Yesterday, I asked you to think about your triad of beliefs. Today, I want to follow-up by sharing a frequently-repeated anecdote that effectively illustrates the power of a person’s beliefs.
A Psychologist recalls an encounter with a patient who believed that he was dead.
Thinking he’d hit on a good idea, he asked him, “Do dead people bleed?” to which the patient replied “No, of course they don’t.” The Psychologist then picked up a scalpel and made a tiny prick in the patients’ finger, causing the patient to bleed.
The patient’s response was “My God, dead people do bleed!”
The beliefs that we develop – often from being children – are rarely reviewed and extremely powerful. We cling to them, even when there is no real, logical evidence to back them up. Like the patient here, we might just create our own evidence by seeing what we want to see.
The thing is – dead people don’t bleed.
And it’s probably not going to lead to a happy life, if you’re walking around thinking that you’re dead.
Hopefully, you looked at your core beliefs yesterday – about yourself, the world/others and the future. Today, just spend a few moments thinking about your negative beliefs. You’ll need to be really honest with yourself.
Ask yourself now: Do your beliefs work for you, or against you? Are you attached to words and phrases that are hurting you in the long-term? Are you just seeing what you want to see in order to confirm beliefs that you just can’t let go of?
If you were to let go of these beliefs, what’s the worst that could happen?
What’s the best?
Once you know this, you can ask this last question: Is living your best-case scenario, and avoiding the worst, better than the comfort of clinging to that familiar belief?
If the answer is yes, then it’s time to begin letting go….
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