Early in my life I believed that the only way to do something was the ‘right way’ which translated into the ‘perfect way’. My father was a perfectionist and my mother had the Midas touch for doing everything exceptionally well. As a result, my world was filled to the brim with nice tidy black and white thinking and an abundance of limiting beliefs. Looking back now, I realize just how limited my beliefs were and how they left absolutely no room for shades of grey or other options.
As I matured and my world expanded I realized that what I had initially believed was set in stone was actually more fluid and changeable. As I learned new concepts and became aware of universal truths, I consciously gave myself permission to modify my beliefs, without doing this I risked staying stuck and stunting my personal growth.
The foundation of our belief system is formed at an early age. It is our families, our teachers, our society, and the media to name a few, who help us to formulate what eventually becomes our belief system.
Even as we mature we often just accept beliefs rather than delving deeper to formulate our own truths. We often just assume or simply believe what we have been told or what we have read or heard on TV or news reports. We then make judgments and assumptions about people, situations, religions, and places based on our beliefs.
On a social networking site recently I saw a poster that stated, “I made it through four years of college and I still didn’t become a liberal”. Even with taking out the word liberal, when I read this I felt sad as it appeared to me to mean that they did not grow or learn anything in four years. It makes me sad that there are people who think that holding steadfast to their old beliefs and old ways of being is a good thing. Would you want to wear the same clothes you did in grade school or have the same hair cut you did as a five-year old? No. We all change and grow, that is one of the gifts of being human. It is unfortunate how limiting it can be in terms of personal growth to hold onto outworn beliefs.
How is it that we get tricked into believing that holding onto outworn beliefs, judgments and prejudices is a good thing? How can we believe that holding onto to old beliefs and judgments we are somehow better than the people, situations or things that we are judging?
I learned to question my beliefs when I became a practitioner of Option Method back in 2004. http://www.optionmethodnetwork.com/
Have you ever questioned your personal beliefs?
I invite you to make a list of your top ten current personal beliefs. Then ask the following questions of each belief.
- Why do I believe that?
- Where did that belief come from?
- Do I believe it my heart or is this something that I believe because I adopted it from someone else?
- What would it mean about me if I did not believe this?
Here is an example of how your list might look.
Belief #1) I believe that I need to get angry when I see injustice.
Why do I believe that? Hmmm. If I don’t get mad then it will look like I do not care about injustice.
Where did that belief come from? Where did I learn that in order to show I care I need to get angry? Hmmm. My mother, father, brother, sister, uncle…the list goes on.
Do I believe in my heart that I need to get angry when I see injustice? No, not really. I can view injustice for what it is and then if I am moved to do something about, to speak out, I can choose to do that without getting angry. Actually getting angry just clouds my thinking anyway. So, it’s probably best to speak out from a place of clarity and calm.
What would it mean about me if I did not get angry when I see injustice? Nothing. It would not mean anything about me if I did not get angry when I see injustice. It would mean that I can see injustice, know it for what it is, and do what I chose to do rather than becoming an angry person who adds more negativity to an already negative situation.
Can you see how questioning your beliefs might be helpful? Additional questions you might wish ask yourself are:
- What choices do I make based on my beliefs? Why?
- How have my beliefs impacted my life overall?
Life is about change, it is about learning and growing. Nothing in life or in nature stays the same, it is constantly in motion and constantly changing. There are, cycles to everything in life, we are born, we grow, we decline and we die, change is natural.
Another part of this natural growth process is to invite ourselves to decide whether to accept a new concept or a new awareness as a new belief, just as it is natural to release old outworn beliefs.
Humanity as a whole has been changing its collective beliefs forever. Where would we be today if that were not the case? We might still believe that the world is flat!
How would humanity not updating its beliefs benefit us? How does not re-evaluating our beliefs benefit us personally, if at all?
In conclusion, I invite you to make a habit of questioning your beliefs. Taking time to assess our beliefs and modify them based on new awareness is healthy and helps us grow emotionally and spiritually.
There have been many times during a conversation when someone asked me, “Why do you believe that?” I welcome those opportunities to pause and reevaluate my beliefs. In my opinion, questioning our beliefs is one of the many ways we can grow into the expanded beings we are intended to be.
©2013 Victorea Luminary www.TakeBackYourPowerNow.com
