FEATURED ARTICLE
Your Beliefs May Cause Your Fears
by Joe Cotton

Beliefs in how the world works allow you to get through your day-to-day activities. You often react automatically as a result of your stored thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

Your “thinking set” is made up of “ingredients” that you’ve collected over a lifetime. These “ingredients” consist of billions of brain cells that allow you to get through the day without thinking every single action through. You get into trouble and get unnecessarily stressed when your unconscious signals don’t really fit what is going on.

Your beliefs cause automatic thoughts and inner self-talk that can cause you to think negatively about yourself, others or a situation at home, school or work.

A worker may say, “The boss doesn’t like me. I’m sure to be fired.” An accountant says, “These numbers don’t work. We’ll never get through this.” A man approaching a woman at a dance says to himself, “She won’t say yes when I ask her to dance so why bother?”

All of these thinking sets that result from inner beliefs can set you up for a self-fulfilling prophesy – what you believe you may cause to happen.

Try this exercise to help you understand and turn around some of your “awfulizing” beliefs.

Write down your beliefs about what you think the outcome will be of events that come up in your life. Write down the time of day that the belief popped into your head. Then take a look at your list after dinner; how many of those beliefs stood the test of time?

Compare them again the next morning. This comparison will help you understand that along with your thoughts and feelings, many of your beliefs are a result of thinking that you’ve developed over time; and more importantly, many, many of them are untrue.

They take you for a very long ride for no purpose.

The next step is to pay attention to your thinking every time you complete a phone conversation or touch a door knob. Use these signals as opportunities to look over your worrisome thoughts and say, “What is the evidence for this? Can something else that is more comforting be closer to the truth?”

Then use positive self-talk. “I’m a good worker and the boss knows it. My job is as secure as any job can be. I’ll be OK,” or “I’ll make it through this mishap. I always have,” or “I’ll ask her to dance anyway, it won’t be the worst thing if she says no, and she may say yes.”

Remember, to a great extent you do control your actions in the world. Become more aware of your automatic thoughts and see how much more positive your life can be.