Hutt Bush’s BELIEVE your way into success!

WELCOME

Welcome to a five-day conversation about belief. This is intended to be a “mini-seminar” which will deliver you to a new place of awareness about the impact of your belief system on all areas of your life. The five days build on each other. If you choose to participate,

I believe that you will derive the most value from doing the exercises in order. I’m smiling as I write those words I believe because I want to point out that all opinions, projections, and most statements are beliefs of various importance to each of us.

All humans have beliefs which significantly govern the results we experience. The likelihood of creating a desired result is diminished or even destroyed if one does not believe that it’s possible to do so.

Our beliefs are reflected in everything that we do and all the choices that we make. This realization is freeing and poignant because we can literally change our lives by changing our beliefs.

Please enjoy and know that useful feedback and questions are welcome.

DAY ONE OF FIVE
BEGIN AN INVENTORY OF YOUR BELIEFS

Beliefs are perceptions that we hold as true. Clearly, beliefs can be completely incorrect. For centuries, Conventional Belief said that the earth was flat. And in the supposed “New World,” indigenous people living in islands where Columbus first landed actually did not recognize sailing ships on the horizon because there was no belief that such ships existed.

Let’s start the New Year by beginning an inventory of our constructive beliefs and then rank them on a scale from 1-10, with 1 being “very weak” and 10 being “absolute.”

Choose 3-5 categories like: Business, Health, Family, Romance, Financial, etc.

For example:

Health
I know what to do to treat my body exquisitely well.

Or

Financial
I will meet my income and other financial objectives for 2010.

Please create and score somewhere between 5-15 beliefs as we will be working with those this week.

DAY TWO OF FIVE
DO YOUR LIFE CONDITIONS MATCH YOUR BELIEFS?

As you were creating your Belief Inventory, you may well have been asking yourself how well your beliefs are serving you. James Allen said, “The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs.

Does that ring true to you? Think about the correlation between the beliefs in your inventory and the conditions in your life.

Look specifically at elements in your life that are associated with your beliefs. For example, if you believe strongly that you’re going to meet your 2010 financial goals, you’ll likely observe the following kinds of things: a written income plan, accurate and timely record keeping, increasing balances in your bank accounts.

Please go to your Belief Inventory and note what actions you’d need to see to have each of those constructive beliefs become real in your world.

DAY THREE OF FIVE
SOURCES OF BELIEFS

Where did the beliefs in your Belief Inventory come from? Parents, teachers, partners, spouses, the media?

You may have wanted to change the beliefs of others. It’s natural to desire agreement. It seems to be the nature of the human condition that we have attempted to have others believe the way we believe. How to influence and persuade ethically is a rich topic for another day, but we can consider the sources of your beliefs.

There may be a primary source to whom you attribute a particular belief – but, most likely, each belief is an amalgam of many different sources.

Please go to your Belief Inventory and note the primary sources of each of your beliefs. Note also the approximate time in your life when you felt the strongest influence in favor of each belief.

DAY FOUR OF FIVE
DESTRUCTIVE BELIEFS

Often, we humans begin to believe something, and that belief hardens into something that we hold as absolute. If the belief moves us forward, absolutism can often be tolerated. If beliefs are negative and hold us back, it can be very healthy to challenge them.

Please go to your Belief Inventory and in the same categories as before, note 5-10 destructive beliefs. Then – just as you did with your constructive beliefs – rank the destructive beliefs in terms of strength and note the primary sources of those beliefs.

For example, suppose someone believed:

I will never make as much money as I need.

Or

It’s too late (or too early) for me to have the kind of life that I really want to have.

As you do the exercise, be aware of the discomfort that will most likely appear. We humans have frequently avoided confronting our destructive beliefs, but they have been as much a part of our belief system at the constructive beliefs.

DAY FIVE OF FIVE
TRANSFORMING BELIEFS

Your Belief Inventory now contains at least five constructive beliefs and five destructive beliefs. You have assessed the strength and sources of those beliefs.

What do you want to do about your belief system? Are there constructive beliefs that you would like to strengthen? Are there destructive beliefs that you’d like to weaken or eliminate?

There’s a truism – a kind of widely-held belief – that we can expand any object of our attention simply by increasing the amount of attention.

One can transform beliefs by paying attention on a regular basis and working with the beliefs. For example, suppose you wanted your belief that you were going to meet or exceed your financial goals for 2010 to be ranked a 10 in your mind. You can put attention on creating the plan, the recordkeeping, etc., that would be congruent with that belief.

You can challenge any destructive beliefs and invent constructive beliefs to put in their places.

ENDING NOTE

Five days of very brief exercises may not be able to make radical changes in your belief system, but you can take the momentum that has been created and expand it.

I encourage your working with your beliefs so that you are increasingly only paying attention to strong, constructive beliefs – whose effects you see more and more in the conditions of your life.

Thank you for participating, and all the best.

Hutt