Belief Is Confidence in Something
A belief is confidence in something. Every belief is subjective. This means there are no right or wrong beliefs. Each person has their own truth. Every belief a person holds is true for them.
It’s important to understand that there are empowering beliefs and limiting beliefs. Empowering beliefs make you happier and help you achieve your dreams. Limiting beliefs make you unhappy and keep you from your dreams.
How Are Beliefs Formed?
A belief is essentially a simple thought that you are 100% sure is true. Every belief starts with a thought! This thought can come from anywhere. It might be inspired by another person, a situation, or just appear out of nowhere.
Then, this thought is confirmed multiple times and eventually accepted. A single thought doesn’t affect us!
Ways to Reinforce a Thought
For a thought to become established in our consciousness and then move into our subconscious, it needs to be supported and reinforced by other thoughts. The more support a thought receives from other thoughts, the stronger it becomes!
Here are some ways to reinforce a thought:
- Personal experiences (the most powerful way to confirm a belief)
- Personal feelings, intuition, logic
- The experiences of a close person or friend
- The opinions of people you deeply respect and trust
- The opinions of acquaintances and people you know
- Examples from famous people
- Examples from other people
Stages of Belief Formation
Stage 1: Acceptance
At the acceptance stage, a thought moves from your conscious mind to your subconscious. Once in the subconscious, it starts to integrate into your existing system of beliefs. As a result, your entire belief system changes slightly. Imagine a glass of clear water. If you add a drop of red dye, the water changes color just a little. The same thing happens with a new belief.
Once a belief is integrated, a person starts to think, feel, and act in accordance with this new belief. According to the Law of Attraction, a person begins to attract situations into their life that align with this new belief.
For example, I recently worked with a man who believed that to be happy, you need to earn a lot of money.
Let’s see how this belief formed and became unshakable. He told me that at home, he often heard, “Go to school, study well, you’ll earn a lot, you’ll be able to provide for yourself and your family, and you’ll be happy.” His parents said it in different ways, but the message was the same.
At school, he saw other poor kids like himself and noticed they weren’t as happy as the rich kids, who had the best toys and whose parents drove them to school in fancy cars. These kids were more confident and cheerful.
He concluded: to be happy, you need to have a lot of money. The idea was accepted.
Stage 2: Confidence
The confidence stage is marked by the belief becoming deeply rooted in the subconscious. The thought has been repeated so often that you no longer have any doubt about its truth. At this stage, a person doesn’t even notice or realize this thought anymore because it’s so deeply ingrained. To identify beliefs at this stage, a person needs a high level of self-awareness.
The thoughts you are confident in shape your life. At the level of belief, you can interpret black as white and white as black. You can see a positive situation as negative just to confirm your belief.
Continuing our example, the person is sure that to be happy, you need a lot of money. The consequence: if I have little money, I am unhappy. So people chase money all their lives for happiness, but it’s never enough, because “appetite comes with eating,” and happiness never arrives.
With such a belief, you won’t even consider that you can be happy regardless of how much money you have. To start thinking about another possibility, you need some external influence to shake you out of your routine and make you reconsider. Often, books can do this, showing us another perspective. But books only show the way; you have to root the new idea yourself.
Conclusion: at the confidence stage, you don’t question or even think about your beliefs. Some external influence is needed to make you reconsider a particular belief.
Stage 3: Unshakable Conviction
Unshakable conviction occurs when a belief at the confidence stage is constantly confirmed over a long period. Since at the confidence stage we can interpret white as black and black as white, we simply ignore facts that contradict our belief and notice even the smallest confirmations, which inevitably leads the belief to become unshakable!
Such beliefs are extremely strong. A person will defend these beliefs as if defending their own life. If someone questions this belief in conversation, the person will react fiercely, like a lion ready to attack.
Returning to our example, a person with the belief “to be happy, you need a lot of money” dooms themselves to an unhappy life. Since there will never be enough money, happiness will never come! If you suggest that it’s possible to be happy without money, they’ll immediately give you a dozen reasons why that’s impossible, or say something like, “Well, everyone in the asylum is happy.”
Only people who take 100% responsibility for their lives and are highly self-aware can change their unshakable beliefs on their own. Others need a powerful push from outside!
The stronger the emotions, the faster beliefs take root. Emotional and highly energetic people go through this process much faster than unemotional and low-energy people. Emotional people change their lives much more quickly, but these changes can be for better or worse. I want to warn emotional and energetic people to be especially careful with negative thoughts.
Stages of Breaking Down a Belief
- Awareness
First, you need to realize that the situation in any area of your life is ONLY due to you and your beliefs. Second, when you understand that beliefs are the root of everything, you can identify them. - Identification
To break a belief, you first need to find it. It’s often buried so deep that it can take days or even weeks to identify a limiting belief. - Decision
Next, you need to decide to change the belief. Remember, you can’t just destroy something without creating something new in its place. - Doubt
Tony Robbins, my teacher, compares a belief to a tabletop. The tabletop stands on legs. These legs are what support our belief. To make the tabletop collapse, you need to start sawing off the legs. That’s what doubt does. If you want to change your belief, ask yourself: “Could this belief be false?” Then your brain will start looking for situations that prove the belief is false. There are many such situations; we just don’t notice them. The belief will lose its power as you “saw off the legs of the tabletop.” - Creating a New Belief
As I said, beliefs need to be changed, not just destroyed. You need to consciously choose the belief you want to root in place of the old one. - Rooting the New Belief
After you’ve chosen the belief you want to root, use the 7 ways to reinforce the new belief. Look for evidence that supports your new belief. Really look for it! At first, you’ll need to work hard to get the new belief to take hold. After it’s accepted, everything will happen automatically.
Author: A. Andreev