You’ve got to believe in yourself, or do you?

So many people place huge importance on holding onto positive beliefs about ourselves and the world in general. For me however, I can’t help feeling this not only misses the point of self-awareness, but also severely limits it.

Whilst on the surface it may appear obvious that believing ‘I can’ puts me in a better state than believing ‘I can’t’, it still fixes and limits my awareness. In some cases this can blind me to important feedback that lets me know I might need to reconsider my position. Isn’t this a part of the problems we all face today? Holding onto distorted, generalised and incomplete versions of the world?

Even if you find you’re holding onto limiting beliefs, changing them from a negative to a positive continues to limit the level of awareness you operate from. In some cases can leave us dependent on having to believe something to feel ‘enabled’, ‘ok’ or ‘good’ rather than simply just ‘being’ or ‘doing’ the thing we’re busy thinking (or procrastinating) about. This utilises precious energy and cognitive resources I could be employing in just getting stuff done. For me, the fact that I might need to ‘believe’ something in order for me to ‘feel good, complete, take part or have a go’ at something is an insight into a deeper strategy I am employing, which may not be the most useful thing i could be doing.

Where do beliefs come from?

Beliefs are not ‘things’ in themselves but internal processes.
In order to believe something, I employ a strategy of conviction about the possibility of something happening and even generate a degree of dependence and rules around it. Whilst in some cases this can be useful, this can also become a dogma of habitual self delusion. Even stopping us accessing parts of our awareness that could help create real and lasting change. Namely, our strategies for ‘doing’ and ‘being’, rather than just thinking about doing or being!

If I find i have to continually believe positively in a ‘self’ or an ‘ability’ to take part in things or feel good, I might begin to question where my attention is and if the strategy I’m employing in that moment is in fact the most useful and appropriate. “Am I in the moment? Am I engaging with what I’m actually or about to do? Or am I lost in my thoughts rather than here right now?” or “do I really want to do it?”Sometimes a reluctance to do or be something is an important message in itself, not just a limiting belief.

The point is, beliefs are a part of the doors of perception, our deletions, generalisations and distortions about our experiences, not the reality we share with each other. Maybe if we were all a bit more present with each other and the world in general, beliefs wouldn’t cause as much hassle as they do!Awareness on a level above beliefs requires an open mind, an openness to possibility and an active and associative attention, within the thing I am ‘doing’ or ‘being’.For me, if I’m busy believing, I’m not fully present to what I need to do or open to the infinite possibilities right in front of me.

Do I believe I can do something? I don’t know, let’s have a go and start learning…