How Your Beliefs Create Your Reality

In this episode of Pearls of Wisdom, I explore beliefs - where they come from, how they shape our experience of life, and how becoming aware of them can transform the way we live.

From early childhood, we absorb ideas about who we are, what life should look like, what is possible, and how we are expected to behave. 

Over time, these thoughts become beliefs, and these beliefs shape our reality.

Often, we identify so strongly with these inherited patterns that we believe they are simply “who we are.”

This episode explores:

• How thoughts become beliefs and beliefs shape our lives
• The influence of family, culture, and early experiences
• Why many people live on unconscious “autopilot”
• How questioning beliefs can feel both freeing and unsettling
• The role of visualisation and conscious thought
• The shift from victimhood to empowerment
• Reconnecting with awareness and conscious creation

Through reflection and personal insight, I explore how we can begin to recognise the patterns running beneath our lives and consciously choose what we wish to create moving forward.

Because when we become aware of our beliefs, we are no longer bound to repeat the past.

We become free to create consciously.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

They have an incredible power in that they shape everything that we experience, everything that we are, everything that is going on. Welcome to the Powers of Wisdom. Today I'm going to be talking about the leaders because they are the invisible architecture of our lives. They have an incredible power in that they shape everything that we experience, everything that we are, everything that is going on is shaped by how we think. And whether we realise it or not, we are always creating our reality because our thoughts are incredibly powerful, incredibly creative, and they create our beliefs. And then our beliefs shape the way we experience life. They actually shape our reality. One of the things that's really useful is to start to really listen to our thoughts. I think that sometimes people's thoughts are so vast, there's so much a stream, there's so much going on that people are unaware of the amount of narrative that's going on in their head. So it can be a really, really vital thing, and it can be so revealing to start to listen to what you're thinking. Just start to really listen to the phrases, the sentences, whatever's going on, listen to the narrative. Get curious about your thoughts because your thoughts are creating what you believe about life or they are reflecting what you believe about life, and this is then creating your experience in life. So also really listen to that to language. It's really important if we listen to our language, because our words have so much power. Again, creating um everything, creating our ideas about things that mean that we then live out from all these loops that are to do with our feelings, to do with our thoughts, and then the beliefs emerge, and we will find that we're often repeatedly saying things about life, we're repeatedly communicating to our inner self what our beliefs are and therefore what we expect life to be, and they reveal themselves. So if we're listening to the words like saying, I'm not good, I'm not good at this, I'm not good at that, I'm not good enough, or life is hard. My dad used to say, Darling, the sooner you realise life is hard, difficult, earnest, the better. Fortunately, I didn't internalize that belief, but it was projected onto me. And you hear that people saying people are always this, or women are this, men are this, you know, there's so many things that if we start to really listen, these the statements are coming out of our mouths, but also coming out of other people's mouths, point to unconscious beliefs that are all running beneath the surface because many people are just operating out of a program, out of patterns, out of conditioning from early years, because our beliefs were formed super early. We were, you know, they were formed when we were little, they were formed in our family. As I've said many times, those early years, those seven years, our brain is in the theta state, which is the meditation state, the hypnotherapy state, and it means that we are like sponges and we are taking everything in and we are absorbing everything, and we are creating within ourselves beliefs about you know, from our family, coming from our society, coming from our schooling, coming from our culture. Then, of course, the experiences we have will internalise very early if things feel unsafe or things are you know, we're not allowed to do, we shouldn't do this, what's deemed acceptable, what we get approved of or for. And um, in in a way, people don't know their beliefs. So as we go through the years, we will get into this conditioned patterns of how things are meant to be, how we're meant to be at school, what we're meant to achieve at school, what we're meant to do when we finish school, what we're meant to do thereafter, what the path of life is. And it's often just plotted out in a program that we haven't even questioned. And sometimes people just live their lives by default, their whole life. They live it out of this conditioning, and they'll do the same things that you know they the people around them have done, they'll they'll follow in um professions and ways of being, ways of you know, having families, whatever it might be. And they're they're often just completely um unconscious, and you know, people choose partners unconsciously. When I was doing my emargo training on the emargo relationship therapy theory training, the emargo relationship, it was created by Harville Hendricks and Helen Hunt, and it you know, it looks very much at how relationships are often playing out, just projecting our childhood um our childhood images onto the partners in front of us. And it was said that people can be choosing their partners 90% unconsciously, driven by um beliefs and conditionings, and also unresolved and lost parts of themselves. So they would, you know, in a family lose a part of themselves because it wasn't acceptable, then they'd see it in a partner and unconsciously go towards that without realizing it. And then, of course, that that can create conflict because if it's lost in yourself, you see it in another, it can trigger because often if you've hidden it or lost it, you've deemed it unacceptable. You might be drawn to somebody with that characteristic, but then you deem it unacceptable because your belief system is such. So there is so much, you know, it's a kind of minefield, really. If if you don't investigate your beliefs, you are stumbling around quite unconsciously, and often just living in this cycle of patterns and programs. And over time, really beginning to believe that these ideas of how life should be is what happens, the always is, the I'm always this, I never this. Um, we believe that's who we are, and we identify with the beliefs so completely that we don't even question them, we don't question beliefs about how life should be, how we should be, how other people should be, and how how we are and so many areas of life. We believe um certain things about money, you know, we'll have all sorts of beliefs. If you question people around money, I've got a set of sentences that I'll often give to clients to finish around money, and it's fascinating to for them to uncover what they believe about money, and it will just say say things like people with money are, if I had limitless money, I would. Um and when I have money, I all those sorts of questions that just uncover beliefs about money, about career, about about what we're supposed to do, what's you know deemed acceptable, successful. We have beliefs around health and food, around aging, around our relationships. We have beliefs around success and failure. Obviously, also parenting comes into that with relationships. And of course, again, you can get a couple come together with um completely different beliefs around money and health and parenting and success and failure. And of course, that can create um all sorts of seemingly problems in a relationship, whereas actually all it's doing is it's uncovering things to be investigated and beliefs to be um questioned, because really we need to think where did I first get that belief? Because often these beliefs are inherited and they're not necessarily consciously chosen. Of course, when we investigate, we can then consciously choose the ways we want to see the world or opinions we have, and we'll hold them more lightly because we don't believe we are then. So it's a helpful thing when you have a strong belief about something to just say, when did I first believe this? Where did I learn this? Where did I first get given this? Who taught me this? Who said this was the way to think? And you know, is this what I believe? Is it what I believe? Who am I? If I and who am I without that belief? Because often our identity is very tied up with what we believe about life, and that's why changing our beliefs often means changing our whole identity, because people are very identified with what they believe, even the negative beliefs, even the beliefs about not feeling unworthy or not good enough, all these things, it can be a big identity with it. There can be an identity about um, you know, how we how we are in the world, whether we've always succeeded, or whether we even if we things don't work out for us, there can be an identity, ironically. Um, and of course, if we do change our beliefs and we do start to question them and find that that shifts our identity about ourselves, we we find we drop out of university and that's okay, and we go off on a completely different path to all our peers, that can be that can be challenging. I remember picking up two young people. I was in Spain and they were hitchhiking, and they were about 20 years old, and we had a lovely conversation because the young man had just dropped out of university, done a term or two, and it hadn't worked out for him, and he was in a bit of a quandary, and his girlfriend was loving her degree course, and we we had a good investigative conversation about that it didn't have to be the set route, that he could find his way, and if university wasn't right for him, there would be other pathways, there's lots of different paths, and yeah, it was a it was a good conversation because he was feeling challenged because he had felt he needed to drop out, but it was going against so much of what he'd been taught and how he was meant to be, so it can affect obviously it affects can affect our friendships because people don't necessarily understand what we're doing, or we might not understand what someone else is doing when they change and they seem to change. Um, so it affects you know relationships, it can affect our lifestyle, even when people change their diet or decide to stop drinking. I can remember um somebody years and years ago who was in you know in the rugby world and he uh wanted was told to stop drinking by his wife and was very keen that he stopped. So he stopped, and he would go out with his rugby friends and leave the pub with 12 pints of undrunk beer on the counter because he was trying to change and wanted to um you know listen to what his wife was requesting, but his friends weren't adjusting to it, so you know it's our lifestyle changes where we live might change. Um I remember again years ago when I had my own gym, somebody had moved down to Bath from the north because he needed to move away from the identity he had up in the north and all the friends he had and the lifestyle he was living there that wasn't healthy for him. And he moved to Bath and he told nobody about his previous lifestyle, he created a new lifestyle, he joined our gym, and he didn't tell me for some time the change that he'd made that so that he could shift his beliefs about life, shift his identity. But sometimes people do stay with what's familiar rather than step into what's true, and of course, as I said before, if we are um not investigating our beliefs, we are often living completely unconsciously, repeating these patterns, recreating the same experiences and living on those programs that I was saying, just living out, um thinking that things are happening to us, and just thinking life's unfair or this always happens to me, and actually it creates a complete sense of powerlessness. But when we do realize our thoughts, emotions, and our beliefs are shaping our lives, that can be such a turning point because it is an empowerment. Now it can feel quite a difficult shift, and obviously, I work with people and it takes time because often they're having to work through the things that have inverted commas happened to them because things have happened to them, and to get to the stage where there's an empowerment where they can see the shift as an inner one can take a bit of time because it needs to be a process, but it is very, very empowering because you can begin to realise and recognise that you, you know, we, you, all of us, we are the authors of our life, and I realized very young that creative visualization was an incredibly powerful way to create our reality. I've always been an athlete. Um, as a teenager, my coach was very um progressive in the way he taught us the power of the mind, the power of the imagination, but the power of the feelings. So I used to do creative visualization then, which employed all senses. So you get the sense, the kinesthetic sense within you, get the feeling sense of running fast and free and winning a race. You you see it from afar, see yourself crossing the line, you'd hear the crowds, hear the people, hear the things going on, maybe in the stadium or if it was cross-country, hear the breathing of the other athletes, taste the salt on your lips, smell the you know, whatever might be around, um, and have the experience actually real. And I used to do a lot of that as a as a teenager, and I can remember one of my races that I'd gone over so much in my mind that I I kind of already knew the outcome, and it then just unfolded as I'd as I'd visualized. Now, obviously, again, um it's got to be adjusted because I did have quite a lot of um races unfold exactly as I'd foreseen. Of course, I had some that didn't, and it's recognizing that you know there is a there's a process of an inner, there's going to be the inside playing out on the outside, but there's things that we don't necessarily know. There are things that can be karmic or stuff we haven't uncovered because I had a lot of winning, but then I had some obviously, you know, I had some disappointments and some failures, but I would always still be interested in what I was creating inside me and looking at the um it was something to do with me. I learned very young that even if things weren't working out, I could investigate from the inside out. And I also passed my driving test, I think, by um inside out by visualization, because I couldn't have any driving lessons leading up to my driving test because I don't know why I didn't, to be quite honest, different era. But my car was out of action because a post office van had driven into the back of me. But I used to lie in bed at night and just visualise three-point turns and emergency stops and parallel parking and going around the roundabout and looking in my mirror and all the things. Anyway, I passed my driving test, but um I wasn't necessarily the greatest of drivers because then I crashed my car four weeks later. However, as I said, it's all a work in motion, it's all a uh we're a we're a work in progress. And um, I also did a lot of hypnotherapy, I had a lot of left side pain due to my wonky back, and I did a lot of hypnotherapy work and really do feel that the it it freed me from the the chronic pain I was in because the subconscious mind does respond powerfully to imagery, powerfully, powerfully to imagery and repetition. And it's known that it doesn't distinguish strongly between imagined and lived experience. So we, you know, the more we are what we're thinking, we're becoming what we're believing, we're becoming, and we're often doing that unconsciously, which is why the more consciously we do it, the more we're then able to unravel the bits that don't work out, and it's more again how we meet the bits that don't work out when we meet them with presence and we meet them with um just curiosity and we we don't react badly to it. That again can be part of the process of shifting patterns because some patterns take a while to move from us because we've been so familiar with them and think that's as I said, think that's who we are. Um but I think visualization is a brilliant thing, it's fun as well, and you know, once we become aware of our belief beliefs, we're we're not condemned just to repeat unconsciously and just repeat old cycles again and again. We really do begin to create consciously and and rather than automatically, and as I say, it's a journey, so even if it's kind of can be feel a bit stop start, we can go, oh okay, I've done that pattern again. Well, that's not shifted from inside me, but okay, I'll have a reflection, I'll look again and I'll go again. Because below all the beliefs really is the awareness, and that's why the more again we come back to presence, the more again we use meditation and the breath to come back to that place of stillness, and you know, it can be a really good practice to daily sit and just get into a state of great ease. Use the breath, go deeper, deep into the breath, deep into your tummy, breathe out, find that space at the bottom of the breath, and get so connected to it, get very, very connected to the space, and then in that space, there is limitlessness, there is the essence of you, there is pure potential, and that is the space where you can start to be creative and visualize and imagine and feel, and start to create a new pathway, a new identity. But again, these things need to be practiced and practiced and practiced because there's so many set ways of being that we're so familiar with that it can it needs to be a creative fun thing that we're willing to clear throughout the day if we're reactive to things, if we find ourselves caught in old loops, old loops of thought coupled with old feelings, we can create those psychological loops, those psychological dramas where we go round and round. If we get conscious of those and throughout the day of coming back to presence and essence and clearing, then when we're sitting quietly, um morning, evening, it's it's a good thing to do and sit for 20 minutes. We're able to get more and more connected to who we truly are, to awareness itself. And when we do connect with the essence of who we are, we do connect with something limitless, and we start to really experience that we're limitless beings and that we are creating from a limitless source, and we can start to um free ourselves from those patterns. Now, again, if we go round a pattern again, don't beat yourself up because that ends up being you know a negative um way of responding, and it can kind of ironically deepen it. Whereas if we go round a pattern again or something goes the same thing happens which we didn't want, again, the more we meet it differently, the more we meet it with stillness, we'll be able to start to you know not fight ourselves. The idea is just to become conscious of what we're creating, and if it isn't exactly as we want, we meet it with um peace, with ease, then gradually, gradually we're going to begin to be able to choose our beliefs consciously, and then life begins to change. And awareness gives us the freedom, it gives us freedom to stop repeating the past and to begin to create consciously.