How to Change or Remove a Bad Belief

What Is a Belief?

As Tony Robbins says,

“A belief is nothing but a feeling of certainty about what something means. When you say I believe this, you’re saying I’m certain of this.”

A belief is an idea or theory that you perceive to be a fact in your mind. The funny thing is, you don’t have to believe something to be true.

I’m sure you have a lot of negative things that you don’t believe about yourself. We’ll challenge them together in this section.

How Negative Beliefs Are Formed?

A belief is formed through:

1. You’ve given meaning to past experiences. For example, being last chosen in school dance and thinking means that everyone thinks you’re horrible looking.
2. Someone else (including news, media, magazines and authority figures) telling you something. For example, someone tells you that you’re hideous, either directly on your face or on TV or in magazines.
3. Say something to yourself. For example, look in the mirror and say you’re ugly.

The more you tell you, or someone whose opinion you think is valid, the more you believe it. In fact, this was proven.

That’s why it’s so important that we stop repeatedly telling ourselves hurtful, negative things and listening to other people’s negative things about us.

Negative beliefs about ourselves originate mainly from past experiences when we were kids.

Here are some examples:

• You may have been punished, neglected, smacked or abandoned as a child, and now you think you are worthless and deserve such treatment.
• You may have been told hurtful things by your parents, loved ones and teachers when they were mad. Things like, “You’re a bad boy,” “You’re never going to be worth anything,” “You’re like your father,” etc. Now these things you have come to believe.
• Maybe when your parents or teachers were mad at you, you were smacked and punished. Now you think you always have to keep people happy or you will have pain.
• You might have been told to “never talk back” and “don’t argue.” Now you think confrontation is bad and at all costs should be avoided.
• Maybe your parents or teachers always told you to “be still” or “shut up.” If you spoke too much or stood out in class, you were punished. Now “being quiet” is your survival strategy to avoid pain in social situations.
• Your parents may also have said things about the world, such as, “Never trust or talk to strangers,” “It is impossible for people to trust,” etc. Now you came to distrust people and fear them.
• If you ever said no to your parents or authority figures, pain in the form of punishment would come. So now you may think you never have to tell anyone or there will be pain.
• You may have been told by friends or other school children that you’re ugly, fat, unlikeable, uncool, etc. You think you’re unattractive, ‘ less than, ‘ or lower than others, and you don’t deserve to be loved.
• You may have felt or been told that you were “not as confident as other children” or “not as intelligent,” and you came to believe it.
• If you did n’t like the same things that everyone else liked, you might be told something was wrong. This may have led you to think you’re weird, different, strange or inferior.
• If your parents (or other family members) rarely acknowledged your good points and always focused on your mistakes and weakness, this may have led to the belief you’re not good enough.

Negative Beliefs Can Also Come From:

Opinions of authority figures: For example, someone you trust will tell you that you are on lifetime medication, you were born shy, you have a learning disability, or you have a genetic fault in your brain. You believe what they told you now, because you think they are in a position of authority and they know better than you.

Comparing yourself to other people: Feel inferior if you don’t measure the results or appearances of other people. Look at photoshopped models or men’s magazines on steroids and feel bad about yourself. Comparing yourself to confident people who have had years of social experience and because you don’t have the same skills at the moment, you think it means that you have something wrong inherently.

An abusive relationship:Making the actions of someone else towards you means something about your value as a person.

Being cheated on: Believing it was your fault because you were cheated and it means something about your value as a person or your appearance.

Growing up poor: You may feel less than people because of your financial history or you have inherited the negative beliefs of your parents about money and the world.

Criticism and judgement from others: Accept negative opinions of other people about you as facts and do not challenge them or question their validity and their motivations. Maybe others were jealous of you or insecure about themselves, so they had to try and bring you down to make them feel better.

How Do We Change a Belief?

Beliefs are so strong that they can be your biggest ally or your worst enemy. Beliefs act like self – fulfilling prophecies ; you’ll see evidence of whatever you believe in yourself.

If you think you’re ugly, for example, your brain only looks for evidence that confirms your belief and filters out any contradictory evidence. You’ll concentrate only on the parts of yourself that you don’t like, completely rejecting your good points. The worst part is, whenever someone says you look nice, you’ll reject the compliment, thinking it’s sarcastic or insincere.

If you think you’re attractive, however, your brain only focuses on your good points, and when someone compliments you, you believe them, confirming your belief that you’re attractive.

It’s the same to be shy. If you think you’re shy, your mind will filter out whenever you have n’t been shy and remember the times you were, confirming your belief.

So knowing this is actually easier than you think, even if you’ve had it all your life, to change a negative belief you hold about yourself. You just change what you’re focusing on. Instead of focusing on negative experiences and memories that confirm your negative belief, you are now focusing on evidence that contradicts these negative thoughts.

Every story always has two sides ; just because you believe something doesn’t mean it’s true. People thought the world was flat for centuries. I thought I was hideous all my life ; now I think I’m attractive. I’m still the same person, I just changed the evidence I concentrated on.