Setting Your Beliefs
What you believe is the best indicator of what actions you are going to take. If you believe that traffic is backed up, you will take an alternate route home. If you believe that the highways are clear, you may sail home on your usual route. And if you believe that the highway is closed, you may decide to stay and work a bit longer until the traffic clears. In this way, what you believe —regardless of whether you are correct — causes you to act, or not act.
What you believe is the best indicator of what actions you are going to take.
This one idea — that beliefs cause us to act — has changed how I see everything I do in life. When I find myself stuck in inaction, the first question I ask myself is, what belief is leading me not to act. In this way, I seek to ferret out, and clear out, limiting beliefs that are not serving me, or are preventing me from accomplishing my goals.
Spiritual beliefs are much the same. What we believe about spirit affects what we do. If you are someone who distrusts the promise of unconditional love, then you may live a life trying to prove your worthiness. If you are someone who takes unconditional love at its words, you may see life as your playground to explore. And if you are someone who doesn’t know what she believes, you may be challenged to make sense of what actions you want to take.
I am not here to push my beliefs, but I am here to advocate that each of us take a look at our own beliefs and decide, one be one, whether they support us. Whether they feel true to us. Whether our beliefs are sufficient for what we want to do with our lives.
When you have goals, and things you want to do with your life, a set of beliefs that makes you feel loved, supported, and guided is a welcome addition for your journey. When you are content with life, and not looking to add new experiences, you may be satisfied with a set of beliefs that suggest you are alone, or unsupported. But my question for you would be why? Or rather, why not try out a belief that you are supported in all areas of your life?
As you set out to determine what you believe, which is what every spiritual journey is about, I offer this suggestion. Even if you have to pretend, try out this idea: I am loved and supported in all areas of my life. I am unconditionally loved.
If you can embrace this idea, and make it your own, then your new belief will begin to affect how you act. And how you act will reveal further what you believe. It’s a cycle of living that I have found to be the best way to see, and then change, what I believe.
If you are new to your spiritual journey, spend some time with your own beliefs. Write them out. Say them out loud. Decide if they feel true to you. Decide if they hang together and make sense. Decide, for yourself, what you are going to believe.
If you are new to your spiritual journey, spend some time with your own beliefs. Write them out. Say them out loud. Decide if they feel true to you. Decide if they hang together and make sense. Decide, for yourself, what you are going to believe.
I have found great benefit from adopting a set of beliefs that feel true to me. As I have done so, I have found more ease in my day. I have found that I more easily make decisions. I have found that I act in accordance with what I believe. Which is the best way to see your beliefs, if you are unsure of them. Note your actions, and then ask yourself why you acted, or didn’t act, as you did. Investigate your own invisible web of beliefs, and seek to keep only those that support you.