How to Revise Your Beliefs

I am writing my third book now. I can’t tell you the title yet because we are not sure it is final. While I am writing this book, I am unintentionally writing another book. Let’s call it book number seven since it is my intention to publish it five years from now. But who knows for sure when it will be published or in what format.

I tell you this because I am full hot on the idea that you are allowed to revise your beliefs at any time, about anything in which it is possible to have beliefs, and even if this ability is rarely exercised. One of the reasons people don’t revise their beliefs more often is that they are unaware of how they come upon their beliefs in the first place.

Your beliefs are first shaped by your parents, which is why so many of us have the beliefs we have about what is possible, what kind of education we need, what work means, much of our values systems, as well as our beliefs about politics and our spiritual faith. You didn’t choose these beliefs. They chose you.

Later, especially during your teen years, you are shaped by your peer group, helping you meet your need to belong (which is why middle school and high school can be a difficult time for many). Then there is college, where your beliefs are shaped by your peers and the new ideas you are exposed to, ideas which were chosen and assigned to you by your professors.

Even worse than picking up beliefs from the people surrounding you, there is the news, media, and now social media, both a constant drip of fear, negativity, and divisiveness (verify this by counting all the positive and negative storylines that are put in front of you over a couple hours and you’ll recognize the potential damage to your view of the world). These sources, coupled with the very human confirmation bias, locks in your beliefs.

If you want to start eliminating this negativity, you can find my video about how to do a negativity fast here on YouTube.

Ideas are like infections. You pick them up without knowing that you are being infected. You also spread them without realizing that is what you are doing. Because this is true, it is also true that you can choose what beliefs you choose to be infected with. You can literally revise your beliefs at any time, exchanging disempowering beliefs for beliefs that better serve you.

If you want to revise your beliefs, you have to start by exploring other beliefs with the potential to change your results. You can read, listen to, and study things like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and adopt an empowering set of beliefs about human performance and relationships. You can read and study James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh and adopt new beliefs about your potential. You can find people who are producing a result you want and study what they believe that allows them to produce that very result.

If you want something to be different than it is now, identify your beliefs about that something and explore other beliefs that might serve you better and the new actions that beliefs would require of you. I hope I just infected you with a new choice of beliefs, the belief that you can choose empowering beliefs.