How Beliefs Relate To The Emotional Body
Beliefs are pathways that allow energy to flow through our beings. It is a whole-body pattern, but I’ll talk a lot about the brain in this book because there is more scientific evidence available for it. How the flow of energy feels to us is called an emotion. If you believe that being alive is something to be grateful for, then you will feel a positive flow of emotion upon waking because you will realize that you are alive. If you believe that you have to go to work to survive and you don’t enjoy work, then you will feel the opposite way when you hear the alarm clock.
When I had depression, I had many beliefs that kept happiness at a distance or caused me pain. I remember when I first learned that we have the power to deconstruct our own beliefs. It was a major breakthrough for me. I started to watch my own thoughts and laugh at how unhelpful they were. Specifically, I remember when I got up the energy to go for a run. Even though I rarely exercised and I was finally doing something helpful for myself, I had repetitive thought patterns about how I should be running faster and should be able to run longer. I was abusing myself with these thoughts. As soon as I realized what my belief was and deconstructed it, I could run in peace. If the word “should” is in your thought, it is a clue that your thought is resistant to reality, and is therefore causing pain.
Take responsibility for the belief. It may stem from genetic predisposition or environmental conditioning, but the choice is now yours to tear down the pathway and build a better one that takes you straight to the destination of happiness. Just releasing a negative emotion is like taking an aspirin for headaches. Headaches are often relieved from headache medicine, but headaches are never caused by lack of medicine. It is YOUR belief that caused you to feel the negative emotion. By all means, take a pill to take care of the symptom, but then cure the disease! Many headache medications contain vasodilators that allow blood energy to flow more. You will see this trend repeatedly. Constriction causes pain. Relaxation causes happiness. Of course life is a balance between the two, but most people are too tense!
A belief is a strong pattern through your entire being. In Hindu tradition, the term is samskara. A compartmentalized way of looking at it is a pathway through your brain. Every time you use a thought pattern, it becomes more engrained and your brain gets better at using the pathway. When other pathway options come up, your brain likes to choose the highway because it is an easier, more familiar and well-trodden path.
Reflect:
Write down the top ten beliefs that bring up the most emotion for you (positive or negative). You can keep the positive and you can deconstruct the negative.
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My strongest limiting belief about myself is:
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My strongest positive belief about myself is:
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My strongest limiting belief about my body is:
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My strongest positive belief about my body is:
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My strongest limiting belief about relationships is:
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My strongest positive belief about relationships is:
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My strongest limiting belief about my mother is:
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My strongest positive belief about my mother is:
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My strongest limiting belief about my father is:
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My strongest positive belief about my father is:
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My strongest limiting belief about money is:
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My strongest positive belief about money is:
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My strongest limiting belief about my career is:
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My strongest positive belief about my career is:
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