INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS
BELIEF?
CHAPTER TWO: HOW BELIEFS
ARE FORMED
CHAPTER THREE: TYPES OF BELIEF
SYSTEMS
CHAPTER FOUR: BELIEVE IN
YOURSELF
CHAPTER FIVE: BELIEVE IN GOD ALMIGHTY
CHAPTER SIX: WHAT IS FALSE BELIEF?
CHAPTER SEVEN: WHAT ARE
BENEFICIAL BELIEFS?
CHAPTER EIGHT: DANGEROUS
EXPRESSIONS THAT INCAPACITATE YOU
CHAPTER NINE: BELIEVING
IS SEEING, NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING
CHAPTER TEN: BELIEFS
AFFECT YOUR LIFE
CHAPTER ELEVEN: HOW TO
APPLY THE LAW OF BELIEF
CHAPTER TWELVE: HOW TO
REPROGRAMME YOUR BELIEFS
Do
you believe in something? The answer is a resounding yes! Even the atheist
believes in something. Our beliefs rule our lives. Usually, when you board a
taxi, you believe the driver is a good driver even when you have not met him
before. You also believe that the vehicle will not breakdown in the middle of the
road. When you enter a restaurant to eat, you believe that the food is good for
human consumption. When you open up a bottle of soft drink to gulp, you believe
that there is no cockroach inside it. The examples are indefinite.
One indubitable fact in life is that each of us has a set of beliefs that secretly molds and controls our lives. This set of beliefs greatly affects our daily thoughts and functioning, which consequently influences our emotions. Our emotions in turn affect our behaviours and lifestyles; our lifestyles affect our achievements and destinies.
One
can say incontrovertibly that our beliefs make us slaves throughout our lives.
This is simply because our frame of beliefs becomes a set of instructions that
governs our lives. It guides our destiny by determining how successful and happy
we can be in life.
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Our belief patterns are like operating systems (as in computers) in our subconscious mind, which control us daily. Oftentimes, we may not be aware that we are being manipulated by our beliefs. But they help us to cognitively appraise and analyze what we perceive. Such evaluations can be positively or negatively done, depending on our individual belief systems. In other words, our interpretations of life’s phenomena depend on our beliefs. For the fact that we believe differently, we can perceive a situation as good, neutral, or bad, depending on our belief make-up.
The
caveat is – beware of your beliefs! Question your beliefs. Are your beliefs
life-enhancing or destructive? We shall discuss all these issues in subsequent
chapters. It is heart-rending to note that negative beliefs have destroyed lives
and destinies. We need to urgently recognize their effects in our lives.
Consequently, we can change our lives tremendously for good if we change our
beliefs.
Belief
is very powerful and must be managed with a lot of circumspection. Millions of
individuals all over the world have lived unfulfilled lives because of the
wrong set of beliefs that they have imbibed from childhood.
This
book, “Unlocking the Powers of Your Beliefs,” makes attempts to explain what
belief is and how beliefs are formed. The book also encourages us to believe in
ourselves.
Most
importantly, it explains how beliefs affect our lives and basically how we can
reprogram our beliefs for success.
In
summary, reading this book will help the reader achieve the following:
·
To know the negative
expressions that help form negative beliefs.
·
To discern the
differences between positive and negative beliefs.
·
To know why some people
are enslaved by negative beliefs throughout their lives.
·
To understand how
negative or non-beneficial beliefs lead to poor performance in life.
·
To achieve success with
ease, with the right kind of belief.
·
To improve success in our
daily endeavours, by having belief in our abilities.
·
To believe in God
Almighty who controls the universe.
·
To increase our staying
power when we face difficulties.
·
To enable us to interpret
the events of life in their proper perspective.
· To
tap the energy inherent in our beliefs.
This book is titled Unlocking The Powers of Your Beliefs because of the need to address the issue of negative beliefs prevalent in our generation. Remember what Christ said in John 14:1 - “let not your hearts be troubled. Believe God and believe in me”.
This book is a clarion call to constructive beliefs. It will inspire billions of people not to allow their beliefs to work against them. It is a rare treasure, a pearl.
CHAPTER
ONE: WHAT IS BELIEF?
“Believe something and the universe is on its way to
being changed, because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other
things start to follow. Isn’t that the way it works?”
Diane Duane
There
are many definitions of this important term called “belief”. The Collins Dictionary defines it as “the feeling of certainty that something exists, is true or is good”.
According to the Collins Dictionary, belief implies mental acceptance of
something as true, even though absolute certainty may be absent.
For Wikipedia, belief is “the state of mind in which a person thinks
something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to
prove that something is the case with factual certainty”. Another way of
defining belief is that it is a mental presentation of an attitude, positively
orientated towards the likelihood of something being true.
Remember
the warning by Deepak Chopra – “our
beliefs shape our lives”. Yes! They do. In the same way, Kola Raph
articulates that “what you don’t believe
on cannot work for you”. Explaining further, Anton Chekhov states that “Man is what he believes.”
Life
is beautiful. Planet Earth was delicately prepared for humans and animals to
enjoy to the fullest. You were created to enjoy life, to excel, have wonderful
family, relationships and all the luxuries of the world. You were created to
work hard and enjoy the fruits of your labour, completely. You were created to
have good and sound health, thriving businesses and good home, cars, children,
spouse, and those things that make life sweet and refreshing. However, the big
challenge is your belief.
Your belief can hinder you from enjoying the sweetness of life. Your belief can repel the good things of life, instead of attracting them to you. Beliefs can cause great dangers if not checked. Consequently, we must change our lives positively by changing our old, worn-out, delimiting, and debilitating beliefs.
WHY DOES EVERYBODY BELIEVE IN SOMETHING?
We
all believe in several things in life – whether spiritual, non-spiritual or
even superstitious – that so powerfully influence and shape our lives. Even the
so-called atheists who do not believe in the Almighty Creator still believe in
one thing or the other.
Several
countries enshrine Freedom of Association
and Belief as part of their constitutions. Some people believe in their
religious leaders, while some others believe what their computer can do for them,
in science and humanity. A quick look at what people believe in would suffice
to show that everybody believes in something on Earth. I need to stress that
belief is not only and necessarily considered spiritual.
WHAT PEOPLE BELIEVE IN
AROUND THE WORLD
People
around the world believe in the following:
GOD ALMIGHTY –
God Almighty is the creator of the cosmos and everything therein. As a matter
of fact, many names are gotten from the names of different gods. We got our
calendar from the names of some Roman gods. An example is January (Janus – the
god of new beginning).
A
few other things that people believe in are:
·
Black Magic (Juju)
·
Reincarnation
·
Luck
·
Superstition
·
Fatalism - Every action
or event has been pre-determined to happen.
·
Spiritual manipulation
·
Astral travels
·
Fellow human
beings/humanity
·
Sports
·
Universal laws
·
Constitutions
·
Sorcery
·
Science
·
Destiny
·
Heavenly bodies – sun, moon,
and stars
Carolyn
Spring has this to say – “as a child, the
best way to survive was to be still, to submit; to do nothing that might incur
further harm. That belief had grown with me through my teens, my twenties, my
thirties, are unacknowledged mentor directing my every faith, reinforcing a
ubiquitous sense of powerlessness and victimhood. I had believed that I was bad
and unlovable, coward, and weak. These beliefs have been unconscious in me and
had always gone unchallenged. I believed them because they were true and because
I believed them to be true.”
HAVE YOU READ?
Wisdom-4-Excellence Books--
THE PRAYERS THAT RUN (TPTR)?
61 MOST GUARDED SECRETS OF LIFE (61MGS)?
UNLOCKING THE POWERS OF YOUR BELIEFS (UTPOYB)?
POVERTY IS A MAN: PERHAPS A WOMAN (PIAM)?
BEYOND THE ECLIPSE (BTE)?
Prof. William James
Beliefs
come primarily from our environment, religious leaders, parents, personal
experiences; the books we read and persons we meet every day. After the birth
of a child, the mind of the baby is like a blank slate. Brian Tracy posits that
there is a theory in Psychology which says that each person comes into the
world with no thoughts or ideas at all and everything that a person thinks and
feels is learned from infancy onward.
The theory that the human mind is like a
clean slate at birth is referred to as TABULA RASA. John Locke in his essay,
Concerning Human Understanding, states
the importance of human experience and concludes that the human mind at birth
is a complete but receptive blank slate upon which experiences imprint on over
time.
The
Scottish Philosopher, David Hume supports the idea that we are born Tabula
Rasa; a blank slate upon which the experience of the world imprints all our
ideas. Over the last few decades, some philosophers and geneticists have
ignored the concept of Tabula Rasa. The geneticists argue that a child’s
behaviour can be traced to the genetic inheritability of the child from the
parents.
However,
no matter the contention about the state of the mind of the child, great
writers such as John Locke, David Hume, Brian Tracy, etc., believe that the
adult becomes the sum total of everything he or she learns, treats and
experiences, while growing up. What the adult does and becomes later is the
result of early conditioning at home and the surrounding environment.
No wonder we all behave differently, the way we do. A child who leaves Africa to America at the age of seven will definitely behave more like an American when he or she is 30 years, than a child who grew up in Africa and is 30 years. The environment we live in helps to create and shape our beliefs in a very impactful way.
TABULA RASA AND FORMATION
OF BELIEFS
It is an incontrovertible fact that most people have religious beliefs they inherited from their parents. There is a high probability that a child born by Hindu parents in India will practice Hinduism. A child born by Muslim parents in Saudi Arabia is most likely going to be a Muslim. More so, a child given birth to in America by a Christian family has a high tendency of being a Christian. Our parents largely influence our beliefs.
In Nigeria, we have families made up of parents who are, and whose children eventually become, doctors. In some other families, there are politicians, accountants, pastors, businessmen, etc. The role played by parents on our beliefs cannot be ignored. Our parents are our first teachers.
ENVIRONMENT AND BELIEFS
By environment, we mean our immediate location, the customs and tradition of our immediate society, the lifestyle of people living in our environment, the events and trends in our environment, the attitude of people around us, experiences in our environment, the weather and location of our environment, the type of music played in the electronic media, the level of freedom and fundamental human rights enjoyed in our area, etc.
The
next time you want to do a self-introspection, ask yourself the following
questions:
·
What is the role of my
parents in forming my beliefs from childhood?
·
What impact does my
environment have on my belief system?
·
What other phenomena
affect my belief system as I grow up?
·
What impact do the books
I read have on my beliefs?
·
What impact do the people
I meet every day have on my belief?
·
What impact do religious
organizations have on my belief?
·
What impact do the things
I hear every day have on my belief?
·
What impact do the things
I see every day have on my belief?
ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
THAT LEAD TO FORMATION OF BELIEFS
RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL BELIEFS: People become Pagans, Christians, Muslims, Hinduists, Buddhists, etc. due to the religions practiced in their area, which they believe is true. This is difficult to change at adulthood.
FASHION AND LIFESTYLES: People wear tattoos and crazy hairdos because people around them wear such. Peer pressure affects the youth. The dressing in the western part of the world is remarkably different from the dressing in the Arab world. All these influence beliefs.
MUSIC/FILMS: The type of music we listen to also helps to form our beliefs. In some homes, parents watch films in the presence of their children; this will definitely affect the beliefs of the children when they grow up. To the children, it does not matter.
CULTURE AND TRADITION In several European countries, hard work is the order of the day. More so, in many Asian countries such as China, Japan and Indonesia, hard work is the culture in the environment, while in parts of Africa and Southern America, enjoyment and merriment are the order of the day.
GOOD GOVERNANCE AND WEALTH OF NATIONS: The mindset and beliefs of citizens in countries with great wealth, differ from those in countries where there are needs and wants. Children who were born and raised in such areas reason differently.
LEVEL OF SUPERSTITION: The more scientific a society is, the less superstitious it becomes. A lot of people, especially in the third world countries, hold superstitions in high regard, and these superstitions form a large percentage of the sum of their beliefs.
THE WEATHER AND LOCATION: The people in temperate regions tend to have more smokers of cigarette than those in the tropics. Convincing such people that smoking is wrong may be very difficult.
LEVEL OF PERSONAL LIBERTY AND FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS: In Countries where there is unfettered personal liberty and human rights, we hear stories of homosexuality, transgender, gender equality, rights of women, etc. While in countries where the government consider such rights as taboo, the belief of the citizens regarding such lifestyle will be almost extinct. This affects the belief of the people.
DIVERSIFIED ECONOMIES: In Countries with diversified economies, the citizens believe that money can be made through several means, including sports, entertainment, telecom, information technology, inventions, etc. In poor countries, especially third world countries, the belief in ‘quick money’, especially through illicit means, takes precedence over hard work.
PEOPLE WE MEET EVERYDAY: Our environment affects our belief system through the people we meet every day. If we want to be millionaires, we’ll have to meet and talk with millionaires and learn their tricks. The reverse is the case when we meet negative-minded people.
The people we meet every day have an overwhelming
influence in the formation of our beliefs. When we meet people that believe
they can do all things, we form the belief that we too can do such. However, if
we meet people that have great disbelief in themselves, we tend to lose
confidence in ourselves. This eventually leads to poor performance. This
explains how peer pressure destroys the youth every day.
We
form our beliefs every day and some of the factors mentioned above definitely
affect them. As an individual, what are
the things responsible for the beliefs you have formed?
FIRST IMPRESSION MATTERS
The following first impressions may stick with us throughout lives. Brian Tracy believes that children who are raised by parents who told them how good they are, eventually grow up to become great achievers.
If parents do not know how powerful their words and advice are, they end up raising incompetent children. They produce children who believe that the world hates them and that they are less endowed. This is a major cause of failure among adults.
If a child is raised in an environment
where there is no love, the child may become wicked and heartless, because of
the belief that there is no love anywhere - as the Latin proverb says, “nemo dat quod non habet”. Meaning, you
cannot give what you do not have. Such a child may become insensitive in giving
and receiving human warmth because he lacks the love.
When parents call their children names such as fool, idiot, nonentity, moron, bastard, etc., such negative names register in them and they believe them as true and act accordingly. It will require another level of reprogramming of the mind to erase such belief from where it is stored in the subconscious mind.
As in the case of a computer, it is garbage in garbage out (GIGO). The subconscious mind is working 24 hours a day to store any information or belief the owner stores in it and it subsequently controls the behaviour of the owner. This explains why some people have queer behaviour. These people should not be blamed; they are only acting what has been stored in their subconscious minds.
A child who grows up in a violence-prone area will not see anything wrong with violence when he or she grows up. Again, a child that is trained in a society that is ridden with drugs, prostitution, robbery, cheating, fighting and other destructive acts, may grow up to believe that these are the best ways of life. The subconscious memory registers such lifestyles in the human hard disk and moderates the child’s behaviours to reflect what has been registered.
This explains why some teenagers smoke and drink as early as the age of thirteen or fourteen years. No matter the correction, they may believe that these are the ways of life... the best way to live.
THE AGE OF STRONG FORMATION OF BELIEF
The Psychologists of behaviour and observational learning posit that children learn through observation, imitation and modelling. Some are inclined to believe that most things parents, adults, caregivers, and even more knowledgeable others (MKO) do are true and worth emulating, even when such behaviour is an anti-social behaviour.
According to Brian Tracy, by the age of
three, beliefs formed from our environment are LOCKED-IN and become fundamental
part of the way children view themselves in relation to their world. Therefore,
no matter what happens to
them, they hold unto those beliefs in facing the reality of their existence.
WHY DO CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOURS SOMETIMES DIFFER FROM THOSE OF THEIR PARENTS?
As earlier pointed out, sometimes, parents’ behaviours differ from those of their offspring. In some cases, children of pastors or clergymen behave waywardly when compared to the behaviours of their parents. The Psychologists and geneticists would tell us that some of the unwanted behaviours may come from certain latent traits in the parents’ genes, which may have been transferred to the children during birth and later manifest in adulthood.
Another possible reason is that the children may have individuals outside the family whom they look up to as models, thereby conforming to these individuals’ ways of life, instead of their parents. However, these are clear exceptions to the general rule. Children copy a lot as they grow, especially from the people that they live with.
Again, a child can grow up and assume a queer character due to his or her genetic make-up. Most importantly, the role of parents and environment in the forming of beliefs of individuals cannot be overemphasized. They form the mental instructions we obey in form of beliefs.
YOUR BELIEFS ARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Your beliefs are whatever you conceive in your mind and consider to be true. Therefore, our thoughts are significant in shaping our beliefs.
Napoleon Hill posits that “if you repeat something over and over to yourself, your subconscious mind will eventually begin to accept it as fact. When something has been accepted as truth by your subconscious mind, it will work overtime to transform the idea into physical reality.”
This is a case of self-fulfillment
prophesy. When you repeat false reports to yourself several times a day, sooner
or later, they become reality. For instance, if chicken pox invades a family,
those who fear it most in the family, may become the first to contract it.
ABOUT THE AUTOR
Mr Jude Okey Dike is an accountant by profession and a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN). He has worked for over two decades in one of the most reputable banks in Nigeria and has risen to the enviable position of a Regional Manager. He likes reading and motivating people around him to reach the zenith of their aspirations in life. He is married to his beautiful wife, Chinwe Dike, and blessed with wonderful children.
BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
Wisdom-4-Excellence Books
Wisdom-4-Excellence Books
Wisdom-4-Excellence Books are books that inspire, motivate, educate, recalibrate and resuscitate a Christian’s faith in God, and their relationship with Him. “The Prayers That Run” is the first in this series. Subsequent books will build on the foundation it sets.
Wonderful books
ReplyDeleteWisdom 4 Excellence books are simply inspiring
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