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How to Identify Beliefs

Why is identifying beliefs important to our lives? Let’s take the example of the lady who was trying to lose weight. After some early success she couldn’t
figure out why she reverted back to old habits of binging on food that caused her weight loss to plateau. With some investigation she discovered an idea in
her mind that she agreed to long ago and had since forgotten. She had agreed to feeling deprived if she didn’t eat everything she wanted. Since our minds
naturally direct us to avoid the unpleasant feelings like “deprived”, she ate food to avoid these feelings. Beliefs in her mind she was not aware of, were
driving her to unwanted behaviours.

When she stepped outside the emotion and the perspective of being deprived she saw a completely different picture. By overeating she was actually depriving
herself of a healthy body and physical vitality that she really wanted. By identifying that one belief about food she is back on her way to changing her eating
habits.

Finding these hidden beliefs often requires that we do some hunting. The process is rather like investigating a crime. We begin by gathering clues until all
the pieces fit in a way that we can see the hidden belief that drives destructive behaviours and habits. You might also think of it as solving the mystery of
who you are.

Sometimes these beliefs in our mind are right in front of us and we don't see them. The same way we might not see the windshield because we have trained
our self to look through it. It might not seem like much until we bump our head into it. Beliefs are the same way. We have to retrain our mind to see the
beliefs in front of us.

IDENTIFYING SELF-LIMITING BELIEFS

It is useful to understand why we form self-limiting beliefs in the first place and how we act them out.

Caught between two decisions

“Should I go this way or that?” This is a dilemma that can result in nothing being done. The limiting belief here may be “I can’t make decisions”.

Stuck in a mental rut

We may have always done something in a particular way that seems to have worked in the past. We get frustrated when it doesn’t work this time, but stay
with what we know having “bought into the belief” as a form of habit. This limiting belief may be one of “I can’t change”.
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