What you believe affects your perception, your biology, your results and even matter itself.
Belief creates your personal reality. This is a unique worldview where often what is true is only true for you and yet often you can fall into the trap of assuming that it is true for others also.
I think of beliefs as bar codes – just like those parallel lines on a supermarket package which identify the product within. If you change one of the lines on the bar code you will changes the entire meaning of its original message.
So, belief could be described as a MODEL that we make up. It is a series of ‘lines’ that we have constructed on our bar code of life telling us that this object, person, idea, situation, condition etc is good, bad, great, scary, difficult (you name it).
It’s amazing what beliefs that intelligent human beings have taken to be true. Consider now, what have you taken to be true that is not necessarily so?
The question for every belief has to be … “is it useful”?
I guarantee that you won’t have to search far to discover beliefs that you do which are not useful. The stories you tell yourself are a good place to start. Stories like “I’m not a good…..(insert any number of activities), “People are …” or “People aren’t …”?, “Servicing X number of people a week is easy” and so on may or may not be useful.
Often a collection of beliefs that are really well established is considered as a Personal Law. It is so true to you that you take it as an irrefutable law. This becomes your identity. Statements like “I am (insert the descriptor that resonates with your Personal Law like shy, awkward, timid, clumsy, funny, brave, poor communicator, resilient etc).
The things that we tell ourselves are our internal dialogue at play. You create your world with the use of your internal dialogue so it’s useful to challenge your Personal Laws and determine if and how they are supporting you. If you determine that they are not serving you may like to create some internal dialogue change.
There are several methods of shifting internal dialogue so try on one or two of the following suggestions.
- Firstly, become aware and just notice it then…
- You could go to the mountain top and just STOP IT
- You could repeat a mantra, override it or JAM IT
- You could say affirmations and REPLACE IT with useful ideation
- You could add to it by stating UP UNTIL NOW or YET or, IN THE PAST
- You could thank it for sharing, just acknowledge it and let it be
So, get really familiar with your beliefs, they are your bar codes of life creating your personal reality, giving you your unique worldview, your personal satisfaction, your practice effectiveness, your financial wellbeing – in fact, everything.
Now is the time to change one of the lines on your bar code of belief. List 10 things that you believe about yourself, your team, your practice, your practice members or the world around you that is not useful and change it.
Mark
