I used to teach people how to change their beliefs.
I believed it, too.
Find the belief that’s getting in your way. Question it. Challenge it. Replace it with a better one. Practice the new belief until the old one disappears.
It sounds perfectly reasonable.
There was only one problem.
I couldn’t always do it myself.
And believe me, I tried.
Some beliefs aren’t simply thoughts we picked up last Tuesday.
They have been with us for years. Sometimes for most of our lives.
I’m not good enough.
I don’t belong.
I have to please people to be loved.
I can’t trust myself.
Other people know better than I do.
We may understand intellectually that a belief isn’t true anymore. We may know exactly where it came from. We can analyze it, argue with it, write affirmations saying the opposite, and tell ourselves over and over that we’re going to change it.
And still…
there it is.
Then one day, I began to wonder:
What if I’m going about this backward?
Maybe I Don’t Have to Change It
What if I don’t have to wrestle that old belief to the ground and somehow convince myself never to believe it again?
What if I simply stop feeding it?
And begin feeding something else.
That changed everything for me.
Our deeply rooted beliefs have been practiced.
Again and again and again.
Every time we repeat the same thought, interpret an experience through the same old story, or behave according to what we already believe, we reinforce that familiar pattern.
Our brains become very good at traveling roads they have traveled thousands of times before.
That doesn’t mean we’re condemned to travel them forever.
Our brains can change. We can learn new patterns, strengthen different ways of thinking and behaving, and gradually make the old patterns less dominant.
But I have found that fighting the old road isn’t particularly helpful.
I’d rather build a new one.
First, We Have to Notice
Of course, we can’t stop feeding something we don’t know we’re feeding.
This is where awareness becomes so important.
Listen to the conversations you have with yourself.
Not just occasionally.
Listen when you’re disappointed.
Listen when you’re frightened.
Listen when somebody disagrees with you.
Listen when you’re about to try something you’ve never done before.
Listen when you make a mistake.
That’s when some of our oldest beliefs tend to come strolling through the door.
See? I knew you couldn’t do it.
They’re going to think you’re ridiculous.
Who do you think you are?
You’d better ask somebody else.
Don’t take the risk.
For many years, I didn’t even recognize those thoughts as beliefs.
They simply felt like truth.
That’s the tricky thing about a deeply rooted belief.
It doesn’t introduce itself by saying:
Hello, I’m an old belief you developed many years ago and you may want to reconsider me.
Wouldn’t that be convenient? 😂
It simply speaks.
And because the voice is familiar, we believe it.
I Know This Voice Very Well
One of the beliefs that followed me for much of my life was some version of:
I’m not good enough.
I spent years working on it.
I became stronger. More confident. More aware.
I accomplished things.
I helped other people.
I gathered plenty of evidence that I was capable.
And yet that old belief could still find places to hide.
For years, I thought I needed to finally get rid of it.
Now I see it differently.
I don’t need to defeat it.
I don’t even need to argue with it.
When that old voice appears, I can simply recognize it.
Ah. There you are.
And then I get to decide whether I’m going to give it my energy.
More and more, I don’t.
Instead, I practice something else.
I trust my own judgment.
I listen to my heart.
I make choices that feel true to me.
I allow myself to change direction.
I say no when something isn’t right for me.
I create things simply because I want them to exist.
I let myself be ME.
Every one of those choices gives me a different experience of myself.
And gradually, the new experience becomes more familiar than the old story.
Don’t Replace One Lie With Another
There is something else I’ve learned.
A new belief has to feel possible.
If you have spent your entire life believing:
I’m worthless,
and tomorrow morning you stand in front of the mirror and announce:
I am magnificent! I am extraordinary! I deserve absolutely everything!
there may be a little voice inside you saying:
Oh, that’s a lie.
😂
And frankly, I understand.
We don’t need to replace one belief that doesn’t serve us with another statement we don’t actually believe.
We can start somewhere more honest.
Maybe:
Perhaps I don’t have to earn my right to exist.
Or:
My needs matter too.
Or:
My opinion is worth listening to.
Or simply:
I’m learning to trust myself.
Can you believe that much?
Good.
Start there.
And then live it.
Because I don’t think new beliefs become deeply rooted simply because we repeat the words.
We begin to believe them because we experience ourselves living them.
Stop Watering the Weeds
Perhaps this is why I see beliefs so differently today.
I used to think the work was about finding the bad belief and changing it.
Now I think it’s much more about becoming conscious of what we’re practicing.
What are we giving our attention to?
What are we reinforcing?
What story about ourselves are we repeating for the thousandth time simply because we’ve repeated it 999 times before?
And what might happen if we stopped?
Not with anger.
Not with judgment.
Not by declaring war on some part of ourselves that learned that belief for reasons that probably made perfect sense once.
Just…
stop watering it.
Then plant something else.
Something that feels more like truth.
Water that.
Tomorrow, water it again.
And the next day.
And the next.
Live it whenever you have the opportunity.
Give yourself new evidence.
Let yourself experience a different version of what is possible.
And perhaps one day you’ll notice something.
The old belief you were trying so desperately to destroy is still somewhere back there…
but it has become smaller from neglect.
Meanwhile, something much more beautiful has been quietly growing beside it.
So perhaps the question isn’t:
What belief do I need to change?
Perhaps it’s:
What do I want to grow instead?
Come sit with me on The Bench and tell me what you’re planting.