Creativity Information

"True Power" is a series that will focus on proven techniques to accomplish any goal. Each exercise is designed to enlarge your ability to believe what you want is possible and will actually happen.

How Beliefs Work

You use them everyday. They determine everything from how you feel about your body to who your friends are, from your political affiliations to your work. "They" are your beliefs. Whether you know it or not, you use visualization, affirmations, and self-hypnosis all the time, and here's the clincher: Those beliefs that you're visualizing, affirming, and saying to yourself repeatedly form your life-literally.

Here's how it works: Physics has reduced all matter, motion, and events down to live energy and information or consciousness. Consciousness (live and active energy and information) is the force that is both the substance and the organizer of the physical universe. Your mind, amazing as it sounds, through its various functions, has a directing power on the physical universe-in other words, your mind and thoughts determine your life and its events.

Think of your mind, and your thoughts in particular, as an invisible electromagnetic power plant, which it is. You have no trouble believing if you point a remote at the television, it will turn on, or if you dial your cell phone, someone will answer and you can talk to that person. In both cases, the processes involved are invisible but reliable. Your mind is much like these gadgets, working through invisible processes that follow organized laws. You can prove these laws exist by using them and examining the results. To use these laws properly, however, it helps to know how they work.

The gadget you call your mind is magnetized. It has drawing and repelling power. A particular thought has its own electromagnetic organization and will, by its nature, draw to it like thoughts, emotions, and subsequent events. The thought gathers momentum and pulls in similar electromagnetic and organized energy information clusters that then form similar thoughts, emotions, and events in the physical world. Thoughts unlike your original thought will be repelled like a magnet turned backward. The brilliance of the system and its potentials are astounding.

An easy way to demonstrate for yourself how this works is to take a person you dislike and begin to systematically think kind and loving thoughts about this person on a regular basis. Then see what happens.

Beliefs are supercharged thoughts that have tremendous drawing and repelling power, that actually organize your subsidiary thoughts, emotions and the events that happen in your life. These beliefs are alive. They're working for or against you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, whether your thinking about them or not, whether you think you even hold the particular belief or not, and whether you believe your beliefs have power or not. You have a choice to let the process go on willy nilly or to direct it consciously.

There are two ways to discover what beliefs you hold and whether they're productive. You can examine the beliefs in your mind, asking yourself, "What do I believe?" Or you can look at the results in you life. Do you live in a comfortable home, have lovely friends, fulfilling work, a sunny view of people and the world? If there's room for improvement, or if your deepest desires are as yet unmet, you can consciously work to establish beliefs that will bring about seemingly miraculous changes.

The first technique we'll deal with, visualization, is one you're constantly using, but from cultural training, you many times visualize the exact opposite of what you want by thinking about your problems or how what you want can't happen. You do this because you believe this is "realistic," or that this is how problems are solved when, in fact, the truth is quite the opposite. Bear in mind that you do not need to fight against unwanted beliefs or remove them nor is it possible to do this. If you try, your focus on these old beliefs will keep them in place because you get exactly what you focus on. This is a law. Old beliefs will gently move aside in a natural and normal process as you establish new beliefs.

The real question is how do you stop the momentum of negative beliefs and develop strong affirmative ones? Before we begin, I want to mention that many of you who are trying to change your life situation for the better will find your biggest hurdle is a belief you don't even see and wouldn't guess to look at. It's a belief in the value of the news. It may be difficult if not impossible to change your basic beliefs about people, institutions, and the world you live in if you're in the habit of reading, watching, or listening to the news each day.

That it's good to read, watch, or listen to the news, that you need to do this to be "on top of things" is a belief. You may protest that the value of news is a fact not a belief, but you can test this out for yourself quite easily by asking yourself what its effect has been in your life. Due to keeping informed of the news, regardless of the source, are you a better citizen? Do you vote more regularly? Do you trust your neighbor more? Do you love your country, its government, and institutions? Do you feel empowered to act? Do you feel you have control over your life?

To pay attention to the news each day is to give your power to someone else by allowing that person to hypnotize you. The results are normally a feeling of helplessness and a deep distrust of your fellow human beings and the world around you. Where is the value in that? Try, if you can, to quantify that value. This, in the face of the fact that the world continues to be wonderful, people are good, and institutions and governments are not static but change quite easily for the better if people believe they can change for the better.

If you stop paying attention to the news, you will still be informed, you will like people better, and that will be reflected in you work, your relationships, and ultimately in every facet of your life, including your prospects and income. However, the only way to know this is to try it. Lacking that, be aware of your emotions as you listen to the news, NO MATTER WHAT THE STORY. Know that those emotions form your life and that you are choosing to form your reality in this way by allowing someone else to control you.

The above summations on how beliefs form your life has been a oversimplification of a topic that could literally take books to explain. In the interest of space, I've left out much information. It's true that your thoughts, emotions, and especially your beliefs form your world, literally, not symbolically, but it's also just as true that you should ALWAYS express your emotions and never criticize those emotions or your thoughts NO MATTER HOW NEGATIVE. Have your tantrum if you need to. Be morose for a while if you need to without castigating yourself. A colorful variety of thoughts and emotions is part of life, and the point is to be conscious of the general trend of what you're saying, feeling, and imaging for yourself and NOT impose discipline on your thoughts and emotions. You can foster incredibly positive beliefs even WHILE you're have what you might consider negative thoughts, without ever trying to change or stop those negative thoughts. In other words, don't worry about negative thoughts or emotions. Just notice them. They will phase out, slowly, of their own accord as you begin to make changes.

Next: Part I. Visualization: Image Production and Verbal Thought

S.C. Giles is a contributing author of The Artrepreneur E-Zine and newsletter.

The Artrepreneur offers articles helping artists focus on proven techniques to accomplish any goal. Read More: http://www.theartrepreneur.com

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