Perhaps you have a pretty clear idea of what you want to change or improve in your life, such as becoming more assertive or starting your own business, and you’ve had a good look at your options. You may even have formulated a plan but somehow you never really got going with it. You feel frustrated, because the plan’s a good one, and you really want to put it into action. But you find yourself procrastinating, thinking of reasons not to start, or getting discouraged along the way. You say to yourself that you don’t have time or that you need to do other things first.

What’s going on? Are you simply weak, or lazy? I’d guess you’ve beaten your- self upon this count a number of times in your life. The good news is that the reason you’re blocked may have nothing to do with weakness, laziness, or any other nasty trait you choose to label yourself with. You may well be blocked because, deep down, maybe you don’t believe you’re capable of executing your plan. Or even worse, you don’t really believe that you deserve to be happier than you are at the moment.

In this section, we talk about having the power of a strong belief system to catapult you into action. We show you how you can choose the beliefs that will support you and how to turn down the volume on the beliefs that hold you back.

Understanding how your beliefs shape you

You can lack resources and your plan can be no more than a few random scribbles on the back of an envelope, yet if your motivation is right and you really believe you can do it, you can make your plan happen. History is full of men and women who have defied the odds and overcome seemingly immovable obstacles to reach their goals, and these people all have one thing in common – an unshakable belief that they are exactly the right person at exactly the right moment in time to achieve whatever they set out to do, be it scaling an impossible mountain or winning a marathon.

In life coaching, a belief is simply a feeling of conviction about something, specifically about yourself – and strong positive beliefs about something are the foundation for action. Holding negative beliefs or beliefs that no longer serve you well has the opposite effect and keeps you stuck. Your inner critic specialises in these destructive beliefs and can produce them at the drop of a hat.

Beliefs are tricky things; they always appear to be logical and watertight – that’s their nature – but whole communities have built their worldview based on beliefs that were later proved wrong. For example, the world isn’t flat, but people used to believe that it was, and wasted a lot of energy on elaborate strategies to avoid falling off the edge.

• What are your beliefs and
• Where are they from?

Some of the beliefs you hold go right back to your childhood. When you were very young you genuinely believed that your parents knew the answer to everything. And what about your belief in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy? Some beliefs you picked up in childhood are harmful. What about the school report that left you with a belief that you’re lazy and easily distracted? Okay, you sometimes behaved that way in class, but these kinds of labels have a habit of sticking with you as part of your identity long after you’ve also become hardworking and focused. 

Beliefs learned, or given to you, in childhood can be very powerful indeed, and if the beliefs are negative, they can really hold you back from seeing and then fulfilling your true potential.

But sometimes beliefs can be overturned in an instant. Scientists are constantly making surprising dis- coveries about ‘facts’ that have always been held to be true about our external world and the internal workings of the human consciousness.

Have you ever experienced a time when something you utterly believed in turned out to be different from what you thought? Perhaps you’ve read true stories where someone discovers that their partner of many years has been leading a double life for decades. Having a core belief overturned like this cuts to the quick of your belief system, and makes you begin to question many things you’ve always held to be true.

Sometimes beliefs you pick up may be incomplete or misleading. Perhaps you formed ideas about someone from what a friend told you and then found out that there was a lot more to the situation than met the eye. What do you believe about the stories you read in the newspapers? The media can be very compelling and authoritative and yet can only reflect a tiny proportion of the whole truth of the matter, or even be a distortion.

Realizing that your beliefs can be wrong doesn’t mean that you need to walk around in some kind of conspiracy theory state, challenging everything that comes your way. But you can see how strongly held beliefs propel you into acting with conviction, for good or ill. Choosing different beliefs that move you forward isn’t being naïve, or ‘thinking positive’ – it’s simply plain good sense.

The belief that’s holding you back is no truer than a belief that spurs you into positive action, so choose to focus on the beliefs that get you great results!

Many of your beliefs are so much a part of you that you rarely have a good, objective look at them. A quick glance isn’t always enough, because on face value all your beliefs may look perfectly reasonable to you. Building a strong positive belief system starts with dusting off your beliefs and pinning them up on your mental washing line to let some air get to them.

What do your beliefs give you?

All the beliefs you hold are likely to feel very real to you. Even negative and destructive beliefs exist for a reason. At some point, you’ve gathered evidence that supports everything you believe. If you’re convinced that you’re hope-less at sports, that’s because you’ve got a stack of compelling examples, such as missing an easy goal or coming in last in a race. You have more negative examples than you have instances where you performed well, so you get used to looking only for the evidence that supports your negative belief about your sporting ability. Holding on to this belief protects you from failing or looking stupid because by doing so you can choose to avoid sports. In reality, you’re almost certainly able to become very good at sports if you want to do so badly enough and are willing to put in the practice and effort required.

Your most limiting beliefs about yourself get in the way of the action you need to take. But many people are surprisingly attached to their limiting beliefs and are reluctant to let them go. That’s because all your beliefs serve you in some way. If you believe that you’re not bright enough to get a promotion, then you can give yourself permission not to try. If you believe that all the men or women you date are selfish and untrustworthy, you can build up comfortable protective armour so that you don’t get hurt. Your limiting beliefs have a function, but a very limited one. Your empowering beliefs, on the other hand, serve you far better by helping you to expand the range of what is possible in your world.

Changing your beliefs

Sometimes, simply by recognising a limiting belief, you take all its power away. You then are able to see it for the false friend it really is. Whatever you believe about yourself (‘I am deceitful’, ‘I am unattractive’, ‘I am stupid’) you can always find plenty of evidence to support that belief if you look hard enough. Your brain seems to actively seek out that evidence and ignore the contrary evidence that says you are truthful, attractive, and smart.

You are a complex human being who at times may behave in a deceitful way and at other times in a truthful manner. But what defines the essence of you isn’t your behaviour. Nevertheless, your behaviour does tend to define the results you get, and those results determine how good you feel about your life. Changing your beliefs allows you to act in different ways more of the time. The more you choose positive behaviours, the better the results you get, and the better you feel. It’s a virtuous circle.

Can you simply decide in an instant that you no longer hold a limiting belief, even if you feel as if you’re playing mind games with yourself? Yes, absolutely!

You can defeat your limiting belief through regularly repeated affirmations and mantras, powerful, positive, present-centered belief statements that help to change your thinking patterns. For example, ‘I radiate energy and vitality is a great affirmation to use if you’re working to cut out unhealthy foods that make you feel sluggish. Your brain believes what you tell it. So a great starting point is to experiment by simply switching the language that you use from negative to positive. You may feel a little as if you’re kidding yourself, but over time, the new belief becomes embedded and you begin to gather more evidence to support it than you previously had for the old limiting belief.

 So instead of always seeing the evidence that you’re lazy (spending all afternoon on the sofa), you begin to notice and focus on the contrary evidence (when you take a walk, clean out a cupboard, or knuckle down to a work task).

You need time and practice to embed a new habit. Research suggests that you need to do something 15 times before it becomes a part of you. This varies according to what it is you are trying to do and how deeply ingrained your old habit is. The best approach is to keep practising the new habit until you catch yourself doing it three times in a row without having to make yourself do it. And then carry on!