Are your beliefs serving you?

Your beliefs control your destiny because they are the footprint on which the future is projected. Take a moment and reflect on your current beliefs. Think about how you got them in the first place and whether they have changed over time. Many of us form beliefs when we are young and hold on to them with strong conviction. If our beliefs are questioned, we respond with anger because of their importance in our lives. But what if our beliefs don’t work for us? For example, I remember growing up, the importance of working hard for a living. This became my belief for the last three decades. However, my parents immigrated to this country in the late 1950s and worked hard to make a life for themselves in a new country. From his perspective, hard work equated to the success needed to thrive in his new environment.

Today, with the technological boom, we have seen countless young entrepreneurs become billionaires and billionaires overnight. The hard-working, painstaking approach my parents were familiar with has been replaced with big ideas and innovation. The point I want to make is: we must update our beliefs as our life circumstances change. Many beliefs are passed down from one generation to the next and are rarely questioned. What about you? Do your beliefs serve you? How do you know? You just need to look at your current circumstances to see if your beliefs are working for you or against you. For example, how would you rate your relationships, whether intimate, friendship, or otherwise? What is the state of your finances or career? How is your health? We need to be honest and rate ourselves in each of these areas to see if our beliefs are building us up or working against us.

Be willing to improve your beliefs

Fate does not influence our destiny, our beliefs do because they control our actions. Take, for example, my mother, who rarely drives in the CBD because she thinks it’s hard to find parking spaces on the street. On the other hand, I have worked in the CBD for years and known parking spots are readily available in the city. If I were to drive to the CBD with my mum for a couple of weeks and point out the parking spots, I’m sure her belief would change. There is a passage that says: “You must believe it before you see it.” Unfortunately, for most people the opposite is true and this holds us back in areas of our lives. Can you see how your beliefs decide what you experience?

Sadly, many people go to their deathbed after having lived a less than optimal life and call it luck or fate. We have many more choices about our life than we realize. Therefore, we must take into account whether we are choosing between a place of fear or a place of love. If our beliefs are faulty, we will choose accordingly and call it fate since we don’t know any better. A well-known example is seen in dating where many people have a limiting belief such as: “There are no good men or women to date” or “All the good ones are taken.” Have you heard these beliefs among your friends or perhaps even yourself? In this case we are perpetuating a limiting belief based on fear. However, if we accept this narrative, it will prevent us from taking steps to be in a loving relationship. We could avoid exposing ourselves or build a wall to protect ourselves. Thus our belief becomes a double edged sword where it keeps us safe but prevents us from living a richer life. It might be better to create a belief like “I am open to being in a relationship with the right person at the right time.” We must update our beliefs and challenge them until our life circumstances change. Is this something you are willing to do? Are you ready to step out of your comfort zone and challenge long held beliefs that might be holding you back?

A practice I have used for years is to write down in my weekly journal any limiting beliefs that I feel are holding me back. I challenge belief and look for evidence where it appears in my life. I then create new beliefs and affirmations to support the shift in consciousness. We must change our thought landscape if we want to change our model of reality. If we don’t do the work, we are likely to call it luck or fate and lament our lost choices. After all, as the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung knew well: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it destiny.”