Are you struggling with negative beliefs? Can you eradicate them easily? Discover the most efficient ways to be negativity-free.
Table of Contents
How to Transform Negative Beliefs
Here are 7 proven steps to follow. For the best results, observe the order of steps presented in this article.
1. Learn What Negative Beliefs Are
In short, a belief is an idea a person holds as being valid. It may not be accurate as such, but it has been presented in this way. For example, you could believe that eating wholemeal bread made of wheat is healthy.
Doctors promote this general belief, which is nearly everywhere in the mass media. Wheat is ubiquitous on the menus of restaurants, cafes, and food-serving outlets.
However, Dr William Davis proved that wheat was harmful (see his book “Wheat Belly”), written according to his long-term research. So, depending on our beliefs, we can debate whether wheat is healthy or not.
A belief can come from different sources, including:
- a person’s own experiences or experiments,
- the acceptance of cultural and societal norms (e.g., religion),
- social conditioning, i.e., what other people say (e.g., During upbringing, education, or mentoring).
Leverage
Working smarter, not harder, is one example of leverage. It means delegating as many tasks as possible to others and using other people’s talents, skills, contacts, abilities, and resources for mutual advantage.
You work using your fortes while other people compliment you in other areas. Together, you will achieve more.
Pain And Pleasure
We will use a different kind of leverage here. It will be based on pleasure and pain, the two factors that motivate each of us.
The pain-pleasure principle, developed by Sigmund Freud, suggests that people make choices to avoid or decrease pain or make choices that create or increase pleasure. We seek pleasure to reward ourselves with immediate gratification.
The pain-pleasure principle suggests that while seeking pleasure, people will also seek to avoid pain. For those individuals where conflict is painful, they will do anything to avoid conflict.
Recommended reading
Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works
E. Tory Higgins
Motivating By Pain and Pleasure Principle
Here are the conclusions coming from the quote.
- we can be motivated by pain and/and pleasure,
- we avoid pain more than seek pleasure,
- and thinking about something painful brings more pain than facing the painful situation
You have already noticed that avoiding pain can cause sticking to a given belief. Therefore, you would rather stay in an abusive relationship or toxic job than risk the pain of the breakup and facing the unknown.
Exercise
Choose one of the beliefs that inhibit you from acting. What do you usually avoid and why? The “why” is your painful situation, reaction, person, etc., avoided. Write down your belief and the reason for avoidance hidden underneath.
2. Create a Leverage
Find leverage. It is the strongest way to break any negative belief. Just questioning the payoffs may not be enough (you will learn more later in this post).
You must associate as much pain as possible with the negative belief and its payoff to abandon them.
A Word of Caution
Unfortunately, it is often hard to eliminate negative beliefs. Why? Because they have payoffs, i.e., secondary benefits, despite harmful consequences.
For example, you may be very verbose, have a gift of the gab, and could prepare a TED talk to help you find a better job, make more money, or become famous… But you may be afraid of criticism and public speaking. What is the result? Avoidance.
I have to point out that pain can be the leverage for both changing your beliefs and sticking to your payoffs. You need to find such painful leverage that the payoffs of given negative beliefs will no longer make sense.
Exercise
Define what leverage you could use as pain. Answer the question:
What is one nastiest thing in my life that I avoid as it brings me pain?
Here are some examples:
- having your ego bruised by criticism, humiliation, shame,
- fear of being hurt emotionally,
- death or being murdered,
- vulnerability and being dependent on other people (because then you risk abuse and taking a disadvantage),
- chronic illness (because of vulnerability),
- disability (as above),
- loneliness,
- any violence.
If you have more than one kind of leverage, define which of them brings you the most pain. It will be your leverage. What can you do? Can you discover the truth about your leverage by pain? Change your belief. How? Continue reading.
Spiritual Payoffs
Apart from mental, emotional, and physical payoffs, there are also the spiritual ones, usually neglected:
- Missing opportunities to create a happy, healthy, and wealthy life whole of love and fulfilment,
- Having to do the homework again, as long as you learn the lesson, e.g. having abusive partners until you learn self-love and how to stand up for yourself,
- You will have to clear the lost opportunities during this life on the other side (i.e. after death, like at the bank).
- You do not show your strength to other beings. A disability may be a physical impairment, but if you are spiritually and mentally strong, helpful, decent people will surround you.
As you can see, holding on to your payoffs of negative beliefs will be as much or even more painful than changing these beliefs.
The Benefits of Pay-Offs
Of course, payoffs have benefits, too. Hence, they are so hard to eradicate. Your leverage by pain must be more substantial than these benefits.
3. Define the Costs of Your Beliefs
Here, we are coming to another technique, partially described above. Apart from finding your leverage, make a balance sheet indicating whether sticking to your negative beliefs is worth the trouble.
Balance Sheet
So, take one negative belief that you want to change and list, in writing, the costs and benefits of this belief. Then, mark how important each item is.
| Costs of sticking to the belief: 1 2 3 | Benefits of sticking to the belief: 1 2 3 |
| Costs of changing the belief 1 2 3 | Benefits of changing the belief 1 2 3 |
Let’s see how it works, for example, with the belief that “People criticise maliciously and deliberately.” The person having this belief will avoid public speaking and social interactions. Here are the most important costs and benefits of supporting and changing this belief:
Costs of sticking to a belief:
- Losing opportunities . – 8 points
- Unlearnt life lessons. -5 points
Benefits of sticking to the beliefs:
- No one hurts my ego. – 5 points,
- Temporary exemption from work on yourself. – 5 points
Cost of changing the belief
- Leaving the comfort zone, which can be painful, dreadful, etc. – 10 points
Benefits of changing the belief:
- Meeting new people who can help and inspire 7 points.
As you can see, the difference is not significant, so take the items that have scored the most points and visualise which would hurt you more. Eventually, answer this question in writing.
What is better in the long run – temporary pain and later pleasure because of taking some action or chronic pain because of doing nothing?
4. Define Facts and Opinions
Apart from defining your most immense leverage, find evidence that your negative belief is not true. Do it in writing. Let’s take the following belief and their reasons why it is true in your opinion:
I am not enough… (e.g., with maths) because:
- … my mother told me so,
- … I cannot handle finances,
- … my last boss kicked me out of work for being too slow,
- … I am not good at Maths,
- … and so, on
This is the evidence supporting your negative belief. Then answer the question for each item you have written:
IS IT A FACT OR AN OPINION?
An opinion is usually shaped by social pressure and modelling, e.g. family members. So, if your mother reckons that you are not enough, your negative belief is not based on facts and can be discarded—examples of facts.
I make mistakes when calculating in the morning because I am drowsy.
My test result is average.
Notice that facts are very detailed and usually concern specific cases, while opinions are general.
After defining the evidence supporting your belief, list all the evidence against this belief and classify each item as an opinion or a fact. For example:
- I have passed three maths tests with a grade,
- I can calculate my budget very well and never make mistakes there.
- My friends say that I am a shrewd accountant
- You do not need to be great in all the fields of maths; those that are useful in today’s life are enough.
The Balance Sheet of Your Evidence
After finding evidence for and against your beliefs, weigh each argument (e.g., from 1 to 10, like in the case of costs and benefits) and add up the two groups.
If the balance favours the evidence supporting your belief, ask questions in the next method.
5. Discussing Payoffs and Negative Beliefs
It is said that a person who asks a question during a conversation has an advantage over a partner who listens to and must answer.
Hence, all sales agents, press interviewers, and journalists have many questions at hand that will help them elicit the necessary information when closing sales or gathering information for an article.
Case Study
Let’s look at the two biggest payoffs which occur as benefits of your limiting beliefs:
- no need to make an effort to improve your life,
- excuses, complaining and other forms of giving up responsibility for your life.
“I do not need to make an effort; I can rest in the end.”
- What do you mean by “rest”?
- What is better, doing nothing, gaining nothing or trying to gain something?
- How sure are you that you make no effort to do nothing?
- Who has told you that doing nothing is better than trying?
- What will you lose doing nothing in this case…?
- When did it happen in your life that doing nothing helped you to achieve something?
You could ask even more questions, depending on the answers to those listed above.
But your goal is to find a conclusion. And it means that taking action will give you satisfaction while doing nothing – frustration and disappointment because of lost opportunities.
“I do not have to take responsibility for my life and anything.”
- To what extent is it true that you do not have to take responsibility for your life? Are you sure 100%?
- What is the worst thing that happens when you do take responsibility for your life?
- What is worse – your own falls and temporary failures because of your decisions or when life has decided for you, and you have lost control over it?
- Are you sure that you want to give your control over life to someone else?
- What is better, doing something and achieving something or doing nothing and achieving nothing?
- To what extent do you want to depend on life and other people?
Recommended reading about stopping excuses:
100 Excuses For Not Doing Things
May Betom Horrow
Lou Harry
Most Common Questions for Negative Beliefs
There are many limiting beliefs. Some reasons for them are just excuses. We can challenge these excuses and other negative statements. Let’s take a belief (or reason for it) “I am not smart enough…”
- What are the fields of life where you are smart?
- When were you smart last time?
- Even if you struggle in …., when was the last time you did it right?
- Who already likes you?
- Who has told you recently that you are not smart?
- Is the person who questions your skills smart enough in the field she/he is discussing? Is he/she an expert? (e.g., in cooking, maths, driving, cleaning, dressing, finances)?
After having answered the questions listed above, you will notice that your beliefs belief will vanish. Why? Because in most cases, there are at least SOME cases when you are smart enough to succeed.
The person who has installed this belief (usually parents and the family, teachers, and people from your community) is usually NOT an expert in the field; he/she criticises you. And even if they are, there are always better experts (or will be) than him/her.
5. Building New Identity
It is not enough to change the belief itself if you do not identify with the new mindset or behaviour. Therefore, after questioning the old, negative belief, think about the alternative option.
However, do not focus only on the new belief’s form. Decide what it means to be the new you: how you will think and walk, what kind of self-talk you will use, what actions you will take, and so on.
For example, if you think no effort is necessary in life, now create an identity that thinks, acts, and speaks the opposite. Define the area of life where making some effort would bring the most enormous benefits.
From the next day, start visualising the new you, eager to make more effort because… and list all the benefits of the new identity, Implement this new habit long and often enough to redesign your life in this, “small” area. Then, add another area.
So, when you start making money (i.e., make more effort to make more money), you can move on to physical exercise to become fitter. Net, add healthy eating (and choose one element of it first, e.g., smaller portions or eliminating sugar).
Recommended reading:
Derick Howell
6. Meditate
Meditation has become very popular recently. You can practise it even if your level of consciousness is far from spirituality. just focus on your breath or listen to calming music attentively.
If you are spiritually awakened, you can focus on the guardians and other helpful beings. Ask them for help in instilling the new belief and the identity supporting it. See yourself, creating all the best for yourself from the perspective of the new belief.
7. Pray
I have already written two articles: 7 + 2 Prayers to Transform Your Subconscious Mind and 1 Self-Love Prayer That Transforms Your Life. Uuse them as helpful resources if you are unsure where to start.
Praying to God and others for help forming new, uplifting beliefs is very effective. You connect with higher intelligence, your higher self, finding the resources unavailable to your mind.
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In A Nutshell
Today, you have learnt four efficient tools used for changing negative beliefs. They are finding the leverage – pain and elimination of the most significant pay-off, discussing the belief, weighing its costs and benefits, and finally finding the evidence against the belief. Good luck with the transformation of your most difficult beliefs. With lots of love and light,
Vicky Yang
