In the article The Screenplay and your beliefs I asked the questions: how blank is your screen when you are born, what is imprinted on it once you are born and how does that effect your life today. Let's pick it up at how beliefs effect your life today.
As you experience in life, you give meaning to your experiences. Someone put something on your feet. Later on you learn everyone calls those shoes (by the way, are flipper shoes?).
Once at school, the type of shoes you wear seem to have an effect. Fashionable expensive shoes are giving you a certain status. Old broken shoes can be cool too, or not at all. You think adult have grown over that? The projected image plays a role everywhere.
In the triathlon community the bike you ride certainly must say something about how trained you are. In the business community, the suite you wear. In your family, the job you hold.
Now you are sitting around the dining table and the discussion shifts to politics. It becomes heated. Why? Next, someone mentions that a talking bear walked into the house yesterday. "Yeah right". While two camps where stating 'political facts' back and forth, the talking bear was thrown out of the window.
How do beliefs effect your life today? They make your life today. Entirely.
Why is this so? Every fraction of your life is a decision. What to decide? Which direction to go?
The weather today is sunny. You belief sunny is good for running. You go running.
The weather yesterday was rainy. You belief rainy is bad for running. You don't go running.
A step further:
The weather yesterday was rainy. You belief rainy is bad for running. You also believe running is very important for your health. You go running anyway. You don't like your run.
The weather yesterday was rainy. You belief rainy is bad for running. You also believe running is very important for your health. You go running anyway. You love your run.
The scenario's are endless. Every experience you have is based on a decision based on a unique combination of information out of your book of beliefs. Once your screen went from blank to color, the color on the screen influenced the direction of your story.
This book is fundamental and goes very deep all the way to the blank screen and the first pixel. You could very well say that you are the book. Everything you hold to be true about yourself is in that book. Your entire self image.
Therefore, the question of what is imprinted on your screen once you are born, should interest you. Who is writing what in your book?
As a young child you are an open book. It's easy to write in it. Impressions are made easily since the screen seems blank and there is a lot of space to add color on it still. As your life progresses, the screen gets more coloured, you are further down the path, many pages have been written and the story has significant structure. Your role and personality is more defined, the scene and the world settled in. Your surroundings validate what that story is, what your personality is and what scene you are in. Together we hold the structure in its place. It becomes increasingly difficult to step out of that structure. You may love it. You may hate it.
The reality can be that you simply are aware of limited information, which is also often conflicting:
You don't need to eat any solid foods to survive
You have to eat meat because you need enough protein
Aliens and UFO's exist
There are no organisms that are smaller than your eye can see
You are beautiful
You are a tiny star of light
Fruit juices make you fat
You continue to live after you die
You must do something to get something
Water has memory
Your last hair cut was awesome
You have ADHD
All birds can fly (hint!)
The list goes on and on. What and who to believe?
Going back to the running example, your beliefs guide your decision and so you make your experiences what they are. You went running: that was a decision. You liked it or hated it: that was a decision. All inspired by your book of beliefs. If you story goes one way, it doesn't often make a sudden turn.
So what to do with it? A practical approach could be to watch how your decisions make your feel. You kind of start at the end of it. The practical thinking being that all those experience that make you feel great are likely the right decisions for you based on an aligned belief system. Don't fix it if it ain't broken. If it does feel like something is broken, then the idea would be to fix the belief that made you decide in that direction. That may still feel like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. I personally find it workable to uncover what I do want, and then just try to go do that.
Something like:
Hmmm, I'm not loving this experience I'm having right here
What would I like it to be instead
Let me try something
As yes, this feels much better.
Sometimes the belief in play is much further back in your book of beliefs and you can't remember. My personal preference to help me remember is meditation and hypnosis (read here about Hypnosis and Soup). But a long walk, good conversation or some paddo's may do the trick too. Whatever doorway you prefer.
Once you remember the belief at play, and how it got into your book, there is still the decision to let go of the old belief and what to replace it with.
It's not like you need to let go of all of your believes. An empty blank screen you may not want. Once you know how to sing do-re-mi, you may want to move on to something more advanced. You build on your belief and knowledge system, your combined experiences, your story. It enriches your story and opens doors to even more interesting stories. Whether those stories are nightmares, fairytales, fiction, romances or whatever else - that is for you to decide.