Empowering Beliefs

From our e-book “Filling our Life with Celebration”

achievement confident free freedom

After developing the positive habits introduced in this book, we can proceed towards bringing more happiness into our life in a more subtle manner; through empowering beliefs. Beliefs can either empower or paralyse us. A famous example is that of seeing a rope in the dark. If one believes the rope to be a snake, one would not dare to take another step. If one recognises it as a rope, one would be indifferent. But if one mistakes the rope for a gold chain, then one would rush towards the rope lest someone else gets to it first.

Beliefs are difficult to change as they have been ingrained to into us since childhood. These beliefs create mental barriers between nations; between races; between religions; and between different factions within the same religion, race or nation. If we are honest with ourselves, we can easily identify these beliefs within us. I know of a father and son who refuse to talk to each other because they were in different factions within the same religion. Their individual beliefs were so strong that the beliefs became part of their personality or ego. To challenge their beliefs would be equivalent to an insult to their ego! The father and son allowed the differences in their beliefs to deprive them of a happy relationship for many years now and the sad part is that they believe that they are doing so for God’s sake.

Beliefs sometimes deprive us of self-confidence. A friend shared with me an interesting insight. When she was young, her parents taught her to burn blessed paper, add water over it and drink the water so that she can do well in her exams. When she did well, she was not sure if it was due to the blessings of the paper or her own intelligence. It took her many years to realise that it was her own intelligence that got her the good results. The blessed paper acted only like a placebo. Only then did she regain her self-confidence.

On a personal level, we need to analyse our beliefs to see if there are any belief that cripples us. Once we identify the limiting beliefs we can proceed to apply the right antidote, that is, the empowering beliefs that are able to counter the limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, in the following chapters, we will identify certain empowering beliefs we can adopt and by doing so, any related limiting beliefs will fall away on their own.

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