Table of Contents
Most people think of beliefs as something static and inherent. In other words, “This is what I believe, and I believe that for life. It’s who I am.” In terms of their personality, they’ll say, “I’m mild-mannered” or “I’m a type A person.” “I believe men are good at X, and women are good at Y.” That’s the way most people are, but it’s not the way they should be, because our beliefs shape everything in our life.
Belief is a very interesting word. It plays a big role in our life. Our paradigm is made up of our beliefs. Unfortunately, many of the beliefs that we operate with are absolutely ridiculous. They have no foundation at all. In the light of truth, they would just disappear. Furthermore, we did not originate most of these silly beliefs. (Excerpt is from ‘Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life’ by Bob Proctor).
Belief and Reevaluation
One day Bob Proctor was having a meal with his mentor Val Vanderwall. In idle conversation, his mentor said, “Our belief system is based upon our evaluation of something. And frequently, if we reevaluate a situation, our belief about that situation will change.”
When you keep hearing the same thing over and over again, you’re going to start to believe it. We heard that if you don’t go to school, you can’t win. That’s not true. Many people that have never been seen inside of a school have built huge organizations. We were taught if you don’t go to a religious place, you’re a sinner. That’s not true either.
Why do we believe this? Because we heard it over and over again as children. It was programmed into our mind. As a result of hearing that repeatedly as little children, we develop that belief. We believe it from the moment we become aware of anything; it’s part of our belief system. We have to keep reevaluating our beliefs. Whenever you believe that you can’t do something because of whatever condition or circumstance, it doesn’t hold water. You’ve got to get to the point where you believe that there’s something absolutely magnificent about you.
As Earl Nightingale pointed out, our body is changing at the rate of about forty million cells per second. We’re in a constant evolution of change. Our belief system can change, and it is changing all the time. This change should involve upward growth, expansion, and fuller expression, because we’re spiritual beings, and spirit always moves toward expansion and fuller expression. It’s always for the greater good—not just sometimes: always. When we can understand that and lock into it, our lives are going to keep getting better and better.
Conscious versus Unconscious Beliefs
Sometimes as they’re establishing a new belief system, people can lose confidence when they don’t see the results they want right away. What should people do when their new vision of themselves isn’t reflected in the results in the near term?
To understand this problem, you have to realize that you’re dealing with two levels here: a conscious level and a subconscious level. You can believe something on a conscious level while not believing it on a subconscious level. Say you’ve read Think and Grow Rich and you believe that you can earn more money, but you’re not earning it. Where’s the problem? The belief is just in your intellect. It needs to be integrated into the subconscious mind. Until it’s properly planted in the subconscious, it’s not going to manifest in results.
It’s quite confusing to people when they know they believe something, but it’s not showing up in their life. It’s a matter of praxis, which is the integration of beliefs with behavior. When you say, “I believe I can do something,” and you’re not doing it, it’s because that belief has not been properly planted in the subconscious mind. Through repetition and proper visualization, it will be planted in the subconscious; then it starts manifesting as results.
Author George Leonard wrote a book called Mastery. He said that if you stay with something, you’ll be on a plateau for a while. But you stay with the practice day in, day out, one day you’ll suddenly hit a jump and find yourself at a new level. But you don’t know when that jump’s going to come. That’s when you take a quantum leap.
Repetition is the Key
When that mastery cuts in, there’s an enormous change in results. It happens so fast, it’s almost a shock. This happens when you master something. This process probably takes a different length of time with every person. It depends on repetition—how often you study it and how deeply you study it. Repetition is the key.
People go to seminars, read books, and listen to recordings, but the results don’t come, so they get very frustrated. They don’t understand that all kinds of things happen that they cannot see. We’re part of an unseen world; in fact, the biggest part is the unseen. Nothing is created or destroyed, and the law of vibration decrees that everything vibrates on different frequencies. Every frequency is hooked up to the one above and the one below, so everything is connected. The unseen and the seen are connected. Spirit manifests through its polar opposite. Spirit is working within and through the physical body that you’re living in.
The average individual knows nothing about that. Or they believe it intellectually, but it’s not happening, and that causes frustration. Quite often, people will quit when they may only be, as Napoleon Hill said, three inches away from the riches.
Evidence!
In his book You 2, Price Pritchett wrote, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Then he added, “Think of an iceberg, where you see only the tip of what’s really there, but just as real and out of sight are invisible sources ready to make a profound difference in what you can achieve.”
We’re dealing with something we don’t understand, with something that’s absolutely foreign to the minds of most people. The average individual knows very little about himself or herself. We learn nothing about ourselves in school. Even if you’ve studied psychology, you never really get into the essence of who you are. It’s all left on an intellectual level; you never get into the spiritual essence of who we are, which is pretty sad.
When Bob Proctor first heard these ideas, he thought they were silly. But the man that explained it said, “My way’s working, and yours is not. Why don’t you try my way?” He was happy, healthy, and wealthy. Bob Proctor was unhappy, sick, and broke. The man said, “Do exactly what I tell you until you find out I’m lying to you or I don’t know what I’m talking about.” Bob followed his advice. Immediately everything started to change. Of course, it started to change Bob’s beliefs.
Overcome Distraction
When President Kennedy asked von Braun what it would take to build a rocket to go to the moon and come back safely, he said, “The will to do it.” The will is one of the higher faculties, and it gives us the ability to hold one idea on the screen of our mind to the exclusion of all outside distractions.
Unfortunately, we are distracted all the time. You see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, but those five senses merely connect you with the outside, material world. There’s always activity going on out there, and it’s always begging for your conscious attention. With the proper use of the will, you shut down those five senses and bring your mind into perfect harmony with the idea that you’re focused on. That’s what the great golfers and the great athletes do. That’s what all the great salespeople do. And that’s what all the people who qualify as being great at anything do. They focus. They stick to their knitting. And they don’t wander all over the place.
Everything is Spirit
As human beings, we share the spiritual aspect with the rest of creation; in fact, spirit is 100 percent present in all places at the same time. Spirit is omnipresent. Everything is spirit. There’s nothing that is not spirit. It manifests in many forms, but it always manifest in its polar opposite, the physical form. Although we share spirit with all that exists, what separates us from all the rest is that we are self-conscious. We have been given intellectual qualities that no other form of life, so far as we know, have been blessed with: perception, will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition.
Each one of these faculties can be developed to a tremendous degree. They are reflected in the results; by their fruits you will know them. Most people know very little about these higher faculties. They only go by what they can see through their senses. If you’re going to let the physical world control you, you’re never going to have anything more than you’ve already got.
Expression of God
Everything in our material world is in the third dimension. You want to go beyond that into your higher faculties. If we’re created in God’s image, then all things are possible. We can do all things. We’re not God, but we’re an expression of God, and great work can be done. You’re dealing with an infinite power; there’s no end to what you can do. It doesn’t matter what it is or how good it is, it can still get better.
The emotions are in the driver’s seat, they cause us to move, but the conscious mind dictates what goes into the subconscious mind. The conscious mind reasons both inductively and deductively. The subconscious mind only reasons deductively; in other words, it can only accept; it cannot reject. Your conscious mind has an inductive reasoning capacity, which enables you to choose what’s going into your subconscious mind. If you’re not using that inductive reasoning faculty, if you’ve just lying dormant, whatever’s going on around you is going right into your subconscious mind and will control your behavior.
