“I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.” ~Groucho Marx

In order to use affirmations in a useful way, for now I am going to describe useful as … helping us to achieve our goals more quickly and elegantly, we are going to do just a bit of exploration about “Beliefs”. Now, in my opinion, there is no such thing as a belief. The entire concept of “belief” cannot be proved. In fact, the entire concept of beliefs and what I am going to tell you about them is a lie! But it is a very useful lie! I encourage you to embrace the concept of beliefs! Why? Because using the artificial construct of belief or beliefs will make it much easier to understand your behavior, the behavior of others and using “Beliefs” will make it much easier to achieve your goals and to help others to achieve their goals. For more on beliefs, and the many ways of viewing them, I encourage you to read the entire entry at Wikipedia about the word “Belief”.

Here is the definition that I am going to encourage you to use with the word “belief”: an organizing principle, held to be true and held to be an accurate representation of reality, that is used as a filter to ascribe meaning and a filter to determine what is possible and impossible and even what types of behaviors are enabled or disabled. This is only one of a great many useful descriptions of the word belief, but let’s look at what this definition is saying:

A “Belief”:

  • organizes us and our behavior. It makes us behave in more organized and predictable ways. We will tend to respond the same ways time and again to the same situation. (We will also tend to respond the same way with greater and greater speed of response. Beliefs save us time and make us respond more quickly!)
  • determines how we view reality. I don’t think anyone that I have ever met actually is seeing or experiencing reality. But they are seeing the reality that their beliefs let them see! Beliefs act as filters for meaning. X happens and it means Y. This is a belief at its simplest level. If you had to always decide what every piece of information coming into your brain meant, you would be completely overwhelmed all of the time. You brain is tracking too much information. So a belief acts to take information and immediately translate it into meaning…saving you time and confusion.
  • determines what is possible and impossible. Again, to save you time and effort and confusion, beliefs act as filters on what you will attempt and what you will not. If you believe something is possible, you may go for it. If you believe it is impossible, you likely will not go for it.
  • determines to a great extent how you behave in every area of your life. A belief or set of beliefs will also tell you how you should or even can respond. Beliefs will actually determine what you are capable of doing.

I use beliefs or at least the concept of beliefs constantly in my work with myself and my clients. Whenever I find myself, or my clients, consistently failing to achieve goals that we sincerely want, I always search for beliefs that are supporting the status quo and I always search for beliefs that could be substituted that would support the desired goals. With rare exceptions, when someone is failing to achieve their goals, despite their best efforts, they will benefit from some analysis of beliefs. Now they may also have some strategic issues and even some knowledge issues…they don’t know what to do or in what order to do it! They may also have conflicting goals or even issues with their identity or spirituality, but somewhere along the line, somewhere in the package that ultimately gives them their desired goals, belief work comes powerfully into the picture.

Wow. That is some deep material huh? Well, it is worth the time. I believe this to be true based on experience! Ha! How does all of that relate back to affirmations? Once you have identified beliefs that are limiting you, you can use affirmations as a way to replace these old “limiting beliefs” with new “empowering beliefs”. And that is a hoot!

More next time…Jack

“There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values.” ~David G. Myers, Social Psychology