Have you ever seriously considered what you would tell your younger self? If you were given the opportunity to go back and share advice that would change your world? I would tell myself to break my conditioning so I can live an empowered life in alignment with who I am.
Your Conditioning
Our brain is our most powerful muscle. It has the power to influence us to lead a life we love or suffer through the life we have. But we haven’t been taught how to use it or why it’s so hard to change. Our conditioning is established primarily by the age of eight. That is when our subconscious mind is running the show, absorbing anything and everything it can. During this phase, the foundation of what we believe to be true about ourselves, others, and the world is established.
Our brain consumes 74 giga-bytes of information in a given day, but it doesn’t absorb all of it, it filters it. Our filter’s main purpose is to weed through all the information we gather to select information that confirms what we believe or that we are right. This provides the brain with a feeling of safety. The sad truth is we have been conditioned so that most people are too afraid to look within themselves to do the deeper work.
Because the beliefs that most of us operate under are established by the age of eight, that means we are going through life filtering information to confirm the eight-year-old inside of us is right. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two since I was eight.
Break Your Conditioning
The question then becomes, how can we upgrade our beliefs to confirm what we truly believe? The answer is we need to challenge them, which looks something like this:
Identify a limiting belief and associated thoughts and evidence confirming such a belief is true.
Ask questions in a specific way aimed to create reasonable doubt in the mind about the limiting belief.
Implant a new, updated, and believable belief.
Identify new evidence to confirm the updated belief.
If we want to challenge our beliefs, we must first be able to recognize them and that is rarely taught to us. However, you probably have an idea if you listen to yourself. What thoughts do you hear often? What is the pattern among those thoughts?
For example, one of the most common limiting beliefs is, “I’m not enough.” As a reformed not enough-er, I was able to recognize my pattern at the gym, with my weight, with my work, and in my relationship. Once you’ve identified one of your limiting beliefs and the supporting evidence, then select one piece of evidence and start asking challenging questions. You are aiming to phrase the questions in a way that the answer will create mental doubt about the limiting belief, or you want to try and prove the opposite is true. For example, the supporting evidence I heard about my work sounded like, you’re not smart enough and you don’t work hard or long enough.
Using that piece of evidence, my challenging questions might be:
● How do I know I work hard enough?
● How did my intelligence spark unique insights today?
● What was I able to accomplish today?
The answers to these questions are necessary to create doubt around the limiting belief.
Then comes the easy part—what do you want to believe about yourself at work? For me, I implanted the new belief that my best is always good enough. To enforce the new belief, I reflected on my work efforts and how much I’ve been able to accomplish throughout my life by showing up as my best. It takes some time and practice to upgrade your beliefs, but it will leave you feeling more aligned and empowered within the life you are living.
Empowered Living
So how does this help you live without regret? Simply by going through the process of breaking your conditioning requires you to use your brain in various ways that strengthen specific mental muscles. This process allows you to see life through a different light and be open to more awareness and more choices and a greater sense of meaning within your life.
