Actually, I really don’t know how to change your life except to pay attention to the decisions you make minute by minute.

Wydle Women’s Wisdom

Christina Baldwin says:

And this is what I learned: if I change my belief system, I can change my life…If we change what we believe, we change what is possible; we change reality.  The mind changes the world.  Consciousness is the tool of our liberation.

I believe her.  She says what most of the guru types out there say (and she isn’t really, I discovered her in a *business* class!  This from “Calling the Circle” – she later went on to self help.), and I believe all of them.

It’s just that they say “changing your belief system” as if it were like changing your clothes.  At least you can see your clothes.  If they are dirty you wash them.  If they are torn you mend them or throw them away.  They do not attach themselves to you with thing trailing invisible strings so that you turn around and, oh look!, there’s that shirt you just gave to the thrift store dragging along behind you.

Belief systems, on the other hand, are a bit trickier.  They *are* invisible.  Not just invisible but often unconscious because we implant many of them when we are too young to know beteter, or are inculcated with them at Catholic school (oh, wait, maybe that’s just me) when we still believe that grownups know what they’re talking about.

Way too often they don’t.  Know that I’m a grownup I am very aware of that.

How to identify a belief system:  resistance.

Be mindful of what happens when you set out to do something new.  Listen to the interior dialogue – you know, all those people who live in your head and know way better than you.

I shouldn’t eat that cookie (“should/shouldn’t” are usually a dead give away of a sneaky belief.).  So, ask yourself, “Self, why do you think that,” and see what comes up?  Why? Because the culture at large says *I’m* too large (well over a size 0) and that is unacceptable no matter what my age.  Is that my own thought?  No.  I got it from the last fashion magazine I looked through.  I didn’t even read the articles, the twig thing models and their fabulous clothes just leached right into my belief system with no filter.  Not to mention all those commercials *everywhere* about diet and makeup and pulling and plucking and tucking because I am not okay the way I am (however, that may be).

This is me around age 24.  I absolutely believed I needed to lose another 10 lbs.

Affirmations:  I am beautiful (interior snicker: no, you are old.  Old is not beautiful), I am talented (interior sneer – right!  That’s why you’re selling real estate instead of art), I am loved (okay, the voices will grant me that because I have more actual examples than they have counters).

It took me a year of looking in the mirror and saying, “I am an artist” to finally believe it with no snickers or sneers.  Now it’s mine.  But I had to work at it.  Hard.  I convinced myself but the world, not so much (see above:  real estate instead of art).

Yes, if you can change your belief system you can change your life.  But what is never said is that it will take a while (think in terms of years, the Universe’s time is not ours) to discover what your beliefs are before you go about changing them.

What are your beliefs (not that they need changing).  Where did they come from?  That’s the way more interesting question!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom Resources for this post:

Brooke Castillo’s “Self-Coaching 101” – for me an expansion on and a more accessible version of what Byron Katie teaches.

Jean Houston’s The Possible Human – I like her writing.  She makes me think.

and of course Brene Brown’s “The Gifts of Imperfection” and Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic:  Creative Living Beyond Fear” (yep, underneath a lot of those beliefs you are changing lies FEAR)