Beliefs are the hidden scripts that run our lives.
– Marie Forleo, “Everything is Figureoutable”
I have been meaning to write this particular article for months.
But timing, as they say, is everything. Because it wasn’t until very recently that I personally & powerfully experienced this truth: our beliefs are the hidden scripts running our lives.
When something in our lives isn’t working out quite the way we’d hoped, it can be a very useful exercise to take a good look at what underlying belief we might be holding on to (often for dear life). What story, belief, idea, hope, or assumption might be so deeply rooted in our psyche that we may not even be consciously aware of it anymore?
But just because we aren’t aware of a belief doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Or maybe we are aware of it—but we allow it to remain where it is…like a faded, familiar & favourite old t-shirt at the bottom of our drawer? We know we should throw it out…but what’s the rush?
If you haven’t read Marie Forleo’s brilliant book, “Everything is Figureoutable,” I highly recommend it. In preparation for writing this, I re-visited the chapter, “The Magic of Belief.” There were an awful lot of highlighted sentences.
Here are a few of Marie’s gems about the power of beliefs:
The process of creation goes something like this: thought, feeling, behaviour, result…Beneath our thoughts, however, lies an even deeper force that directs and controls our lives…It’s a force that underpins every action we take and how we interpret and respond to the world around us. This deeper, commanding force is our beliefs.
Like a track running underneath a train, our beliefs determine where we go and how we get there.
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Long term, your beliefs determine your destiny.
Your beliefs either heal or harm you. They either support your aspirations or thwart them.
It doesn’t matter what’s true, it matters what you believe.
While our potential as individuals is unknowable, what we know for sure is that limiting beliefs guarantees limited outcomes.
All beliefs are a choice and choices can be changed.
When you look more closely, a belief is nothing more than a thought that you’ve decided is significant and true.
The first step to becoming free from your beliefs is noticing which ones are creating hurt or misery for you.
Our goal is to bolster the beliefs that support us and eliminate those that don’t.
Whatever thoughts we repeat most often and with the most emotional intensity, we reinforce.
Whatever thoughts we don’t use or reinforce will grow weak and eventually fade away.
Here’s what happened to me:
For the past three years, I have held on to the extremely faint but oddly persistent hope—which was connected to a very deep-rooted belief—that a certain male someone in my life was going to change his mind about his feelings towards me.
He had (with loving kindness and tremendous patience) tried every trick in the book to communicate his NO to me. But I refused to accept it. I held on to my hope for dear life…for good reason. I hadn’t been ready to let it go because I hadn’t yet learned all that I needed to.
But then, one day, I realized I was ready. I had learned what I needed to. And I let the belief go.
I finally accepted that the door to that particular heart was never going to open…for good reason. So, at long last, I stopped knocking. Then I made one tiny tweak in my behavior (after ditching a secondary belief that was no longer serving me but had also been in place for good reason) and voila!
A new door opened.
When we do what we need to do, learn what we need to learn, and let go of what no longer serves us, something in the Universe shifts and things happen…fast.
How about you?
Are you holding on to a deep-rooted belief that might be doing you more harm than good? What belief/s might be holding you back from doing what you really want to do—or becoming the person you really want to become? If so, might it be time to give it the heave-ho?
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Previously Published on Pink Gazelle
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