The power of your beliefs | Inner Dawn Counselling

A thought could be fleeting and transient. A thought that is accepted by you regarding something is an opinion. A thought that you accept, ingrain and internalize within yourself becomes your belief. Beliefs could be regarding yourself or regarding other things or people around you.

A thought by itself may not have significant power over you. But a thought that has significant emotions associated to it, that you regard as true, a thought that has been ingrained into you as a belief has a lot of power.

Beliefs about yourself, have a lot of say about who you are, what you become and how you feel about yourself. Beliefs about others define your behavior, attitude towards others. Beliefs regarding life situations define how you get impacted in everyday life. Your beliefs define your perspective, the way you perceive yourself and your world around you.

Your beliefs could have been formed based on your own experiences in childhood or later, from the cultural aspects of your upbringing or surroundings, from observing your parents during your childhood etc.

Some of your beliefs may be confining you. Some of them may be unhelpful to you even hurting you. Though you may realize that some of your beliefs are not helping you but hurting you, yet it is fairly difficult to challenge your own beliefs.

Why is it so difficult to challenge your own beliefs or to change your beliefs? It is because you consider your beliefs to be yourself. When you try to argue against your beliefs, you reckon you are arguing against yourself. To even consider the possibility that you may have to admit that you are wrong is so painful. Some times your beliefs give you comfort and helps you avoid the pain of admitting the reality.

For eg, “I will not succeed”. This belief may help you avoid the guilt that you will need to face if you have not put enough effort into your work. But the resulting failure will act to reinforce your belief that “I will not succeed”. The belief is unhelpful to you that it influences a string of failures in your life.