A goose who knows….
I don’t know about you, but looking back, I seem to have spent a lot of life worrying about being in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time doing the Wrong Thing… Wrong, wrong, WRONG. What programming! What a waste of energy!
Jeez. What on earth was I doing, wandering about this gorgeous globe with so much rubbish in my head that I failed to see the moon, gazing down from a pure, blue, mid-morning sky, or the goose looking up at me with a knowing smile…
Even now, writing this, traces of the programming return and I wonder what makes me think that I have anything to say, about anything, to anyone. I find myself stopping, scratching my head, stressing — what if I say the ‘wrong’ thing?
Fortunately, today, I laugh at this as the nonsense it is and carry on writing. But it’s taken a good while to get to this point.
It’s amazing how hard life becomes when we have the ‘I am wrong,’ program running. Because of course, we then have no option but to generate a whole heap of evidence, more every day, to support this belief. Because that’s how it works.
As James E Alcock Ph.D. explains:
The Belief Engine chugs away in the background, taking in information from the world outside, scrutinising its source, checking its compatibility with existing beliefs, subjecting it at times to logical analysis, and then effortlessly generating new beliefs and maintaining or modifying old ones. Most often, this occurs without the awareness of the “operator”—you or me. And, like a computer, our Belief-Engine brains comprise both hardware and software. We come into this world equipped with the basic hardware, although it continues to develop further over a number of years after birth. The “software,” the programming, comes through interaction with our environment (parents, teachers, siblings, friends, the media, and the experiences of everyday life) and through the development of the thinking skills that we acquire as we grow up.
Maybe we were ‘wrong’ once… the experience lodges with strong negative emotion… our system resists that feeling and pushes against the ‘wrong’ thing, making it bigger, not smaller. ‘I am wrong,’ replaces ‘That thing I did was wrong,’ and before we know it, hey presto, we have a crystallising belief taking root.
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) in our brain gets to work, searching every data stream, past, present and future, for more evidence of this belief. Soon, we can’t move in any direction without accruing more of the ‘wrong’ stuff. We literally can’t do right for doing wrong.
When we’ve been practising a belief for a good few years, it feels as solid as furniture. As permanent as eye colour. As limiting as a room with no door.
And yet, beliefs are just thoughts we have thought a lot. That’s all they are. When the masters say, beliefs can be challenged and chosen and changed, they’re right.
All the evidence in the world doesn’t make a belief absolute. If it is physically possible to be do or have what we prefer, as a belief, we can release past evidence as simply proof that our RAS works. We do need to remain within the bounds of reality as we know it. Much as I’d like to believe I can breathe under water, without equipment, that’s not a belief I can pursue without drowning! But within the parameters of physical reality, anything goes.
What a glorious thing, to choose the beliefs we want to have running the show! Here’s where all the power lies. I love it! I love knowing now that I never get it done, but that the only reason for doing any of it is for the joy it brings me now.
There is no Right Thing or Wrong Thing - there is only - ‘How much joy does it bring?’
It’s been an interesting ride to get here and there are, of course, moments where old programming reappear, but I see them now for what they are and I know just what to do with them. (I’ll share some ideas below if you’d like to know what works for me.)
Now I enjoy shopping for new, good-feeling beliefs.
I choose to believe in the Law of Attraction. This belief rests on the premise that all life is vibrational in nature and that aligning with the energy of something draws it to us. Like tuning into a radio broadcast, specific frequencies access particular aspects of reality. The better it gets, the better it gets. Believing that we are always in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing is like living on ‘liquid luck.’
Why do I choose this belief? Not because it’s an absolute truth — I mean, who can honestly say for sure? I choose it because it’s a belief that feels really good when I imagine it. It serves me well in any given moment to believe that I have power over what I attract. Choosing better feeling beliefs on any given subject attracts better feeling experiences and so on.
Psychologists agree that beliefs affect our reality in at least three ways. Our beliefs influence our behaviours, the behaviour of others and our beliefs can impact our health. Juliana Breine, Ph.D. writes in Psychology Today:
Research suggests that people are more likely to engage in health-promoting behaviours like eating well and exercising if they have a greater sense of self-efficacy—that is, if they believe that they are capable of effectively performing these behaviours.
Whilst I cannot prove the truth of the Law of Attraction, I can tell you that the more I nourish it, the more magical ‘liquid luck’ I enjoy. The RAS does its job well!
I’m sure we’ve all had moments like this, where we are playful and flippant and a little moment of magic takes us unawares. Take a favourite example - the Tale of the Exorbitant Picture Frame…
I wanted to frame a beautiful picture, given to me by my Godmother. I went with a dear friend to have the job priced. It was going to cost £300. £300! I could feel Billy Connelly screaming, ‘For a f**king picture frame?’ as the woman spoke. I had to hold back snorts of nervous laughter as she looked at me in all seriousness over the rim of her glasses.
I played for time and my friend and I popped into a coffee shop a few doors down the road. I remember shaking a bit as I bought lattes with freshly-baked fruit scones and clotted cream. I saluted my friend as we waited at our table, joking that this might be my last treat for a while with that much money going out on a picture frame.
But when the scones arrived at the table, with beautifully heart-sculpted coffee foam smiling up at me, something in the joy of that moment turned things around inside me. I found myself laughingly declaring that all would be well - I would simply attract myself a client who would pay for the framing. No problemo!
You need to know that this was at a time when I could count the number of clients I’d ever had on one hand after 5 years of accreditation. My last paying client was a dim and distant memory. I had a hugely demanding ‘day job’ consuming most of my nights as well, and had no marketing, no leads, no connections to speak of. No way of attracting a client. Nothing but the joy and laughter and reckless feasting on sculpted coffee and clotted cream scones in the company of a friend whose love and encouragement lift my every moment.
I remember the nervousness I still felt an hour or so later, signing for the work, pledging the money and heading home that day wondering what the heck I was thinking and how I would confess my outrageous expenditure to my husband.
I can’t fully describe the shock it was to receive, within the period of the framing (a matter of a few weeks), a request from a client, coming utterly out of the blue, who signed up and paid for a series of sessions - totalling, you guessed it, exactly £300.
Magic! I’m not kidding. This is the kind of thing that only ever happened to other people! But no. it happened to me. It has been a bench mark for me ever since and the framed picture, my serene ‘Meditation’, reminds me daily to relax and laugh, to believe in magic.
Now, I am quite obsessive about beliefs. I see them as the core drivers for everything I do. I have found ways to release the unwanteds and plant the ones I want. And the delight I now feel at the power this gives me has me sharing knowing looks with the goose in my window!
I needed a good bit of help to clear my old beliefs - and I am eternally grateful to Penny Croal’s beautiful work using Karl Dawson’s Matrix Re-Imprinting (an adaptation of Emotional Freedom Technique - EFT), as well as Jonathan Shaw’s ‘Do The Opposite’ (DTO) belief-reversal work.
If working on your own, you might like to try one or more of the following approaches:
Create yourself an Inner Being - this is the most important single step I took for myself. Write to her daily and ask her to guide you as you create the beliefs you want. Let your inner wisdom show you the way.
Use visualisation to release old emotions and the beliefs that trigger them. I make audio tracks that work beautifully for me - get in touch if you’d like to try one out, (aomaney@gmail.com).
Pick an issue you know you’d like to approach differently; list, in pencil, all the negative beliefs you have about it, then, on an opposite page, in bright pen, list all the opposite beliefs. Pick one that seems most believable and repeat it to yourself daily until you can happily rub out the original. Then move onto another one.
Use ‘afformations’ (see the book by Noah St John) to encourage new beliefs - for example:
Why is it so easy for me to change my beliefs now?
Why am I noticing more and more evidence of this new belief?
Why do I know just how to create the beliefs I want?
Why is it so enjoyable to create new beliefs?
If you are finding beliefs difficult to change on your own, don’t hesitate to ask for help. I wish I’d done that so much sooner. The most important thing to know is that they CAN be changed. After that, it’s just a case of finding the way that works best for you right now.
I invite you to join me in planting and nurturing the belief:
‘I am always in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing.’
What a delicious belief to have! Imagine life with this belief well and truly established!
Sending every encouragement,
from my heart, to yours,
Amanda