Deliberate Receiving Read online

  Hold on, I can hear you asking, why would limiting beliefs even be part of this game? Isn’t that a little cruel? If limiting beliefs are all that stand between nirvana and us then what the hell, Universe? Why include them at all? Well, why does Amazon have a search filter function? The answer is, so you can find what you’re looking for more quickly and easily! It’s actually a useful tool, or at least, it starts off that way.

  We choose what to believe (free will)

  You may recall that in Chapter 2, I mentioned that you choose what to believe, and you do. You can choose to believe anything you want, choose whatever side of a debate you want to be on and have whatever opinion and preference you want. This is called ‘free will’, and it’s an integral part of the game. After all, the game can’t continue if an experience causes you to create a desire that you can’t realize. Remember that it’s only when we actually engage with our desires and take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to us that we have a new experience (as opposed to simply living the same experiences over and over again), allowing us to spawn a new desire and keep the game going.

  Now, in order truly to have free will, you have to have the ability to choose any perspective. If someone else has gone in there and limited your options, having judged some of them as unwanted on your behalf (like Amazon deciding that you, in particular, don’t get to buy black shoes), then you don’t truly have total choice. So, all options, including marrying a douchebag, for example, have to be choosable. This does not mean that you chose to marry your douchebag-ex just to prove that you were free to do so. Free will dictates that choosing him had to be an option (just as everything is an option), but that’s not why you actually married him.

  You chose to marry a douche because in that moment, at that time, it was the best-feeling option you had access to (or you thought it was). It was the option that actually did feel best to you out of all the options you could see. You didn’t knowingly marry a douche (as in ‘I know he’s a douche and that I’ll be deeply unhappy, but I’m marrying him anyway’). In fact, this is probably part of the information that was being filtered out. There was a lot about that situation that you simply couldn’t perceive. You may be able to see more now, having changed your filters, but given the search parameters you had in place then, marrying that guy was actually the best-feeling option you had access to.

  You made the best choice you could, given the beliefs you had at the time. Your beliefs are your search filters. They determine what search results (options) you can perceive.

  But what, exactly, is a belief, anyway? And how does it become ‘limiting’?

  A belief is an automated thought, opinion or reaction.

  Every thought, opinion, reaction, decision or perspective you’ve accepted as ‘true’, and therefore keep repeating, can be considered a belief. If you’ve made the decision that you like Bob, for example, and every time you see or hear of or even think of Bob, you do so from the perspective of liking him, it won’t take long before your brain will automate the process. So, when you see Bob, you’ll automatically have a smile on your face. You’ll automatically give him the benefit of the doubt when you hear something negative about him. You invite him to your parties, look for him, interact with him, talk to him in a friendly voice, use friendly body language and eye contact, and attribute positive qualities to him that you may never have seen him demonstrate. You’ve made your decision about Bob, and you keep applying it to him every time he shows up in your reality.

  On the other hand, if you decide that you hate Bob, every time you see or hear of or even think of Bob, you do so from the perspective of hating him. It won’t take long before your brain will automate the process. So, when you see Bob, you automatically have a smirk on your face. You automatically believe anything negative you hear about him. You don’t invite him to any parties, do your best to avoid him, talk to him in a disinterested or even unfriendly voice, use hostile or cold body language, make little eye contact and attribute negative qualities to him that you may never have seen him demonstrate.

  You automatically react according to your beliefs. When you think of Bob, you’re not neutral, the way you are about someone you know nothing about and haven’t met. You have beliefs about Bob, which run like a program on your computer brain. These programs get executed whenever you encounter the concept of Bob in any way (someone could simply remind you of him, and the program will run just the same as if he’s walked into the room).

  Once you have your first reaction to something, once you’ve made a decision about something, you have a thought about it. If you think that thought just a few times, it becomes automated. Think about how quickly any action you take regularly becomes a habit.

  Now, they say that it takes 28 days to form a new habit, but the people who say this are usually talking about breaking an old habit and replacing it with a new one (e.g. quit smoking or stop eating junk food), or trying to force themselves to do something they don’t really want to do but think they should (e.g. go to the gym when they don’t really enjoy it). In fact, when we talk about habits, the ‘bad’ that precedes it (bad habits) is usually implied. ‘I have a habit of…’ is almost never followed by something positive, like ‘cuddling puppies’, but much more likely to be something we want to stop doing. We’ve elevated the formation of habits to something horrible and difficult in our society. But the actual mechanism of habit formation isn’t about forcing ourselves to do something we don’t want to do. It’s simply about automation – the automation of stuff that we do over and over again.

  The actual mechanics of forming a habit are easy, simple and effortless. And it doesn’t take anywhere near 28 days. In fact, it begins the second you repeat any action, thought or perspective. It’s one of your brain’s main functions and your brain is very, very good at it. Think about this: if you had to make every decision from scratch, every single one, you’d be totally overwhelmed.

  If you had to weigh up logically the pros and cons of which coffee to drink, which cup to drink it from, which pen to write with, which undies to wear, which route to take to work, and disregard all the criteria you’ve used in the past (i.e. you suddenly have no idea which coffee tastes better to you, etc.) you’d be shut down by the most mundane of tasks. Instead, you’ve built up a database of observations and preferences based on your experiences over time. You’ve tasted several types of coffee and have chosen the one you like the best. You figure the chances are pretty good that you’ll still like that one the best today, and so you choose it automatically. Or, in other words, you have a belief that this one coffee is the best. You don’t have to think about it at all. You accept the decision you made in the past as ‘true’, i.e. to you that coffee really is the best, and so you simply apply this ‘truth’ to your life. Automating that decision frees your mind up to be able to focus on other things, just like automating all the actions required to drive a car frees you up to fantasize about smacking the guy who’s been tailgating you for the last mile and a half in the back of the head… with a frying pan.

  You’ve made your decision about the coffee and the pen and all the rest, and you’re working from those old decisions. And for the most part, this system serves you very well. Until it doesn’t.

  A limiting belief is a belief that once served you, but no longer does.

  Let’s say that a new brand of coffee has just come out. It blows all the other brands out of the water. You love coffee and pride yourself on drinking only the best. If, however, you insist that the decision you made in the past, that the coffee you’re currently drinking is the best and will always be the best, disregarding the fact that your decision was based on a limited sample (you have not tried EVERY possible coffee in the world and this new brand wasn’t available when you made your decision), you won’t even be open to trying this new one.

  As we live and experience and evolve, we have to be willing to upgrade our beliefs, our perspectives and opinions. We have to be willing to bring in new
data and come to new conclusions. This sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, many of the world’s problems are directly attributable to people not being willing to do just that – they’re not willing to upgrade their beliefs.

  Beliefs gone bad

  Let’s take a look at some examples of how a well-functioning belief, which makes your life easier, turns into a limiting belief that stands between you and a life filled with mansions and chocolate fountains. (Not one of those little fountains you see at a buffet, either. I’m talking the normal-sized fountain you’d see in a large garden or in the centre of a European town square. Only, filled with chocolate. You know that fountain is going to be in your fantasies now. You’re welcome.)

  * * *

  Case study: The Earth is flat

  Consider that we used to believe that the Earth was flat. This belief seems incredibly limiting to us now. It would keep us from flying planes around the world, the entire shipping industry wouldn’t exist, we certainly couldn’t have gone into space and there would probably be no Internet shopping. (I’m guessing. There’s no way to know this for sure. I like to think that the geeks of the world would still have found a way.) If you thought you could fall off the edge of the world, how far would you travel from home, from the environment you knew to be safe? So clearly, we can consider this to be an outdated, limiting belief.

  But there was a time when the belief that the Earth was flat actually served people, never mind that they had it wrong. Consider that thousands of years ago (not during the modern historical time of Columbus when people no longer believed in a flat Earth; that’s a total myth), most people’s world was very, very small. They had neither the interest nor the means to travel outside of their tribe or village, much less around the globe. Sure, some nomadic tribes moved around quite a bit, but always on land.

  Not only did people not have the means to do a large amount of travel, much of the world was still unknown and therefore scary. Who could know what dangers lurked out there beyond the horizon? A flat-Earth theory gave people a justification for staying put, for staying where they felt safe. It justified their fears (because if your fears are justified you’re not a coward; the flaw isn’t yours).

  So, believing the Earth was flat not only served the people of ancient times, it didn’t limit them at all. They were never going to be booking any round-the-world tickets. But, at some point, this belief could no longer be applied successfully. The world started to change and humans wanted to explore. If they wanted to travel by sea, they would have to change their belief that the Earth was flat and that they could, potentially, fall off the edge of it. They had to upgrade their belief in order to keep evolving, to do what they wanted to do.

  * * *

  * * *

  Case study: I’m unworthy

  Joey, age five, wants to play. His dad, who’s been working all day and is dead tired, is sitting in the living room, drinking a beer and watching the game. He’s irritated by something that happened at work and just wants to unwind. Joey, however, doesn’t know that. He barges into the room full of joy and energy, and begins to shoot his big, purple toy gun at his dad, challenging him to a duel. He always has a lot of fun playing cops and robbers with his dad, and doesn’t see any reason why today might be different. He yells at his ‘robber’ to ‘put ‘em up!’ giggling and beaming as he brandishes his weapon. Only, instead of jumping up and playing along, his dad loses his temper. The anger he’s been holding back at work comes flying out and he screams at Joey to stop bothering him.

  Joey runs out of the room, heartbroken. His joy is completely gone. He drops his Nerf gun and sheriff’s hat and crawls into his special hiding place under the stairs. What happened? His five-year-old brain can’t make any sense of it. He doesn’t know that his dad is stressed about work. That’s not part of his world and can’t enter into his perspective. He has to come to an observation, a conclusion based on the data he has access to. He sees two choices.

  First: Life is unpredictable and sometimes really hurtful things just happen. There’s no way to know when they will happen and there’s nothing he can do about it. In short, Joey can choose to believe in total powerlessness, which feels awful.

  Second: He can decide that he must’ve done something wrong. He’s not aware of what it could be but clearly, since his dad yelled at him, he’s the one who messed up. Now, while this option doesn’t feel great, either, it feels a hell of a lot better than total powerlessness, because at least this way he can do something about it. He can pay attention and be a good boy and learn to read body language.

  Joey doesn’t have enough data to conclude that his dad was being unfair in that moment, that his outburst had nothing to do with his son, but was about something completely different. And if his dad sees Joey’s smiling face and quiet yet appeasing manner later that evening as a sign that his son is fine and has ‘gotten over it’, and therefore never apologizes or explains his anger, Joey will continue to take responsibility for how the adults around him behave. It doesn’t take too many incidents like that to create the automated belief that everything that happens around him is his fault.

  Then, as a five-year-old, that belief served him. Since Joey could only see two options, he chose the less painful one, the less limiting one. Many severely limiting beliefs are chosen simply to make sense of a seemingly senseless situation. And, at the time of their choosing, they serve the individual in some way. In fact, Joey would’ve gotten quite a bit of positive feedback that this belief was valid. By checking on his parents’ mood before loudly bursting out with his news or asking a question, he could choose the moment at which they were most likely to be open to what he was saying, causing him to have fewer negative experiences.

  Now 30 years old, Joey still takes responsibility for how those around him feel. This belief is mirrored back to him in his holographic reality, and he attracts a girlfriend who is highly emotionally charged, or what one might call a ‘drama queen’. Being a perfect match to his belief (as all mirrors are), she blames him every time something doesn’t go her way. Every time she freaks out, he feels it’s his fault and she’s only too happy to support this feeling of his. He manifests the same pattern in his job, where his boss picks on him every chance he gets. He never stands up for himself because his belief tells him it’s his own damn fault.

  This belief that once helped him avoid total powerlessness has now become the ball and chain around his ankle, keeping him from moving into total empowerment and joy.

  * * *

  Most of our older beliefs were not chosen to maximize joy, but to minimize pain. A belief can serve you by simply being less painful than its alternative.

  All beliefs are observations

  Limiting beliefs aren’t ‘bad’; they’re simply programs that have outlived their purpose. They really are no more sinister than that. Just as you don’t want to try and work with software that was designed 20 years ago and never updated (it’s slow, has limited functionality and won’t let you do what you want to do), you don’t want to live your life with old, outdated beliefs.

  To some degree, all beliefs are limited (they’re all search filters). All of our opinions, decisions, observations and conclusions are based on limited amounts of data. If we look at science throughout history, for example, we believed quite a few things about the human body and how biology worked that turned out to be either total hogwash or only somewhat correct. In either case, we were wrong because our observations were always based on incomplete data. Of course, we totally know everything there is to know NOW, right? Right?

  Well, no. We can never know all there is to know. And that’s because all there is to know is constantly expanding (just as the Universe is expanding). If a new desire is born every time we have an experience and the evidence that fulfils that desire is created (not yet brought into the physical, not yet necessarily experienced, but created just the same), then we can never run out of experiences to have – there will always be more. In fact, the Universe isn
’t just expanding, it’s expanding exponentially, considering that each experience can and usually will spawn more than one desire.

  If the act of experiencing something is simply the discovery of something that already exists, that has already been created, and the very act of experiencing it creates more stuff for us to discover and experience, then we can never run out of stuff to discover and experience. We can never know it all. The data we can perceive will always be incomplete.

  So, if it’s impossible for us ever to have all the data on any given experience, we will, to some degree, always come to a flawed, incomplete observation. We’ll always be at least slightly ‘wrong’. Whenever we discover new data, we can and should use it to upgrade our beliefs, to come to new conclusions, and to make new decisions.

  The beliefs we form on any given subject will always become obsolete at some point in our evolution. All beliefs are destined to become limiting beliefs. Computer programmers understand this. No piece of hardware or software will last forever. Newer versions are being designed even as the current version is being launched. Everything becomes obsolete and the only way to keep thriving is to accept that and adapt. We have to go with it.

  And yet, we don’t, do we? We are so reluctant to change that we’re not willing to give up beliefs even when they’re clearly painful, even when they’re obviously getting in our own way. What gives? Are we, as a species, insane? I mean, it would explain a lot… But no. We’re not crazy. We simply have some, what I call, ‘core beliefs’ that are getting in our way.

  A core belief is a general, underlying belief that governs how we form and interact with smaller, more specific beliefs.