“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” -Wayne Dyer
Our beliefs are the foundation of our personality, and our personality determines our personal reality. They define us and we often treat them as facts (instead of “beliefs”), affecting all the areas in our life: relationships, career, self esteem, physical and mental health, etc.
Reality is neutral. Life is intrinsically meaningless. Things and experiences don’t have a meaning attached to them. We give them meaning (positive or negative) according to our beliefs, and our brain is wired to find evidence of those beliefs in our reality. This is the famous "confirmation bias" phenomenon.
Our beliefs sustain our internal and external world and they will determine how we face the inevitable challenges of life. There are the stories we say to ourselves over and over and that’s how we explain and make order of the chaos of life. So every time something happens to us, we create a story to explain why this happened according to our beliefs. That's why people have completely different reactions to the same situations.
The problem is that many times those beliefs don’t support the changes that we want to make, and that’s why we get stuck in relationships that don’t serve us and jobs that don’t make us happy. That’s why we need to change our beliefs first before we can manifest the changes we want in our lives.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” -Carl Jung
Most of our beliefs are subconscious and were created during the first years of our lives to help us learn how to live in our environment and keep us safe. As children, we quickly learned how to behave in our families and our culture. We learned what kind of behaviours are rewarded, which ones are punished and which ones don't receive attention at all. Over our human history, this knowledge was extremely important and necessary for us to survive.
We are social creatures, and for a huge part of our lives we depend on others for our survival. We depend on our caregivers to receive food, shelter and love, and as children we want to make sure we will still receive those things, because if we don't we can literally die. We want to make sure that we are what they want us to be (pretty, smart, quiet, funny, you name it) so they can love us and give us what we need.
The problem starts when now as adults those beliefs that where created to keep us safe are still running the show in the back of our minds, repeating the same patterns over and over. That’s why the experiences that we have in our childhood are so critical for the rest of our development.
These subconscious beliefs create the perceptual filters through which we respond to life’s challenges. They form the basis for our behaviour, the actions and reactions to each new situation in our lives.
Those are “the programs” that will shape our decisions and, unfortunately, the majority of these programs are disempowering and negative. For example, if we subconsciously believe that we are worthless (maybe because of certain experiences we had we think we don't deserve our success) then it’s likely that we self sabotage when we are about to achieve our goals, because we are not worthy of them, even when consciously think we are.
The good thing is that if we learn how to recognize these programs and take responsibility for them, we can change them for more empowering and positive beliefs about ourselves and the world.
"Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation." -Carl Jung
We can think of our subconscious mind as a machine that always strives to achieve a goal. But it doesn’t judge if the goal is good or bad, it only takes it as the truth, and it will always try to manifest that goal into reality. We can think that those goals are our beliefs, and our subconscious will always try to manifest those beliefs in our reality. That's why our reality reflects what we believe about ourselves and the world. If, for example, we believe that "most people are liars", our subconscious mind immediately will start looking for evidence of those lies in all the people that we meet. And you can rest assure that you'll always find the evidence to confirm that belief even when in reality there is even more evidence that proves the opposite ("confirmation bias" again).
Our conscious mind on the other hand, is the part of us that will always judge and tell us if something is good, bad, useful, etc. It's the creative mind. We can choose what to think and what to imagine. We can plan the future and access our memories from the past. This mind is rarely thinking in the present moment, unless you train yourself to master that skill.
The problem comes when our conscious mind is trying to achieve something: Let’s say you want to achieve a promotion at work. If your subconscious mind has a different belief about that same goal (for example, that you are not good enough to receive that promotion) you will probably not accomplish it, even if the opportunities come up to achieve that goal. You might engage in the famous “self sabotaging” behaviour, maybe by getting really anxious the day of your interview or lashing out at a coworker for something they said. This is really difficult to grasp for a lot of people. You might think, “How can I do that to myself?”, “Why would I sabotage something that I want and I worked so hard to achieve?”. Well, that’s why it’s called “the unconscious”. We are not aware of those beliefs/thoughts/behaviours. We think that what’s happening to us has nothing to do with what we do or believe, when in reality everything that happens to us is a response to those beliefs.
Our subconscious mind takes care of at least 95% of our life and our actions (how we breathe, eat, talk, walk, relate, react to stress or fear, etc). That means that the subconscious manifests itself through our actions and thoughts but also through our body, sometimes creating a symptom.
“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” ― Sigmund Freud
The subconscious mind is also where our long term memory is stored. It has the memory of all your life, even what you don’t consciously remember, and it's constantly re-living the past. It cannot understand the difference between something that has passed and something that is happening right now. That's why we act based on beliefs we created or received from others in our childhood, even when we are not aware of it.
Ok. So now we understand what the subconscious mind is and what is its purpose, but… how can we change it? Is it possible to change those limiting subconscious beliefs? The short answer is: Yes. The long answer is: It takes work. A belief is a thought that you think over an over, and our thoughts (especially the ones we think all the time) are hard wired in our brain, that's why is so difficult to stop thinking them. Affirmations and willpower will definitely help those who are determined to change their habits, mindset and beliefs, but there are specific techniques that can help you achieve that change in a deeper and systematic way. I'll also suggest to find a mental health practitioner, therapist or coach who can guide you in this process.
Changing your thoughts and beliefs takes time and effort. It can even be frustrating at times. But I promise you this: change your limiting beliefs for more empowering and positive ones, and you'll see how your whole life changes and unfolds exactly the way you want it.
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