As many of you might have realised by now most self help and success books, seminars, audio tapes and workshops peddle pretty much the same information again and again so why do people always come back for more.

Why do they leave these workshops full of the best intentions, full of great ideas and full of inspiration only to find themselves doing the ‘same old same old’ just a few weeks later?

The answers are painfully simple yet escape most people’s awareness.

In my experience there are 3 main reasons:

1.The first reason is that the person’s beliefs have not actually changed as a result of the information. Just because we have more information even if it’s great information does not mean we will act on it. To be able to generate the action that we need to take we must have the underlying beliefs that enable this to happen.

2. Secondly we need on-going conditioning. Life is a process, not a one step event. Therefore people need to ‘re-condition’ themselves over time. Unless the person is spending at least 15-30 minutes a day working directly on re-training their unconscious responses, behaviours and attitudes most of what they have learned will remain just information not their life experience.

3. Thirdly, people concentrate far too much on goals and wants and desires. Forgetting that the real work comes from letting go of the resistance to achieving those goals, wants and desires – the resistance being the beliefs, behaviours, attitudes, emotional responses etc that are preventing them from getting them what you want.

In this article we will take a look at the first part of the puzzle: Beliefs

The fundamental cornerstone of life is belief and it is belief that generates the reality that someone experiences. The distinctions that people fail to make when it comes to beliefs are two fold: 1. Many people think they have a belief about something when in fact they actually only have a nice idea. 2. People believe that their beliefs are ‘The Truth’ when in fact they are just “A Truth’.

Let’s look at these two points in a little more detail. Beliefs Vs Nice Idea

Let’s take a look at ‘The Secret’ phenomena – 2,000,000 + people have either watched the DVD or read the book. How many of those 2,000,000 people can manifest pretty much what they want when they want it? Let’s say perhaps sixty thousand at best (on average about 3% of people make what they really want happen). Yet I’m sure at least a million would say that they ‘believe’ in The Secret.

What they actually mean to say is “The Secret sounds like a great idea, I would love to be able to do that but in reality the greater part of me doubts it at some level and although it makes sense I’m still working on getting it to work”.

So a few thousand actually believe it and as such they generate the required thoughts and behaviours that allow it to be their reality. For the others it’s simply not a belief yet as the results in the cold light of day show. For these people it is quite simply just a nice idea that they wish to believe in.
I’m not saying for a moment that you can’t at some point adopt the belief and work towards adopting that belief but until you can actually generate the effects of that belief you simply don’t believe it yet.

Beliefs are Just A TRUTH not THE TRUTH

The reason that people get stuck in beliefs that don’t work for them for so long is that they make the mistake of believing that their beliefs are THE truth not just A truth. When we believe something we normally see it as if it is a FACT – the way that it is. For those of us who believed in Santa when we were young we acted, behaved and thought as if it were fact. However, (hopefully) now you realise that Santa does not exist as a fact in the world rather he was just ‘A Truth’ at that time in your mind.

The same goes for some extraordinary areas in life. For example, in the late eighteen hundreds the birth death rate was very high, only about 20 out of every 200 children born would survive the birthing experience. One Doctor at the time ran a hospital where he had his staff wash their hands before and after every delivery. His hospitals birth survival record was very high – 180 children out of every 200 born would live, a huge difference.

He of course believed that hygiene was a key factor in the spread of disease. His findings were put to the court at the time with the suggestion that every hospital followed the same procedure. He was laughed at and told that there was no conclusive proof that his findings were factual and it would be logistically impossible to test his beliefs.

It wasn’t until many years later that the practice of hygiene was introduced to hospitals. It’s amazing to think as we look back that they couldn’t see the connection between hygiene and birth rate survival but at the time they simply didn’t have the beliefs to be able to do so. They didn’t even know about germ theory to be able to form beliefs about it.

Every year established facts in physics, psychology and medicine are challenged as new information and experience sheds new light. When this happens old ‘facts and beliefs’ change. History has shown us again and again that beliefs are only ever ‘A Truth’ never ‘The Truth’. Beliefs are not reality they are at best only ever one interpretation of reality.

When it comes to our personal and business success and happiness, the reality as you experience it now is due to your beliefs and what you either consciously or unconsciously have accepted as a fact.

Everything from your sense of self worth to net worth is set by your current beliefs and isn’t it nice to know that these beliefs aren’t the truth that they are only a truth and therefore you are at liberty to change them to something that works better for you – far, far better for you.

posted 2010 Apr 26 by Alistair Horscroft