How to recognize subconscious beliefs, and how to change them?

[JeffistheAnswer]

I was thinking about the strength of the beliefs that are so ingrained in us that we don't even know they're there most of the time. How do we change those beliefs when we don't even know what they are?

I was thinking it was just a matter of thinking the same thoughts over and over again until it becomes so ingrained in us that it replaces whatever older belief was there.

[valentino]

It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
Muhammad Ali

[JeffistheAnswer]

Good quote. I guess I was correct!

[VinceG]

I'm writing a series of articles on power blocks that I think you would be very interested in.

Recognizing repression
Transform Your Limiting Beliefs

The third article I am writing tonight. I've been gathering insight over the last few days and I think I'll be able to make this one exceptional.

[SlicK]

It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief.

But the mistake comes from not knowing what an affirmation is. Some "affirmations" can harm you when you repeat them but you do not agree with them. Those "affirmations" make you focus on the problems you have.
An affirmation has to be associated with a congruent feeling. For example some poor people may affirm "I am rich, I am wealthy" and feel like they are lying to themselves and feel frustrated because they believe they are poor.

A good way to change a belief, a scientific way so to say is to build new beliefs around existing beliefs that support it. Example? Let's say you're poor and you want to make money. Let's say you're very good at writing. You could start by saying to yourself: "I am a very good writer! That is a fact because people appreciate my writing. Could I make money by writing? There are people that make money from that so it means it is possible. This means that I could also make money from writing. So why don't I? Because I BELIEVE I can't make money doing that. But the fact is that I can. When I will believe that I can do it, it will be done" and you keep working on that.
There are many ways to install beliefs. Imagination is an efficient way because the subconscious cannot know what is real and what is not. Real is a conscious definition anyway. I just read a book that said that what you imagine is actually real, because the electrical signals interpreted by the brain are very similar to what would happen if you would actually experience what you imagine. But as with reality, if something good happens to you that never happened before, you could think it's just a coincidence and you just got lucky. But what if it happens again and again and again? The same goes with imagination. Your subconscious will keep observing the same experience and start to believe it.

It's not hard to install a belief. But it's a process that requires will, focus, discipline of thought.

[Lifestyle Lift Journey]

SlicK explained it very well.

Mind power can change the reality.
I wrote a blog post about that if you are interested.

The mind has power to change our physical reality.

[TheLifeQuaker]

You don't have to go through yourself digging to find out what your subconscious beliefs are. You just need to take a look around.

Originally Posted by New Testament - Luke 8:17

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.

They are being projected outside yourself into events in your life - and the everyday events you have over and over again in particular are the main ones currently 'running the show'. So whenever something in your life happens, you can simply look at it and ask "what would I need to believe for <insert event> to occur" or similar. [That idea is gone into fairly well by Bashar - although is explored elsewhere as well]

Originally Posted by New Testament - Matthew 6:34

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

If it's NOT currently coming up in your life - then it's really not that important for you to bother with at the time. Rest assured that it will eventually crop up though.

That said an effective way to 'dig' when it's not coming up, but you may want something to occur that is being 'blocked' is to:

• Enter a deep meditative state.(For most people, that will honestly take 45-60 minutes - though you could get away with 20-30 minutes)
• Allow your awareness to expand into your 'real self' that you sense from that state
• Ask a question.
• With a silent mind wait for the answer
• When you get an answer - go even deeper and ask why or how.
• Repeat the questioning why/how until you go to what you sense to be the core

As to changing, I don't find just repeating affirmations particularly effective personally.

Originally Posted by New Testament - Luke 5:36-39

36He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' "

A much more effective way I've found is using focus wheels as described by Abraham-Hicks. In that way you are gradually moving your belief from their starting place into a new belief. Rather than trying to jump from one belief to the other, which the mind often rejects.

Although, affirmations still can work effectively, I just find them a bit more time consuming and there always seems to be 'remnants' of that old belief there, I don't feel that so much with the focus wheel method. If you do affirmations I have found it more effective to do them from 1) Meditative state 2) Falling to sleep/waking up 3) In front of a mirror looking in your eyes (which Claude M. Bristol describes in his book "The Magic of Believing")

Another effective method I sometimes use is described by Franz Bardon and essentially is 'eating, drinking and breathing' whatever you want. Visualizing with firm conviction in its truth, and 'impregnating' the food you eat etc with it.

(I'm not sure why I used the quotes above, since I'm not religious and from what I know you aren't either, but they just popped into my head and I felt like going with it )

[Showtime]

Beliefs aren't really subconscious, it's just your subconsious that stores them.

It's like a computer, you need a bit of information, you pull it from your subconscious (limbic system) and boom, it's now a conscious thought.

Beliefs are just a proposition or idea you hold to be true. Gravity isn't a belief, it's a fact. "Grass is green" that's a fact.

Something like "money is hard to make" is an opinion thus a belief.

You can recognise if a belief is holding you back by the way it feels. If it doesn't feel good, it's holding you back.

As for methods of changing beliefs I agree with the above posters.

[wolfgang]

beliefs are totally subconscious

it's stuff we forget we've done over and over and then it's a pattern we rely on

best to just decide something else and think and go in a direction of choosing, instead of needing to analyze deep junk, imo