April 07, 2007

Most people may still be unaware of one of the fundamentals of life that is responsible for shaping the entire human life. Belief is a profound and powerful tool that serves as an enormous source of energy and insight for a person, both personally and professionally.

Beliefs basically form a platform of ideas in our minds and then the execution of those ideas takes place in accordance with our beliefs. Once a person manages to change his limiting belief he can virtually excel in every aspect of his life in a moment. If we want to direct our lives, we must take conscious control over our beliefs. Remember: once accepted, our beliefs become unquestioned commands to our nervous systems, and they have the power to create or destroy the possibilities of our present and future. This success is a matter of choice here as it depends upon the person’s pattern of thinking, because in this regard beliefs will facilitate us to familiarise ourselves with the way of success. However, in order to implement these principles, you should be acquainted with the background of this phenomenon.

Now first let us ponder over ‘what is a belief?’ Most of us may conclude with an uncertain outcome. In reality, belief is a feeling of certainty about something. If you say you believe you’re intelligent, all you are really saying is, I feel certain that I am intelligent. That sense of certainty allows you to tap into resources that permit you to produce intelligent results. Remember that God has blessed mankind with countless bounties. This is negligence on our part that we don’t realise this fact consciously.

But the question of how to create a sense of certainty and how to turn an idea into a belief arises. The simple theory behind this phenomenon is that you need some past experience or references to strengthen your idea. Let me clarify with an example. Take Tom Amberry — one of the leading basketball players. Instead of worrying whether the ball will go through the hoop, Amberry shifts his attention. He knows that his throw never gets out of the way. Keeping this in mind, now his actions follow his thinking pattern. He makes sure that his shoulder and feet are properly lined up, and then he bounces the ball exactly three times, never taking his eyes off the ball’s black inflation hole. He is certain that his fingers line upon the ball the same way before each shot. Would you believe some day he simply wouldn’t miss and once he had 2,750 throws in a row? He knew people regard him as an elegant sportsman and a professional league player. This thought enlightened Amberry’s mind to generate the belief which push his skills way forward.

Now this was a simple generalisation in Amberry’s mind which was responsible to develop his set of thoughts into a belief. Once these beliefs are driven by our generalisations, these thoughts are transformed into actions by our subconscious mind without being further scrutinised. Once a person comes up with an idea and confines it into a belief, he unconsciously nourishes mindsets in his brain which are completely based on these results.

All the experiences in life are used as basic building blocks for our beliefs. Walking down the memory lane, you may encounter both pleasant and unpleasant events. But not all of them are used to support beliefs. These beliefs are designed to convey messages to our mind as to what will lead to pain and what will lead to pleasure. Whenever something happens in our life it leaves an impression to serve our actions in the future.

This means the way you view an event in life is very significant. Two women turn 70 years old, yet each takes a different meaning from the fact. One knows that her life is coming to an end. To her, seven decades of living mean that her body must be breaking down and she’d better start winding up her affairs. The other woman decides that what a person is capable of at any age depends upon her belief, and sets a higher standard for her. She decides that mountain climbing might be a good sport to begin at the age of 70. For the next twenty five years, she devotes herself to this new adventure, scaling some of the highest peaks in the world, now, in her 90s, Hulda Crooks has become the oldest woman to ascend Mount Fuji.

You see it’s never the environment; it’s never the events of our lives; but the meaning we attach to the events — how we interpret them — that shapes who we are today and who we’ll become tomorrow. Beliefs are what make the difference between a lifetime of joyous contribution and one of misery and devastation. Beliefs are which make a man rise with pride, while let others to lead a misleading life.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that can strengthen them or disempower them. Such beliefs can literally save lives or suppress human capacity. This is because the challenge with all these beliefs is that they become limitations for our future decisions about who we are and what we are capable of. We need to remember that most of our beliefs are generalisations about our past, based on interpretations of many elements.

Our beliefs are not an outcome of a few events; they are formed gradually taking account of even our values, rituals, religion and customs. But beliefs based on such viewpoints generally result in limitations for us. They are detrimental for our growth and future perspectives. For example, think of the people living in remote areas of Pakistan. Conservative approach accompanied with customs such as Karo-Kari, violation of women’s rights such as deprivation of education with all other forms of abuses are traditions strongly inculcated in their minds from decades. One of the major drawbacks of these societies is that they have absorbed these beliefs for so long that it has halted their growth from ages.

Beliefs can change the entire life patterns if people begin to treat such adopted beliefs as if they’re realities, as if they are gospel. If you ever wonder why people do what they do, again, you need to remember that human beings are not random creatures. They try to justify their actions through their experiences. Whatever we do, is due to our conscious or unconscious beliefs about what will lead to pleasure and what will lead to pain. If you want to create long-term and consistent changes in your behaviour, you must change the beliefs that are based on generalisations.

Unfortunately, generalisations in more complex areas of our lives can force us to adopt a belief that has to do something directly with our psychology. Maybe you’ve failed to follow through on various endeavours a few times in your life, and based on that, you developed a belief that you are incompetent. Once you believe this is true, it can become a self –fulfilling prophecy. You may even say, “Why even try if I’m not going to follow through anyway?” Or maybe in school you didn’t learn as quickly as you thought other kids did, and rather than considering the idea that you have a different learning strategy you may have decided that you were “learning disabled”.

Here I think it is important to mention that parents who continuously encourage their children and try to induce positive attitudes in their minds find them more successful in later years of their lives. They unconsciously taught them ways, which initiates positivism in every aspect of their lives. With the passage of time, their children develop habits to utilise their innate abilities to take a clear edge over others.

Beliefs are not limited to impacting our emotions or actions only. They can literally change our bodies in a matter of moments. Beliefs even have the capacity to override the influence of drugs on the body. While most people think that drugs heal, study in the science of psychoneuroimmunology (the mind-body relationship) have revealed what many others have suspected for centuries: our beliefs about the illness and its treatment play as significant a role as the treatment itself. Dr Henry Beecher from Harvard University has done extensive research that clearly demonstrates that we often give credit to a drug, when in reality it’s the patient’s belief that makes the difference.

We need to realise that our beliefs have the capacity to make us sick or make us healthy in a moment. Beliefs have been documented to affect our immune systems. And most importantly, beliefs can either give us the resolve to take action, or weaken and destroy our drive. In this moment beliefs are shaping how you respond to what you’ve just read and what you’re going to do with what you’re learning in this article.

People so often develop limiting beliefs about who they are and what they are capable of. Because they haven’t succeeded in the past, they believe they won’t be able to succeed in the future. As a result, out of their fear of pain, they begin to constantly focus on being realistic. Most people who constantly say, “Let’s be realistic,” are really living in fear, deathly fear of being disappointed again. Out of this fear they develop beliefs that cause them to hesitate; not to give their all — consequently they adhere to their limiting beliefs.

Therefore harness your power of belief. It is a tool which can assist you to generate peak performance in all walks of life. Raise your thinking standards and acquire a sense of certainty like few people who ever lived and left their names. Remember: all personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs. No one can stop you from accomplishing what you desire except your own limiting beliefs.

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