WHERE WE DISCUSS SELF-BELIEF
Are you there?
Yes, we are here.
When we spoke recently on the topic of the stories that we tell ourselves, you said that if we wanted our stories to serve us better, it was up to us to change the narrative. You only touched on it briefly, but you said in that conversation that success in changing our narrative depends on believing the new story that we’re creating. I have always thought that self-belief, convincing yourself of the possibility of something you’re not currently experiencing, is one of the most challenging parts of self-transformation. So, I’d like to take some time today and explore this issue further, see if we can somehow make that part of the process – the self-believing part – a bit easier for ourselves.
You are correct when you say that self-belief – belief in the stories that you tell yourself, belief in your ability to create what you desire, belief in who you really are – is one of the most challenging parts of this journey you have undertaken. It is indeed a daunting task for the human mind to detach itself from what it sees as current reality and allow another experience to manifest in its place.
Exactly. You want to accomplish something that you’ve never accomplished before, but you have doubts; you want something that you don’t currently have, but you’re not sure you deserve it; you long for a certain kind of relationship, but for whatever reason, you just don’t believe it can happen for you. In each of these instances, the element of self-belief is missing. You want to believe you can have what you want, but deep down, you don’t.
The process of manifestation requires that you look at your current reality, the reality that you have been creating for yourself over an extended period of time, perhaps an entire lifetime, and imagine that a different reality is possible, not just imagine, but BELIEVE that an experience or circumstance or relationship that you may have never encountered before could now be a part of your moment-to-moment reality. It takes a certain amount of self-belief, of confidence in your own abilities, to create something new for yourself. Without belief, nothing much will change.
I had a co-worker once, around the time I was first starting to do this kind of personal, spiritual work, and he and I were exploring things together. We had both just learned to use affirmations after reading Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life and my friend really got into it. He bought himself a big notebook and began writing down his affirmations whenever he had a free moment. We were doing plays together during that time and he would sit in his dressing room when he was not onstage and write and write and write affirmations in his notebook. He was very single minded about it. You could almost say obsessive. I can’t remember now what his intended goal was, but after a few months of feverish affirming, nothing much had changed for him. Whatever he was trying to create for himself never manifested and he became frustrated and eventually gave it up. At the time we were both so new to this kind of work, we figured, given my friend’s lack of success, that either we were doing something wrong or that affirmations didn’t really work the way Louise said they did. Eventually I was able to see that my friend’s attempts at affirmations didn’t work, despite how diligent and conscientious he was, because he didn’t really believe any of the affirmations he was writing. He thought that if he worked hard and wrote as much as he could, that things would just magically change for him. It didn’t occur to either one of us at the time how important self-belief was, that for any progress to be made, you had to actually believe what you’re affirming, or at the very least believe in the possibility of what you’re affirming.
As we have said, belief is an essential part of the manifestation process. Without it, the energy cannot flow, and if the energy cannot flow, nothing can materialize in the dense environment of the physical plane. Belief, supported by strong intention, opens the channel to Source energy, which is the force behind all manifestations in the Universe. Belief assists you in shifting your attention from that which is right in front of you and placing it on that which you desire, that which you want to manifest for yourself.
So, how do we get to a place where we can more readily believe in our ability to create what we want in our lives? How do we increase our self-belief?
Start with the idea that self-belief is something more than just a tool for manifesting that which you do not already have or experience. It involves much more than simply repeating to yourself over and over again “I can do it! I know I can! Nothing can stand in my way! I’m the best! I’m the greatest! I can have anything that I want!” This is generally what most human persons mean when they talk about “believing in yourself,” believing that “anything is possible,” that “my dreams can come true!” We are not suggesting that this approach to bolstering self-belief is necessarily ineffective, only that this method of raising your confidence, revving yourself up, so to speak, may engage your mind, but if your feelings are not engaged as well, if you do not believe with all your heart in the possibility of what you are saying to yourself, then your results will come up short, much like those of your actor friend. He thought that by working hard, incessantly writing down his affirmations in a notebook, that he had done enough, but he had only done half the job. He neglected to FEEL what he was writing, to really believe that what he was writing was a possibility for himself, and as a result, his affirmations lacked the grounding force necessary for long-lasting results.
So, you’re saying that our self-belief needs to start in a deeper place. Is that right?
Indeed. The element of self-belief begins with how you see yourself, how you see your own qualities, your own abilities, well before you arrive at the point where desire enters your consciousness and the manifestation process begins. Self-belief is much more fundamental, much more innate and organic to who you really are as a spiritual being, apart from how it impacts the creative process. Self-belief can and should spring naturally from your connection to who you really are, because from the point of view of who you really are, self-belief is self-evident. No questions. No doubts. The only thing standing in the way is your own mental and emotional resistance. That is why we suggest that when you say to yourself, “I can do it! I know I can. Anything is possible!”, allow it to sink down, to settle within the depths of your being, and say it with the force, with the remembrance of who you know yourself to be, deep in your soul.
It always seems that no matter what issue we are discussing, whether it is the issue of self-belief, or the state of our relationships, or how we handle our fears, that in the end is all boils down to whether or not we remember who we really are and why we have come.
When we first began our conversations, we told you that, from our point of view, it really did not matter which topic you chose to discuss, that all of our conversations would center around the same theme – remembering who you really are and why you have come. That is why in all of our conversations, we have always attempted to draw your attention back to this important issue. All roads, no matter where they begin, lead to the same place – awakening to your true self, your true nature. Everything that you experience hinges upon how close you have come to remembering who you really are, remembering your own unlimited power, remembering that the whole point of your journey on the physical plane is to tap into the energy of which you are made and use it to create.
I think one of the things that makes our attempts to remember, to awaken to the “real” part of ourselves, is that who we really are sometimes feels so far away from how we ordinarily see ourselves. Here we are, so caught up in our day-to-day lives, complete with all of its drama and complications, dealing with our egos, our fears, our expectations, all of these things weighing on our minds. Given these circumstances, it’s a challenge for us to believe that we’re actually light-filled beings of peace and love. And yet, I know that it’s possible. I often think of something I once heard the actress Jane Alexander say about how she goes about creating a character. She says that before she makes any decisions about how her character moves, talks, thinks, what her character’s emotional life might be like, she spends a lot of time just sitting with the script, reading and allowing the character to take shape in her mind. As she becomes more and more familiar with the character, she creates an image of it in her mind and then allows herself to feel her way towards it from the inside. Only after she has developed a strong feeling for the character does she begin to make decisions about the physical and emotional characteristics that she will bring to the character onstage. I’ve always thought that Jane’s approach to creating a character would serve as an excellent model for our own creative process. It could also help to strengthen our self-confidence and self-belief. If we start with an image of who we really are and move towards it from the inside, allow that image, perhaps through meditation, to fully inhabit our consciousness, to soak into our system, before we take any action, before we embark on any new creative ventures, then we would have full access to ALL of our abilities, the abilities that lie at the very core of who we really are. And if I’m not mistaken, that should make the process of creating anything that we desire that much easier.
Well said. There is only one thing more we would add. Given the egoistic tendencies of the human mind, it is easy to over-complicate an issue like self-belief, making it seem more difficult and complex than it really is. We recommend that you resist this temptation. Ultimately, self-belief is simply another aspect of self-love. If you love yourself fully and completely, then self-belief, the belief that you are a powerful creator capable of accomplishing anything, becomes a natural part of you, as natural as breathing. Create a vision for yourself and for your life, but always remember to ground that vision in the reality of who you really are. When you are able to do that, your self-belief will no longer be an issue, and from then on, anything, ANYTHING, is possible.
I think we will stop there for today
As you wish. Until next time.
Thank you all.
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