Core Beliefs, how much is really you?

Core beliefs

Core beliefs include the rules, obligations, principles, and values that govern our behavior. Core beliefs are attached to our survival. They are the rules that give structure to our sense of identity and govern much of our behaviour, with or without our conscious awareness. 

This strong attachment is made through our life experiences as a child. In fact, what we typically refer to as the ego is really how a person's mind is taught to express core beliefs.

Core beliefs are the childhood “goodie bag” that everyone gets, some are positive, while others can be detrimental to a person’s overall health and happiness.

This is how why you may have acquired several core beliefs that currently do not serve you. As children, we did not have the tools or freewill to determine which of these beliefs would be helpful to us in our life journey. As a result, we accepted them all.

As an adult, you gain the gift of free will and choice, and it is perfectly okay to question and decide which rules you want to keep and which ones you want to replace or, in some cases, discard completely.

Your Core beliefs may not be yours.

An often overlooked point about core beliefs is that these internal rules that govern how you currently live, love and operate in the world did not come from you. They were your emotional inheritance paid from your childhood training and experiences. For instance, you may have learned that you should feel guilty for taking care of yourself.

Sandra described a belief she had — the "I have to always be doing something, not allowed to rest" program. When Sandra was growing up, her parents taught her that in order to be valuable she always had to be doing something. She was not praised for her ability to just rest or be peaceful. This conditioning established a 45-year program that never allowed her to relax in peace or to feel okay at rest. It also made any accomplishments seem less than spectacular, and since there was no time to peacefully enjoy them, they never seemed good enough. Today, she is able to recognize the little girl within who learned to judge herself negatively and, through the process of letting in love; she has now given herself permission to rest.

For 20 years, Betty hated going to a job where she was belittled, made to feel small, and told she was never good enough.When I asked her why she stayed in the job so long, she said,” Well, I didn’t want to leave the job without being able to find another, and after being in that environment, my self-esteem became so low that I didn’t think I could get another job”. Of course, this belief only reinforced her negative cycle. When I asked where she had learned not to quit, she replied, “My father said, ‘never quit anything’”. We can see how early learned childhood experiences can affect the present.

Standing up for your beliefs

Of course it is okay to stand up for what you believe in, as long as the beliefs you are defending and sometimes willing to sacrifice time and energy for, are, in fact, yours.

All you need do is to add choice, or the ability to choose. It’s your life. You get to decide which beliefs you want—ones that can make you smile when looking at yourself in a mirror. This is efficient, since by choosing beliefs that you want, you may automatically let go of those you unconsciously or unwillingly learned which do not work for you.

In other words, it is okay to stand up for a certain belief as an adult, even if that belief is one that you were taught as a child — as long as, of course, it does not make you miserable. After all, any set of rules that creates more stress or unhappiness most likely is not yours.

It is your life, so your opinions and choices matter; otherwise your life is not based on free will. In other words, it is okay to stand up for a certain belief as an adult, even if that belief is one that you were taught as a child — as long as you have decided it supports you. 

How much of you is really you?

Most of us underestimate how much of our day to day personality, identity and what we think we are, was decided without our input. If we take the example of a person that avoids or does not like conflict, we could guess that they may have learned this in their childhood by seeing their parents fight destructively or not seeing their parents fight at all. The end result would likely be an adult with a belief system and identity that is not really of their choosing. They would not know how to express themselves fully in a conflict.

Examining and choosing appropriate core beliefs allows you to live your own genuine path rather than automatically supporting or modeling someone else’s life, rules, and beliefs.  

Most of us think "freedom"

How free can you be, if your past hurts and conditioning controls your present day actions, how much of your life is yours and how free can you really be? This truth as painful as it sounds is if your mind is controlling you without your permission than you are very much like a robot. You will be as happy as your mind's rules allow you to.

Most people live and die without ever questioning what and why they believe what they believe. Where did you get your rules of life from and do they in fact serve me now? It is very common for people to say; that's just me, or I am a type A personality, that’s the way I was brought up, I am a control person, or I don't like conflict. No matter what the personality trait we must ask ourselves how much of our identity has been decided by us, how much of what I have been brought up to be is really me? It turns out, not as much as we would like to believe, this may not sound so good at first, but the realization of this fact is the beginning of amazing new levels of power and freedom.

Changing your Core Beliefs

To begin you must have the awareness to know the difference between your mind and your heart, the acceptance that you are more than just reflex and that you are a person of free will.

To start simply begin asking yourself the questions of awareness. Knowing that every action has an intention behind it and knowing that it is either to avoid pain out of reflex or to accept more love out of choice.

We are all connected to a force that guides us to the choices in our lives; this is a working relationship where even though the inspiration and opportunities may come from within you, the choice to accept what to do is uniquely yours, it's your life and your gift.

Whenever you are in a conflicted or uncomfortable situation, ask yourself the following

·         Am I doing this to avoid pain or to seek love?

·         What do I really want?

·         How do I feel, happy or sad?

·         Does this personality trait serve me,

·         Does it create happiness?

·         Is this something that I would choose?

·         What would I gain by updating it?

·         Do I want to change it?

A powerful visual and awareness exercise is the Balanced Balance Wheel (aka the happiness wheel) contains different aspects of a persons life (relationship, spiritual, health, fun, family, home, career, financial) and then have the person go through each section and ask the questions - what are my beliefs around this, where did I get those, do they serve me, do they create happiness, does if cause me more pain, would I choose that rule, would you teach a child the same? This can help sort out which belief you want to evolve and can start to remove the obstruction that block so many of us from our purpose.