We all have dreams and goals. We all want to become successful and live happily.

But our habits and daily routines do not reflect the ideal life we want to create. Our everyday behaviour is far from the ideal version of ourselves. We know what is required to be done and what we should not be doing. Yet, we keep on repeating the same behaviour every day. Why so?

The answer lies in our belief systems. Our erroneous belief system stops us from moving forward towards our goals and fulfilling our dreams. Let us understand how our beliefs affect us and shape our lives.

Our beliefs are formed right from our childhood and stored in our unconscious mind. Every experience, whether positive or negative, creates new beliefs or reinforces earlier existing beliefs. Our environment, especially the people who can influence us play a crucial role in the formation of these beliefs. These beliefs become a permanent part of our thought process and influence our actions and behaviours. They shape the story of our life depending on whether our beliefs are positive or negative. Mahatma Gandhi has explained the process in a beautiful, logical manner:

Positive beliefs are beliefs that help us move forward in life, be successful and happy. We shall call positive beliefs as resourceful beliefs because they keep on adding value to our life.

Negative beliefs are those beliefs that hold us back from giving our best in any situation, and also hold us back from enjoying life to the fullest. We shall call negative beliefs as unresourceful beliefs because they drain the life-juice out of us.

The most common negative belief I have observed among people is: 
Erroneous belief 1: I am not good enough or I am not capable of great things. 

A person with this belief deeply embedded in his mindset will never try to achieve anything extraordinary in his lifetime. This unresourceful belief was formed due to the many negative remarks the person was subjected to by his parents, teachers, elders, and peers. Some failures during the growing years helped to reinforce this unresourceful belief. Now, the question is: will this person not try to achieve anything worth it? Will he live a mediocre life forever? Is there a way to change his destiny for the better?

The first solution that comes to our mind is to substitute this negative belief with an anti-dote, -a positive belief: I am good enough, and I am capable of doing great things. This, however, is far from the solution. It would amount to wishful thinking and will not generate the result we want. The starting point in replacing the erroneous belief would be to instil the self-belief that ‘I am capable of working out my way, putting in efforts and gathering resources to achieve great things in life.’

Let us take one more example:

Erroneous belief 2: I can never be rich; all rich people are frauds.

Both these beliefs are intrinsically the same. A person with such erroneous beliefs will find it very difficult to generate a healthy cash flow and create wealth in his lifetime. Also, there will not be any different outcome by replacing the belief with another belief that only says: ‘I will be rich.’ That we now know will be only wishful thinking. The right approach would be to start thinking that ‘ anybody with a focus on providing value to people can become rich and I am capable of providing value to people and getting paid handsomely for it. I deserve to be rich and I am capable of working out my way towards prosperity ‘.

One last example:

Erroneous belief 3: I am too busy; I have no time.

The right way to start discarding this belief of forever-busy status will be to replace it with the awareness and the self-belief that I know my priorities, and I have enough time to focus on the things I want to do, and I say no to things that I do not wish to do.

The think-positive industry has created more confusion and frustration among people as most people confuse positive thinking with wishful thinking and wonder why things are not getting better. We don’t need positive, wishful thinking. What we need are positive self-belief systems.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) offers us tools and techniques that rapidly replace negative, unresourceful beliefs with resourceful, life-enhancing beliefs. These techniques are easy procedures that work on our subconscious mind and create a positive and permanent influence. And all this is done in just a few quick sessions with the help of an NLP practitioner.

An expert NLP practitioner, life coach or mentor can take you on a journey of self-discovery. He can teach you to tap into the power of your subconscious mind, create new resourceful beliefs and reinforce your existing positive self-beliefs to create the ideal version of yourself and achieve your dreams and goals.

I will bid adeau to this discussion with a thought for us to ponder upon:

Whatever is the current
reality of our life,
it is a reflection of
our dominant beliefs.

Vishwajeet