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A Few Words About Belief

When I was a child I learned about me and my world through the opinions, beliefs and ideas of the people around me: from my parents, their friends, my school friends, teachers, acquaintances, the media in general and to some extent from those small everyday events which at the time don’t seem significant yet live on in the subconscious mind and form our opinions about events in our daily lives. This is how I,- and indeed many of us - grew up. I re-jigged my ideas of course as Ilearned from each new event. yet my ‘core’ beliefs remained the same, buried deeply within me. I wasn’t aware of them – yet they were making all my decisions for me! they were me!  my on/off struggle through life confirmed this.

Things are different now. as I’m gradually learning what my core beliefs are, I’m changing them. I’m choosing to believe new things about me and my world, and as a result my life experiences are changing too – for the better.

Our beliefs about ourselves and our world help shape our experiences. every day we carry with us the attitudes to life that are formed by these beliefs and they are very useful as they keep us from repeating painful past experiences – just imagine if we treated each and every event as if we’d never experienced it before - our responses would be hopelessly slow ! however these experiences almost always began when we were children and so – therefore - did the beliefs. so, as adults we may be carrying around beliefs which may have served us well in the past, but which may not be relevant now.

As children we depend on the adults around us. if we are not encouraged to value ourselves, to express love, anger and to speak up for ourselves, then an essential part of our self-development is denied – we feel unimportant and ignored. if we carry this limiting behaviour into adulthood - still believing that our own needs are of no importance - then our relationships will almost certainly bear this out and we’ll
continue to struggle. we can end up not knowing what our needs are - not realising that we can choose what we want from this life, instead of giving our power away to others.

If we believe that life is hard then our outer experiences will reflect this belief. if on the other hand we choose to fill our world with positive, loving thoughts - especially toward ourselves - then our outer experiences will reflect this also.