Interviews & Publications

Thoughts on Changing Your Beliefs

One of the keys to claiming your power and protecting yourself from negative influences is changing your beliefs. To a certain extent, this is psychotherapeutic work. However, you can do much, if not all, of the work on your own. One key is to understand what beliefs are. Beliefs consist of thoughts that are positively supported by positive thoughts and images. There is a mistaken belief that is widely promoted and held that all you have to do is change your thoughts. The reason this is a mistaken belief is that people generally believe that you work on the surface thinking. An example is a belief that you are bad at basketball. A superficial and not very effective approach to changing this belief is to repeat to yourself a different thought, such as “I am good at basket ball”, or in a more sophisticated way “I am getting better and better at basketball”. The problem or limitation with this is that people tend to have other thoughts ABOUT the original thought and replacement thought. These are called meta thoughts. A meta thought about “I am bad at basketball” might be “This thought fits in with how I see myself as being bad at sports in general”, “this thought allows me to avoid trying and failing, which feels safe”, and “this thought feels comfortable because it is familiar.” Now, these meta thoughts, or thoughts about thoughts mostly occur at a subconscious level – unless they are investigated and addressed consciously. Examples of meta thoughts about the replacement thought “I am getting better and better at basketball” might include “if I get better at basket ball then I would have to completely revamp my self concept and that is scary and stressful, so I do not want to go there”, “if I get better at basketball then I do not have a reason to avoid doing physical exercise and my father, who tried to bully me to do sports, wins”, and “this thought is uncomfortable because it is unfamiliar.” So, merely replacing apparent or surface thoughts may be ineffective. Instead, you need to address a deeper level.

So, how do you go to a deeper level? One deeper level is Identity, and you work at this level by re-defining the kind of person you are. Working on yourself at the level of identity and self concept makes it easier to change your thinking. The logical question is how do you change your self concept, especially on your own. There are several ways, but the easiest and most accessible way is through reading inspirational books and watching inspirational movies to expose yourself to models of people who have the kinds of characteristics you would like to have. As you see, hear and read about these models, you tend to identify with them and get ideas of more effective and enjoyable ways of living.