Your belief system
The Man Who Thinks He Can
If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later the man who wins,
Is the man who thinks he can.
The poem is attributed to Walter D. Wintle .
During the first six or seven years of a child’s life, its brain is like a sponge, soaking up everything that is perceived in its environment. The child is in a super-learning state; learning from the behaviours they observe, from the way they are treated, and from the response of their carers, who in most cases are their parents. All of the information presented to the child during this time goes straight into the subconscious mind, as the conscious mind is still under development, and is unable to interfere with this super-learning process. It is well known that, through hypnosis, you can program a person’s behavior by communicating directly with the subconscious mind, bypassing the conscious mind. Between birth and age six, a child’s EEG brain activity would show that it is normally operating in a hypnotic trance state, so whatever the child is learning is being programmed directly into its subconscious mind. The subconscious mind records all of this information and later on in life replays these programs, in the form of their own behaviour.
During this early period of the child’s life, the child also starts to form beliefs about its own identity and how it fits into the world. This is part of the super-learning process, coming mainly from the responses the child receives to its behaviour during this time, and the way it is treated.
The power of our belief system is enormous. During drug tests that are mandatory before a drug can be released onto the market, a control group is always given a placebo, which is often just a pill of sugar, while the real test group are administered the drug under test.
In many cases the placebo out-performs the drug. This “placebo effect” comes about because the people who took them did not know they were taking a sugar pill, and believed that the pill they were taking was going to cure them. The stronger the belief the better it works. Research has found that something like one third of all medical healings may be the result of the placebo effect.
The power of belief can also kill as well as cure people. Years ago, australian aborigines would wander off into the bush and die if the tribal witch doctor “pointed the bone” at them. Pointing the bone was a sign that the aboriginal targeted was going to die, so they would.
During the first few years when a child's belief system, most importantly about themselves, is beginning to form, they have no control over it. Everything and everyone around them, without being aware of it, is programming them. And unfortunately for many children this will be the wrong kind of programming, but the child's subconscious mind will take it on board anyway.
The beliefs that develop during this super-learning period are easily accepted as true because they go straight to the subconscious mind. And they become the references that are used for evaluating everything that the child experiences in the world after that. Later, as the child grows older and their conscious mind develops more, new information now has to pass through their conscious mind before it is accepted as true. New information is evaluated by the conscious mind against any previous references that the subconscious mind provides it with. The subconscious mind always goes looking for previous references so that it knows where to store the information. And if it finds conflicting information it throws this back to the conscious mind to resolve it.
For example let’s say a child is given a musical instrument for their fifth birthday, and is immediately told by their father that the noise they are making sounds terrible, that they have no musical talent, and that they will never be able to play any musical instrument. That’s likely to be accepted as true by the young child. Years later if the same child tries to re-program themselves by telling themselves that they are a good musician, every time they say that to themselves their subconscious mind is going to recall the belief that it already has ‘on file’, that they are a terrible musician and the conscious mind immediately experiences the conflict. The person has difficulty convincing themselves of the new belief that they would like to have, because of the old one that already exists. The more references that the subconscious has on file for the old belief, the stronger the belief will be. The stronger the old belief then the more difficult it is to change it.
This happens every time you have a new thought. Your subconscious mind will, in a fraction of a second, scan through literally millions of mental filing cabinets, scanning every idea or thought or impression you have ever stored which seems to match the new one in any way. In that same fraction of a second, based on the information it finds stored in your mental files, your subconscious mind will send a message back to the conscious mind, giving it back the most relevant memories that it has found matching this new thought. The conscious mind does a comparison and makes a decision on whether it should be accepted, in which case the subconscious mind will file the new thought along with the information it just retrieved. In this way new thoughts which support current beliefs make those beliefs stronger. Alternatively if the conscious mind thinks that what is already filed in memory and was returned to it by the subconscious, is true instead, then the new thought will be discarded or stored in a different area with no links, or only very weak links, to the information that was retrieved. This new thought may be difficult to recall a few days later.
The more information that we receive that supports an old belief, the larger that portfolio in our memory becomes, and the stronger the belief becomes. That is why it is often very difficult to change old programs in our minds. The more you think about yourself in a certain way, the more you will think about yourself that same way in the future! The more you think about anything in a certain way, the more you will believe that that is how it really is.
The situation is made worse by helping to reinforce any negative beliefs we have about ourselves by continuing to have negative thoughts about ourselves, and the way that we talk to ourselves in the inner dialogue that goes on inside our minds every minute of every day. It has been estimated that every one of us has more than 10,000 thoughts every day, and 75 percent of these are negative! That’s a massive amount of negative programming.
Show your children in everything that you say and do that you believe in them. When they get a little older, teach your children to believe in themselves. Teach them to talk positively to themselves about themselves and everything they do, all day, every day. Positive self talk is very important for your self belief. It is also another habit we get into, whether we talk positively or negatively to ourselves. So make sure they use positive self talk.
Here are just a few positive affirmations that can be used to help develop high self esteem and self confidence:
I really am special. I like who I am and feel good about myself
I would rather be me than anyone else in the world.
I like how I feel and I like how I think and I like how I do things. I approve of myself and who I am.
I have many beautiful qualities about me. I have talents and skills and abilities. And I am discovering new talents inside of me all of the time.
I am positive. I am confident. I radiate good things to other people, and in doing so make many friends.
I am a very popular person. Other people like me because I am a great listener and a terrific friend
I am full of life. I like life and am glad to be alive. I am a very special person, living at a very special time.
I like to be around other people and other people like to be around me. People like to hear what I have to say.
I smile a lot. I am happy on the inside and happy on the outside.
I think positively about everything during the entire day.
I can do anything I put my mind to.
Teach your children that they can change who they are or rather, how they behave, by changing what they say when they talk to themselves because their mind is listening. Repeating an affirmation over and over again will eventually displace any prior negative beliefs. The most famous quote that came out of the book Think and Grow Rich was "whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve". The key is to get your mind to believe it. That is why repetition is required. If you want a list of more positive affirmations there is a list of 488 power affirmations available from the link at the end of the book. There is also a very good video by Bob Proctor on this website that you really should watch. here
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