In the instant of your first breath, the moment of your birth… you are infused with the single greatest force in the universe; the power to translate the possibilities of your thoughts into the reality of your world. To fully awaken your powers may require a subtle change in the way you think of yourself… AND a shift in belief. This episode is titled Believe it… or not. At some time or another, you’ve probably used that phrase “I’ll believe it when I see it,’ …

Let’s dive right in…and find out how you can open the door to new possibilities…

Behavioral psychologist, Morris Massey (and author of The People Puzzle) suggests that we go through a series of developmental periods that form and create our core beliefs. The first is the imprint period which he suggests is from birth to around age seven. When a child comes into the world it comes into a world of possibility with no fear or belief about what is possible or not.

During the imprint period, human beings are like walking sponges. You are literally soaking up everything that goes on around you, absorbing the beliefs of your parents, culture, religion, and environment without analyzing or judging. This may answer the reason why you often find you have the same mannerisms as your parents! So your beliefs are created from your past experiences, from your upbringing, parents, media, schooling, religion as well as your environment.

So what is a belief?

Beliefs are those convictions that we hold as being true and trust as being true. A belief is a thought that is thought so often that it creates physical, tangible results, which then reinforce the original belief. What makes a belief true or real is that you have to believe it intellectually, and you have to believe it emotionally. If you only believe the thought intellectually, it is just an idea. If you only believe the thought emotionally, then it is just a feeling. When the belief is held in our thoughts and feelings it becomes true for you. It does not necessarily mean that it is right or even that it is true.

Your beliefs create perceptions that affect your self-esteem, abundance, job performance, mental health, physical health, spiritual outlook on life and your relationships. In fact, your beliefs form the rules that you run your life on. They literally act as an on-off switch and are the driving force, behind all your behavior, whether you know it or not. Dr Bruce Lipton in his book ‘The Biology of a Belief,’ says that your mind is designed to take your beliefs and turn them into reality. For example, if deep down you believe that you’re not good enough, then you’ll never have great friends because deep down, you do not believe you are good enough to have great friends. You cannot have a great job or a great relationship because, deep down, you’re not good enough to have a great job or enjoy a great relationship. Unfortunately, human beings are driven to prove themselves right so ‘believing that you’re not good enough’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Can you then understand that your beliefs are secretly working in the background to either help you or hinder you.

What you have been taught holds energy over you. In fact, think of your beliefs like filters that can keep you from seeing the whole picture. It’s like being given a pair of glasses at birth that colors how you experience the world. So it might be a good time to change the pair of glasses you are currently wearing and swap them for a newer, updated, and technologically advance pair!

Now you know from a previous podcast that I often run what I call, breakthrough experiences, like the fire-walk. These experiences literally blow the boundaries on what you have been taught is possible.

The placebo is another example of challenging beliefs about what is possible and highlights the impact our beliefs have over our health. Basically, a placebo is a ‘fake pill’ that should have no effect on your body. Yet tests and trials have proven again and again that they often work as well or even better than drugs or surgery. Because the patient is not aware that he is being given a ‘placebo’ and believes that the actual drug is being taken, it appears that the belief that the drug will work is all that is needed to allow the healing to occur.

Here’s a great example that was shared when I was studying hypnosis. Way back, in 1957 ‘Mr. Wright’was found to have cancer. Hospitalized in California, and with large tumors, he had been given only days to live. He heard that a horse serum called Krebiozen appeared to be effective against cancer and decided that was the route for him. Just before the weekend he received his first injection and surprised doctors when, by Monday, he was up and about, joking and laughing with other patients and extolling the healing virtues of Krebiozen. His doctor wrote later that the tumors ”had melted like snowballs on a hot stove.”

The story doesn’t end there, because months later, Mr. Wright came across a report that slammed Krebiozen. He subsequently suffered a relapse. Thankfully, his doctor probably advised him not to believe everything that is in the newspapers and went ahead injecting him with ‘a newer and improved version of the drug.’ Actually, it was water, but who cares because the tumor masses melted once again.

Apparently Mr. Wright was healthy for another few months until he read another report that stated that Krebiozen was ineffective. He died two days later, and that certainly proves the power of beliefs!

That said, an episode on David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things, shared the example of a woman with very bad Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). In this experiment, the patient was told that she was being given a placebo and yet her IBS disappeared. The placebo still had the same effect even though the patient knew it was just a placebo. Could it be the excitement of expectation that creates what many would call magical shifts?

As it becomes apparent that the placebo effect has tangible results, new techniques of brain imagery and visualization are uncovering a host of biological mechanisms that can turn a thought, belief or desire into an agent of change in cells, tissues and organs. It would seem that human perception is based on what the brain, based on previous experience, believes will happen next. That means that your past could be negatively impacting you now.

No doubt, you have probably created a belief system based on what happened to you in the past. In fact, most people believe that their past is what has created who they are now. This is an example of ‘experiences creates belief,’ when actually it is the other way around. Beliefs create experience. Your inner world creates your outer world. The old model of the world was that the past does indeed create the present and the future, however, the quantum world has provided evidence that we live in a series of ‘nows!’ This means that if you have had challenges or situations that still bother you right now, the problem is in how you are choosing to re-present past experiences in the now. After all, if something happened to you when you were five years old, you cannot go back to being five years old. All you can do is re-present that experience when you were five-years-old in the now. A shift occurs when you choose to change how you re-present the past now, so that it no longer impacts you negatively. As Mark Twain said, ‘it’s never too late to have a happy childhood!” Your true power lies in the NOW!

Do you remember the movie Dr Strange with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Dr Strange? A wealthy, acclaimed, and arrogant neurosurgeon, Stephen Strange severely injures his hands in a car crash, leaving him unable to operate. Having vainly pursued experimental surgeries to heal his hands, Strange learns about Jonathan Pangborn, a paraplegic who mysteriously regained use of his legs and directs him to a place called Kamar-Taj, where he is taken in by Mordo, a sorcerer. She reluctantly agrees to train Strange. In one of the lessons he finds himself high in the freezing mountains of the Himalayas… and very quickly has to learn the power of heating himself up or teleportation. It sounds far-fetched…. Or could it be that television programming is showing us what is really possible?

In the 1980s, Harvard Professor of Medicine, Herbert Benson and his team of researchers studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by using a yoga technique, raise the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. The researchers also studied advanced meditators in Sikkim, India, where they were astonished to find that the monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent? In 1985, they actually made a video of monks drying cold, wet sheets with body heat alone. Monks spending winter nights 15,000 feet high in the Himalayas is also not uncommon. Is this something that you could do? Would you have to spend years meditating? Check out Wim Hof… also known as The Iceman, he’s a Dutch extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures. He has set Guinness World Records for swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice, and previously held the record for a barefoot half marathon on ice and snow…. He uses a specific breathing technique and cold therapy. I highly recommend you check out his videos and experience the specific breathing technique he teaches – it’s easy and the results are profound… you’ll find that you can go without taking a breath for 5 minutes or perhaps longer!

So if your life is based on your beliefs, what if your beliefs are not true?

‘Just imagine that as you walk into a room, you are able to check in at the door absolutely EVERYTHING in your life that is not working? It’s a little like taking your dirty laundry to the dry cleaners, checking it in…and two days later, taking advantage of the home delivery service. Your dirty laundry arrives back at your home fresh, clean and pressed!

Remember, your beliefs form the rules that you run your life on for better or worse. Your beliefs are literally behind everything you do. Your beliefs drive all your behaviour and the challenge is that you probably not consciously aware of what beliefs are driving you forward…or backward! You just know that certain areas of our life are not working! If that’s the case then here’s a question I want you to ask yourself to develop your awareness of the beliefs you’re operating from: What would I have to belief about myself to have my life this way?

And better still, is to consider how you would like your life to be and ask yourself, what beliefs do I need to adopt to have my life that way… remember your beliefs are demonstrated in your behavior so what behaviors will demonstrate that new belief?

Suppose instead of checking your dirty laundry in to the cleaners, you check ALL your beliefs in at the door. It would mean that you walk into a space and place where ANYTHING and EVERYTHING is possible; where you can truly be a reflection of your perfection!’