ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE EVIDENCE
For a belief to be a defining one, it must be backed up by a tremendous amount of supporting evidence, the evidence that you need in order to make it true.
The evidence is your justification for having a belief, for keeping it, and for believing in its power to define and limit you. Once you know how to choose and expand beliefs, your job is to find new evidence to support the desired belief so you can change the outcome.
Any belief, negative or positive, will dictate any action you will take.
If, like my client Christine (whom I speak of in my book ‘Live Your Best Life’), you believe that having lots of money is bad, you might have amassed in your mind a stack of supporting evidence. I will be teased and ridiculed by my friends, I’ll be seen as selfish, I’ll be corrupted, since money is evil. Christine, who had grown up in a wealthy home, did possess all this mental evidence because these things did happen to her in her youth.
As an adult, however, Christine possessed the ability to seek evidence to support an expanding belief that, as she phrased it, became: “I deserve to make a lot of money”. She gathered her own evidence for this as she raised her fees for her consulting services and none of her clients balked.
Christine also saw that her friends never shunned her and she didn’t become an evil person. Empowered by her successful business and her expanding belief, she soon joined an internet startup, which made her $3million in its first year.
There is a duality in any belief a person holds, a positive side and a negative side.
People make the choice about which side to focus on.
For instance, we all know single people who constantly complain that all women are manipulative or that all men are bad. Since those are their beliefs, these people will be looking for evidence to prove them right. They are likely to miss any evidence to the contrary.
Seeking evidence that supports the flip side (in this example, that there is a kind, intelligent partner out there somewhere) is preferable.
Evidence that supports such an expanding belief will move you along faster and create a positive momentum on its own. If you’ve ever heard that your beliefs determine the circumstance of your life, this is why.
You may recognise what is wrong in your world view, you may even know what action you need to take to correct your problems, but until your beliefs shift from defining to expanding, you may not even realise that you are the one responsible for the lack of results in your life.
Think of looking through the lens of a camera.
You can see both the foreground and the background, but before you take the picture, you have to choose which to focus the lens on.
The same is true for limiting and expanding beliefs: both are always present, but only the one you focus on can be more prevalent.
It will always win.
