For 15 years as a personal development nut, I devoured books upon books about all kinds of self improvement topics from health to finances to relationships to spirituality and everything in between.

After you read 100 or so personal development books, you start to see certain patterns.  After you read 1,000+ personal development books the patterns are completely obvious.  You’d have to be blind not to see them.

One of those patterns that I realized somewhere along the way in reading through over a thousand personal development books is that there is a construct within our minds which is responsible for controlling and shaping every area of our lives.

We all want to fight for our freedoms and if our governments tried to take away even 1% of the freedoms we already have, there would be huge protests in the streets over it.

At the same time though, this mental construct we are all born with in our minds controls every detail of our lives and most of us aren’t even aware of it’s existance.

The mental construct I’m referring to is BELIEFS.

What Are Beliefs?

In elementary schools I remember learning about the seven wonders of the world.

What I don’t remember seeing on that list of “wonders” is human beings, animals, plants and any other forms of life.  All the wonders in the world put together pale in comparison to the wonder of a single human body and the human brain/mind.

I think the list of wonders needs to be amended and the first three wonders on the list should be (1) Life, (2) Human Body, (3) Human Mind.

The fourth wonder on that list should be (4) Beliefs.

Beliefs control everything we see in our lives, yet almost all of us live our lives completely unaware of their existence.

We may hear about them from time to time in some book we read or some personal development guru talking about them, but for most of us they are just one of those things that we ignore.

This, ironically enough, is due to the fact that we have a belief that our beliefs are not something that’s important for us to take a look at.

Let me share something with you that might shine a little bit of a light on that limiting belief.

If there is just one thing you learn about and master in personal development in your entire life that would have a huge impact on EVERYTHING you experience – it would be Beliefs.

So what are beliefs exactly?

Beliefs Are Thought Constructs

Beliefs are nothing more than thoughts that we keep thinking to ourselves until they evolve from “concepts” to “facts” in our minds.

For example, let’s take a belief like this:

“I am a professional blogger.”

The first time I thought that exact thought to myself, it was simply a concept – neither true, nor false.

As soon as I thought about the concept though, my mind began to classify that thought as either “true” or “false”.

Interestingly enough, in order to determine the validity of that statement, my mind had to access other beliefs I already had in order to determine whether that statement is true or not.

Meaning, it had to first determine “What is a professional blogger?”, and then it had to compare the criteria for the definition of what a professional blogger is to who my beliefs believe I am to determine a “truth scale” for that statement.

In this way, every belief we have is actually based on other beliefs we have previously constructed.  Nothing is actually ever based on “facts”, everything is based on beliefs.

We label our most closely held beliefs as “facts” but really they are just beliefs.  They are all just “made up”.  Every day, millions of mental constructs some of us label as “facts” are proven to be false.

Even the mental concept of “facts” is a made up concept.  The “fact” that facts exist is just a belief.  LOL. 

The first step to really grasp the power behind beliefs and how they shape our lives is to stop believing them to be facts.  Beliefs are just beliefs – they are made up.

When people first hear this, it sometimes makes them angry.  How dare someone say that there is no such thing as “facts”?

I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as a belief that we hold that facts exist.  I know that belief exists.  Our legal system is based on it, amongst many other things.  However, in the end it’s still just a belief.

The simple truth is that without our belief in facts, facts don’t exist in and of themselves.  We have to believe in them first, in order for them to exist.

All they are is just mental constructs.

I’ll say it again.  Beliefs are nothing more than thoughts – mental constructs – which we keep thinking to ourselves until we gather enough “evidence” (through our belief in other beliefs) to establish them as “facts” in our minds.

Beliefs Are Self Reinforcing Filters

What’s really interesting about Beliefs is that once they are established, they act as self reinforcing filters to further strengthen them to seem like “facts” in our lives.

What does this mean?

Well, in order to understand what this means we must first realize that one of the most important functions of our human brain is to act as a filter.  If we were to make a computer program that mimicked the functions of our human brain, 99.9999% of the code within that program would be code design to do just one thing – FILTER information.

See, most of us are under the illusion that our brains are conscious decision making devices.  Our brains do make decisions, but 99.99999% of the decisions we make are through the process of subconscious filtering.

Our conscious brain can only process 7-10 bits of information per second.  Whereas our subconscious brain is said to be able to process up to 40 million bits of information per second.

What does that mean?

Well, what that means is that our conscious mind – the one you are reading this with right now is only responsible for processing about 0.00000025% of the decisions that you make every single day.

Most of us live under the illusion that it is our conscious mind that is in control, because that is the part of our mind that we are aware of, and even at 10bits of information per second that still gives us the ability to make about 500,000 conscious decisions every day during our waking hours, but the truth is that there is about 2-4 trillion subconscious decisions that our subconscious mind makes every day that we are not even aware of.

Do you remember making 2 trillion decision yesterday?  Do you remember even making 10 decisions yesterday? How about 1?

If we were to even attempt to process that bandwidth of information with our conscious mind, our brains would melt and we’d pass out in less than a second.

Therefore, what the brain does is that it constantly filters out any information that is not important according to our beliefs.

The brain essentially only relays the absolute most important information to your conscious mind for it to make a decision on.  Everything single other decision is made by the subconscious mind.

So what do I mean by the fact that beliefs are self-reinforcing filters?

Well, how this works is that as soon as we form a belief about something, our subconscious mind filters out (deletes) any information which contradicts that which we already believe.

Meaning, when a new piece of information arrives through our senses, if that information does NOT align with that which we already believe – we simply filter it out.  We delete it from our perceptions.

The reason we do this is because our mind does not have the ability to re-evaluate our existing beliefs every time we perceive something that does not align with our beliefs.  As a survival mechanism we DELETE that which does not align with what we already believe to be true.

I cannot stress enough the profound nature of this realization.

What this means is that through your beliefs your mind creates this little “fantasy” world you live in, which you believe to exist and be “true”, and anything that you perceive through your senses which SUPPORTS that illusion/fantasy is accepted into your conscious and subconscious mind, and anything that CHALLENGES that illusion/fantasy is simply DELETED!

What’s more is that we all totally believe that OUR version of “reality” is the right one, because our own beliefs simply filter out that which doesn’t align with that which we already believe.

How Beliefs Control and Shape Our Lives

Beliefs control our lives by acting as “gatekeepers” to new perceptions.

For example, imagine for a second that you believe this statement:

“The economy is bad right now and it is difficult to make money.”

That is a belief.  If you believe that belief, your mind will essentially filter out everything that doesn’t align with that statement.

So for example, let’s say that you are having a conversation with a friend at your house with the TV turned on in the background.  On the TV, a news cast comes on and says that the economy is showing signs of a recovery.

Let’s walk through what happens.

Your ears hear the sound waves from that TV because you are within hearing distance.  The ears transfer the audio signals to your brain which translates the meaning of the words into a concept.  That concept is “Economy is recovering.”

Your mind then takes that concept and has to decide “Is this important information for the conscious mind to hear?”

The way it does that is to first compare it to your pre-existing beliefs.  Now, lets say that you have a belief that says “The economy is bad right now and it is difficult to make money.”

Well, those two beliefs clash.  So what your mind can do at this point is one of two things…. (1) Point out the fact that it has perceived new information that goes against one of your existing beliefs, or (2) Just filter out/delete the information and ignore it.

What the mind does in 99.999% of situations is #2.  It deletes that which doesn’t align with our existing beliefs.

So how does this affect our lives?

Well, it affects our lives because we never really see the world and our environment as it really is.  We see that which we want to see.  We see that which aligns with our beliefs.  What’s worse is that we keep reinforcing that which we believe to be true, and as we get older the “stubbornness” of our beliefs becomes stronger and stronger.

That is why two people in the exact same situation will perceive totally different things.  One person will see opportunity in the same situation as someone else sees disaster.  They are both right.  They are both just seeing/perceiving that which aligns with their beliefs.

Think about it this way.  Imagine there are two twin brothers named Bob and Bill.

Bob believes the following:

• “The world is a friendly place.”
• “Opportunities to make money are everywhere.”
• “I deserve abundance in my life.”
• “I am in charge of my own life.”
• “My decisions shape my destiny.”

Bill believes the following:

• “The world is a chaotic, random place.   You never know what will happen next.”
• “The world just keeps getting worse and worse.”
• “I don’t deserve any of the stuff I have in my life.  Someone will soon take it all away.”
• “I’m totally out of control.”
• “Nothing I do will ever change anything.”

Based on these beliefs, can you see how the two brothers will live TOTALLY different lives?  I would be willing to bet that a guy like Bob with those beliefs could start with nothing and live a successful life because he would embrace all the opportunities that life showers us all with every day.

And a guy like Bill could be given every opportunity, break and leg-up in life and still end up living a miserable life.

The fact is that the two of them could have the same DNA, the same levels of intellect, talent, ability, etc. and could have been raised by the exact same parents in the same home, but with beliefs that are that different they will live totally different lives.

Speaking of DNA…

Beliefs and Biology

In his book “The Biology of Belief”, Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., explains how our beliefs actually and literally control the biology of our bodies including our DNA.

I know it may sound like science fiction to those who haven’t heard about this science yet, but our beliefs can and do affect the very fabric of our body.  Our beliefs actually have the ability to change our DNA.

Bruce Lipton teaches that it is not our genetic predisposition to certain diseases that determines whether or not we will manifest them in our bodies, but actually our beliefs that control this determination.

Meaning, there is no such thing as a “Cancer Gene” that controls whether or not we develop Cancer.  There is no “Baldness Gene” that controls whether or not we go bald.  Genes themselves have no control to turn themselves on/off.  They are turned on/off based on our beliefs.

Think of genes like a light switch.  We have mistakenly assumed that light switches turn on the lights.  Light switches don’t turn on/off the lights.  The person flicking the light switch turns on/off the lights.

That is a huge distinction.  Keep in mind, however, that there are billions if not trillions of dollars being made out there right now by companies that try to lock us into the limiting belief that we have no control over those light switches.  It is in their best interest to keep us “in the dark”, thinking that our genes control our health, and also the limiting belief that our DNA is something that is static that we are born with and which never changes throughout our lives.

Neither of those limiting beliefs are true.  “The Biology of Belief” explains in detail.

The Awareness Trap

The biggest challenge with the way that our belief system works is that it is self-reinforcing.  If our mind worked in such a way where anything that challenged our beliefs was brought to the surface for “re-evaluation”, then slowly over time our beliefs would balance themselves out.  They would represent a fairly accurate model of reality.

However, due to the self-reinforcing nature of our beliefs, we not only form false/limiting beliefs, but we are also completely unaware of their existence!  Even if we become aware of them, the next challenge we run into is that we are so invested in our beliefs due to the millions of decisions that we already made according to those beliefs, that we refuse to look at any kind of “new information” that might challenge those beliefs.

The only way to avoid this trap, is to address it consciously.  Our subconscious mind won’t just automatically fix our limiting beliefs by itself.  We must consciously decide to do that first, and only then will we be able to change our beliefs.

The only other way in which our beliefs can be affected (outside of our own conscious choice to change them) is when we come in contact with other people who don’t have the same beliefs that we do.  When we interact with other human beings, their minds don’t function within the same limiting beliefs that we do so their perceptions are different.

This is why getting around successful people is so important.

If you want to become a professional Blogger, become friends with or hire a professional Blogger mentor.  They will instantly be able to see things that you don’t see yourself.

If you want to improve your fitness levels, get around people who are into fitness or hire a fitness mentor.  Their beliefs will perceive opportunities for you and challenge the decisions you’re currently making unconsciously without even being aware of it.

If you want to be wealthy, get around wealthy people.

Another Alternative

Besides getting around people who already have a set of beliefs which allow them to accomplish the things that you would like to accomplish in life, there is one other way to get rid of your limiting beliefs.

For my regular Blog readers, I’m sure you’ve heard me mention PSYCH-K before.  PSYCH-K is the only belief clearing/balancing system that I know which accurately identifies the exact limiting beliefs that are holding you back from achieving whatever it is that you want to achieve/accomplish/be in life, and also helps you to balance out those beliefs quickly and effectively.

When you get around people who are already successful in the area of your life which you want to be successful in, just by hanging around with them they will point out your limiting beliefs / mis-perceptions.  For example, often times when I get around people who have a lack-mentality around money, I can instantly spot the limiting beliefs they believe in which they aren’t even aware of.  I can do this because I used to have the exact same limiting beliefs when I almost went bankrupt.

Those limiting beliefs stand out to me like a sore thumb.  I can instantly tell what people believe to be true, and when I challenge those beliefs it’s really interesting to see how people react.   In almost all cases they start of by defending their beliefs, and then after a while they realize that they don’t even consciously believe in those beliefs – so they wonder why they believed them unconsciously in the first place.

This is an awesome way to discover and eliminate limiting beliefs, but it is also a very slow and “manual” way of accomplishing this.  What if you can’t get around people who are doing what you want to do?  Or what if you’re trying to accomplish something that many people haven’t done before?

That is where I think PSYCH-K shines bright.  It allows you to identify the exact limiting beliefs that are holding you back, and then to balance them out.  A process that may have previously taken months or years or even decades to accomplish, can now be done with PSYCH-K in a matter of minutes.

Of course just by studying beliefs, becoming aware of them, asking yourself the right questions, and getting around people with more empowered beliefs can be a huge positive factor in your life.  I’m not saying that PSYCH-K is the only way to affect beliefs.  I had a lot of success re-wiring my personal beliefs for 15 years prior to discovering PSYCH-K, so I know it can be done.  I’m just saying that PSYCH-K is a  much faster way to go.  I wish I heard about it 15 years ago.

The bottom line is this.

Your limiting beliefs are not going to fix themselves.  By default they will simply just “harden” themselves and become a stronger ( and more limiting ) force in your life.

To change your limiting beliefs you must do so consciously.  You have to decide to identify and change those limiting beliefs that are holding you back.

If you don’t, you’ll always be held back by them because the subconscious mind is programmed to “strengthen” our beliefs ( limiting or not ) and not to “determine the legitimacy” of them.

Only our conscious mind can decide to question the legitimacy of our beliefs.

Nobody else will do this for you.

By whatever method, you must decided to change your limiting beliefs.

Or not.

It’s your decision.