I teach a group of 12-13 year olds at my church and today as i was preparing my lesson, some of the research I was doing change a belief I’ve had for a very long time and it kind of rocked my world in an exciting way.
A thought is two neurons connect. Put more simply, it’s a sentence in your brain. A belief is a thought you’ve had multiple time over a period of time. Beliefs often feel like facts, but are just easy to think, thoughts. If thoughts are optional, so are beliefs.
There are many things I choose to believe because they serve me well. For example I choose to believe that Diet Coke is best from a fountain, my family is awesome, I’m really good at my job, physical and mental abuse is wrong, and love is always the right answer.
A belief can be changed two different ways. The first is when you receive new information that is so jarring it changes your thought right away. For example people use to think the world was flat, but once people started sailing all the way around and never getting to the edge, that belief quickly changed for people.
The other way is when you actively practice thinking a different thought over and over to create a new belief. Say you have the belief that your manager is an idiot. If you practice thinking the thought, my manager is human or my manager is doing their best, after enough time you will genuinely believe these thoughts.
A great exercise is to write down your beliefs about your job, your company, yourself, money, your past, your future, anything really. Then start to evaluate if those thoughts are serving you and if you want to keep them. If not, try finding a new thought you already believe and practice thinking that thought.
Here’s a list of a few thoughts I’m practicing believing. Leave a comment and let me know what’s on your new thought list.
- I’m 100% valuable exactly as I am
- There’s enough time
- Money is easy
- They are doing their best
- It’s none of your business what other people think about you
- The worse thing that can happen to me is a negative feeling
- Feelings don’t hurt
- My body is strong
- I’m doing my best
- Of course I want to eat flower and sugar, but I’m not going to
- It’s okay
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