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The following ideas are the heart and soul of Re-Creating Your Self:

1. Your beliefs create your life.

2. You are who you believe you are.

3. The world is what you believe it to be.

4. In all areas of your life, your beliefs create your personal reality.

5. You can re-create your self and change your life by changing your beliefs.

Before continuing, read those five statements again.  Read them slowly.  Let the words and their meaning sink in.  Consider the implications for your life.

Your beliefs create your life and all of its conditions.  I mean for you to take this literally.

Your life is not controlled by the gods, the fates or the stars.  You are not the pawn or puppet of a manipulative Creator, or the by-product of an accidentally created world.  Your life  is not determined by heredity, nor are you the victim of past lives, an indentured slave paying off a karmic debt.  You are not at the mercy of your fellow man, or even your own subconscious desires.

You are at the mercy of your own beliefs about your self, others, and the world in general. That means you can be as happy, healthy, and prosperous as you believe you can be.  You are limited only by the limitations of your personal beliefs.

Success is not a secret, it is a system – a positive belief system.  If you’re unhappy with your self, you can change your beliefs, and in so doing, change your world.  Predestination is a myth.  Life is an experiment in the use of free will and personal creativity.  As I advise my students who believe in a Supreme Being, “Thank God for giving you life, but thank your self for the life you have.”

Whatever your beliefs, sooner or later they will materialize as personal experiences.  That doesn’t mean that you will eventually get everything you want.  Your beliefs and your desires are frequently two different things.  You create your experiences in line with your beliefs, not your desires.  If you desire a peaceful life, but you believe,”Life’s a struggle!” you will create the strife in which you believe, and not the peace you desire.

If, as the saying goes, is what you make it, then your beliefs are what “make,’ or create your life.  Placebos work if you believe they do.  Voodoo is effective if you believe in black magic; it fails to affect you if you don’t.  You may be cured at Lourdes if you truly believe you will be healed.

Once you understand that beliefs make things happen, it is easier to trace how your beliefs have formed your personal experiences, and how the beliefs of your friends and family have determined theirs.  For example, the philosophy of one close friend is, “Life is a series of ups and downs!”  And that’s exactly how he creates his life – spurts of success are followed by periods of dire hardship.  For as long as he believes that he must plunge to the bottom after soaring to the top, his life will be a dizzy roller-coaster ride.  His belief that “life is a series of ups and downs” actually creates the “downs.”  On the other hand, another friend doesn’t believe in setbacks.  He believes that he builds upon each success, and so his life unfolds as an ongoing pyramid of progress and prosperity.

Our personal experiences almost always seem to confirm what we believe to be “true” and “factual,” but it is our beliefs that create those experiences.  It’s not the other way around.

Students commonly ask, “If personal beliefs cause my experiences does that mean I create accidents and illnesses, too?

“Yes!”

Ilnesses are physical manifestations of inner needs, “dis-ease,” or beliefs.  I’m not saying that you plan to be ill, or that you want to be ill.  I am saying that no illness comes to you unbidden; some purpose is served, and the purpose is rooted in a belief you hold as true.

As for so-called accidents, they aren’t accidents at all; they, too, are created in line with personal beliefs.  For example, imagine that you and your next-door-neighbor both work nights.  You both walk home alone in the wee hours.  You are mugged twice in one year; your neighbor remains unharmed.  You may ask your self, ‘Why was I mugged?’

Look to your beliefs for the answer.  You may believe that people are basically evil.  The muggings, then, were no accident.  They were simply the physical manifestations of your belief in peoples’ evil nature.

Your neighbor may believe that God’s protection keeps him safe in all situations.  His safety is the physical manifestation of his belief in God’s protection.

Life is a cooperative venture.  We are in league with one another, and not in conflict.  A self-described “victim” will always attract a “victimizer.”  A person who is ready, willing, and able to love will inevitably attract someone who is ready, willing, and able to love.  An ancient proverb puts it this way, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”  The laws of attraction and cooperation are automatic, inevitable, and based upon the beliefs of the persons involved.

Students always want to know, “How can a belief create a physical experience?”  Simply put, here’s how it happens.  A belief possesses mental energy.  Dictionaries define energy as “life”…”power in action”…”the ability to create an effect.”  The effect your belief creates is called a physical experience.  In other words, a physical experience is a belief, materialized.

Your experiences, then, are like a report card; they indicate how well you are progressing in your personal development.

ADVENTURE 3

MY PERSONAL BELIEFS,

PART TWO

STEP 1:  Using the guidelines in Adventure 2 for discovering your beliefs, identify all of your personal beliefs in the categories listed below.  As in Adventure 2, leave spaces after each identified belief and each category of beliefs.

Happiness                 Success

      Health                        Guilt

      Aging                         Prejudice

       Sex                             Self-worth

       Money                       Career

       My place in the world

STEP 2:  After you have completed your beliefs lists, read them over, including your lists from Adventure 2.  These beliefs, along with others you have yet to identify, are creating your personal experiences, and shaping all of the conditions of your life.

YOUR GUIDE FOR ADVENTURE 3

GEORGIA, 30-YEARS-OLD

HAPPINESS

1.      Belief:  Happiness is a goal toward which we must strive.

2.      Belief:  Striving for happiness doesn’t necessarily create happiness.

3.      Belief:  With health, love, and love in your life, you have a good chance of being happy.

4.      Belief:  It’s not impossible to be happy alone, but it’s easier to be happy with a loving someone in your life.

HEALTH

1.      Belief:  Mental and physical heath are inextricably related.

2.      Belief:  I’m a healthy person.

3.      Belief:  I can afford to be cavalier with my body.

4.      Belief:  On the other hand, the people I love are more delicate (and more important), and their health must be protected at all times.

5.      Belief:  If you do get sick, you musn’t give in to disease; ignore it, or it will beat you down.

6.      Belief:  Nothing can heal a headache – except a lobotomy.

AGING

1.      Belief:  It’s all right to be old; it’s unacceptable to look old.

2.      Belief:  Age has its advantages:  I won’t have to prove myself so much.

3.      Belief:  Old age doesn’t have to include decay and senility.

4.      Belief:  Some of the most dynamic people I’ve known are elderly.

5.      Belief:  The quality of your latter years depends on what you’ve put into the early ones.

6.      Belief:  Staying open to change promotes health in old age.

7.      Belief:  The moment you stop taking chances, lose interest in life, or move in with your daughter-in-law, you’re done for.

SEX

1.      Belief:  Sex isn’t all it’s cracked up for be.

2.      Belief:  Romance is much better than sex.

3.      Belief:  Sex is God’s little joke on humanity.

4.      Belief:  Sex without love is pointless and ridiculous.

5.      Belief:  All my beliefs about sex would change instantly if the right Gypsy Prince came into my life.

MONEY

1.      Belief:  Having money is wonderful, especially if you’ve earned it.

2.      Belief:  Because I’ve never had to earn money, I’ve no right to keep the money given to me.

3.      Belief:  It’s better to spend money on others rather than on your self.

4.      Belief:  Things that you buy for your self have little worth.

5.      Belief:  The only possessions that really matter are those given you by the people you love.

6.      Belief:  Everyone deserves to have enough money to live comfortably, and with dignity.

CAREER

1.      Belief: A fulfilling career, along with love, is what life is all about.

2.      Belief:  If you love your work, you’ll succeed at your career.

3.      Belief:  Talent will out.

4.      Belief:  I was born to write and I’d be a disaster at anything else.

5.      Belief:  A traditional career, with office politics and long-term planning is spirit-killing.  I’d rather sweep streets.

SUCCESS

1.      Belief:  Success is being happy with your self.

2.      Belief:  You must never buy into someone else’s idea of success.

3.      Belief:  Successful living means becoming your own hero.

4.      Belief:  Worldly success can be a trap.

5.      Belief:  Compromising your values to be successful is a dead end.

6.      Belief:  Doing your work well, keeping content, and doing good things for your loved ones – that’s success.

GUILT

1.      Belief:  It’s wrong to make someone feel guilty unless you’re his parent.

2.      Belief:  It is fine to feel guilty your self.

3.      Belief:  At its best, guilt is a cattle prod, nudging us into better behavior.

4.      Belief:  People who never experience guilt are “Martians.”

5.      Belief:  People who feel guilty about everything are generally nice people.

PREJUDICE

1.      Belief:  I hold none of the “traditional” prejudices.

2.      Belief:  Prejudices reflect ignorance.

3.      Belief:  Prejudices, for and against, are a waste of time.

4.      Belief:  Strive for a mind that is as open and unbiased as the ocean.

SELF-WORTH

1.      Belief:  Everyone has value and carries a Divine spark.

2.      Belief:  I’ve been blessed with many gifts.

3.      Belief:  If I don’t use these gifts wisely, they’ll be taken away from me.

4.      Belief:  If I don’t live up to my personal standards, my self-worth is diminished.

MY PLACE IN THE WORLD

 

1.      Belief:  I’m here to learn, to grow, to enjoy, to appreciate, to love, and to do all the good that I can do.

2.      Belief:  I’m here to help the people I love get on with their purpose.

3.      Belief:  I wouldn’t be happy being anyone else.  I fill my own crazy shoes perfectly.

4.      Belief:  Directly or indirectly, I’m going to make the world a better place.