How to Change Your Mind

When we talk about changing our mind, what we really mean is changing a belief within ourselves. With all our intellectual smarts and education you would think that changing a belief would be easy.  Except that if it were easy we would quickly change any thought without it showing up again, but that doesn’t happen. Yet sometimes a thought or belief does change quickly. Maybe some beliefs are easy to change and some others are harder.  

Why is that? 

What if there are certain techniques that work for some beliefs but don’t work for others? Could it be some beliefs are like nuts and bolts that are reverse threaded? Most come apart with a turn to the left, but certain beliefs need to be turned in a different direction to loosen? I’ve been intensely focused on changing beliefs for over 20 years.  I first started with my own and then began to coach other people in changing their false beliefs. Here is an answer to these questions and summary of how to change a belief.

Steps to Change a Your Mind (How to Change A Belief)

• Become aware of the different parts that make up a belief.
• Release the emotions held in those beliefs.
• Shift your perspective so you can see the identity as false.
• Break the bonds of faith that make an idea or thought powerful.

How can you change your mind in a way that will work?

The first step to changing a belief is to understand their construct and what makes us so attached to them.

Here are some typical beliefs that you might be motivated to change?

• *They are so stupid. – A judgment that tends to create conflict.
• *I’m not lovable.  – A self judgment that creates feelings of unworthiness.
• *He is such an idiot. – Can create anger, resentment, disappointment.
• * I hate/dislike/am unhappy with my body.  – Unhappiness and shame.
• * I shouldn’t have done that. – Guilt, Embarrassment

The first thing you notice is that I’ve identified emotions that are often connected with these types of beliefs. Usually the idea, or thought, by itself doesn’t FEEL bad. It is when we have that thought as a belief that we have strong emotions. It is the emotions part that cause us the misery. A thought by itself is just a concept in the form of a sentence or statement that we can manipulate with our intellect. We can pick up an idea or drop it in a moment  without any problem.

For example, we can have a thought about what we, or someone else is wearing and whether it looks good or not without having much emotion.  But what if we walk into a business social event wearing jeans and find everyone else in business suits? The “thoughts” about what we are wearing now comes with heavy emotions. It is no longer a conceptual idea that we can easily drop or change with our intellect.

We might think thoughts about what people think of us.
But we are likely having strong emotions because our beliefs say they are judging us.

We are quickly into emotionally charged beliefs connected to thoughts like:

“I’m such an idiot (worthlessness feeling).  I must have misread the invitation (feeling stupid). Everyone here is staring at me (feeling judged). I should go back home and change (self doubt and insecurity about a decision).  This is going to look bad to my boss’s boss (feelings of inferiority). I’ll never get promoted again (fear of loss). This is a career ender (feelings of doom and hopelessness.)”

What is important to note about all these thoughts and emotional beliefs is what you were wearing didn’t change. When you got dressed you believed you were perfectly fine with what you were wearing. Your clothes didn’t change to something terrible. But suddenly you looked at the same clothes with a different set of beliefs and that activated many emotions.

The powerful component that we need to consider when changing a belief is that we will need to change the corresponding emotion.  The “thought” in our mind is just a conceptual thing and our intellect might say that it should easily and quickly change. However, changing the emotions that are attached to the belief need a different approach. Emotions don’t move, dissipate, or change very well through our intellect. The strength of emotions connected to a belief are part of the difference between an “easy” belief to change and a “hard” belief to change.

Some beliefs are harder to change because they have much stronger emotional attachments.

Identity is Part of a Belief

Suppose that in your negative self talk there is a thought such as: “I feel like such a loser.” What our mind does with this kind of thought is to build a mental story. In a way it plays a very short mental movie. In that movie our mind projects an image of our self as a loser character.  That character has one attribute, “Loser”.  For that moment of the movie this is your whole identity. Since it is a version of you based on only one negative attribute it is a completely distorted self image. In that moment you have no other characteristics, no other history and no other qualities that would make this image accurate. It is a false image, but because the imagination fixates on one attribute and exaggerates it to a whole personality it is accepted as true in the moment. It also might seem true because it is congruent with emotions you feel in that moment.

This Self Image is a False Identity, but we don’t notice it as a lie.

The part we don’t see of the movie is that it is archived in our sub-conscious memory. Our mind doesn’t give proportional credit to all our other qualities and characteristics. Our mental process isn’t concerned in bring up all our previous experiences and accomplishments to create a truthful image of our self. Our mind is making a simple movie for the moment in an effort to explain the current emotions. Our mind does not fairly and proportionally balance the “loser” identity with all our other good and generous qualities. When our mind plays the “Loser” movie fixes that as our WHOLE identity. It also sees the “Loser” as what we have always been and what we will always be. Whenever we look to those “Loser” moments in our past our memory calls on the “Loser” character to show up in our memory and imagination. Another word for this false self image of an identity is “Ego.” 

By taking something that is a slip up in one moment and exaggerating it we have turned it into a self rejecting self image and will generate lots of emotions every time we think about it. We can also generate feelings unconsciously nor realizing our mind still has it stored as our identity. Your mind doesn’t care that it is believing a lie. It also doesn’t care that the lie is about something so fundamental as who you are.

This False Self Image of Identity is Part of the Belief.

In the process of changing a belief you have to include changing your identity, or at least your mind’s false version of identity.  Since your false  identity is part of memories, when you change a belief you will also change emotional memories. One of the ways you can make this go smoother is to have another sense of your identity that you can associate to in its place. If you don’t have an alternate identity perspective then the process will include developing a different sense of self. The exercises in the Self Mastery Course will give you practical ways to shift your perspective on this identity process as well as the other steps to change a belief.