Six Steps to Overcoming Pain-Inducing Beliefs

When pain-inducing beliefs keep you from loving your self fully, you can engage in the following six action steps to let them go with love: 1) acknowledge your beliefs; 2) offer your self compassionate understanding; 3) offer your self gratitude; 4) find replacement beliefs; 5) find proofs to support those new beliefs; and 6) thank yourself for doing this process.

Step 1: Acknowledge your beliefs T

he obstacle that often gets in the way of this first step is judging your self for what you think is true and then experiencing so much emotional pain connected to that judgment that you push the belief away and keep it hidden from yourself in order to avoid the pain. Your resistance to accepting your belief keeps it solid and unchanging within your mind.

Remember the phrase, ―What you resist persists.‖ When the energy of a pain-inducing belief is close to your conscious awareness and is seeking to express itself, to keep it from your consciousness you will need to employ your vital energy to hold it down. You are actually keeping your focus on it as a way to hold it at bay. What you focus on will prevent you from seeing other possibilities. At this point, you must remember that, on the journey to the center of your heart, you must be a spiritualwarrior, brave enough to face your judgmental beliefs and fight your way through them with the sword of questioning: ―Who says this is true? What are their proofs?‖

When a pain inducing belief and its accompanying emotion comes to your conscious awareness, that’s the signal that now is the time to take the opportunity to correct the belief and resolve the emotion. If you push the belief and emotion back down, they will only reappear again later for the healing.

Step2: Offer compassionate understanding 

Compassionateunderstanding istheantidoteto judgment. The healing power of compassionate understanding rests not only in understanding how or why you began to believe and/or behave as you did but to offer your self heartfelt sympathy for the pain your beliefs have caused you in your life. Beliefs and emotions are one unit. Both must be addressed because one cannot be released without the other.

To understand yourself, explore how old you were when you formed a certain belief and what the situation was that caused you to form it. Acknowledge that forming that belief was your loving attempt to take care of yourself in the best way you could come up with at that age, and in that circumstance, in order to survive and thrive. You might want to visualize yourself at that age and introduce your present self to your younger self, offering a hug or sympathy.

Step 3: Offer gratitude 

Thank your self for the loving intentions you had when you formed your beliefs. Even if these beliefs are no longer helpful, or maybe even hinder you now, know that they came from your loving intention to take care of yourself the best you could come up with at the time in order to keep yourselfsafe. Acknowledge that this belief, like everything you’ve done, has come from your loving intentions and then, with a loving heart, release the belief that is no longer helpful. Once you release the belief, you can begin to focus on finding a new belief that will be helpful for you in your present situation.

Step4: Create a replacement belief 

With love, you have the power to replace painful beliefs with beneficial beliefs. 

Step5:Build proofsto support your replacement beliefs 

Write down all the proofs you have for your replacement belief. Review situations at work, at school, with friends and family, with acquaintances and while engaged in miscellaneous social and community activities that support your new belief. The longer the list the better. Speak with friends and people you trust to help you build your list of proofs. Come up with ideas of different actions you can take to add to your list and then do them. Read your list frequently and, if an old belief should emerge, correct it. Afterseveral times of being corrected, that belief will begin to fade—itwill appearlessfrequently—and will eventually disappear from your consciousness. 

Step6: Thank yourself for doing this process 

The energy of gratitude, like love, is strong because it has a faster vibration than does fear or other emotions. Allow yourself the time to feel this pleasant vibration throughout your body. Enjoy your power to create your life as you want it. As you do, you might find yourself repeating this empowering and enjoyable process often.

In the next four chapters, we will take a more indepth look at each of the four aspects that make up loving behavior. By thoroughly understanding love, the verb, you will quicken your steps to reaching the center of your heart.