There are certain beliefs that empower you and others that weaken you.
Let’s take a look at the top 10 beliefs that will take your life from miserable or average and upgrade it to absolutely amazing.
1) Belief in your own strength and power
If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else can either.
But self-belief isn’t easy, and it’s not just about some mantra or “positive thinking.”
Believing in yourself comes through experience.
You can tell yourself “I’m an amazing runner and I know that I could run a marathon and come in the top 50.”
That’s great, maybe you can!
But until you’re training and running, that belief will remain just that: a belief.
The effective example of this belief is to say and believe “I’m an amazing runner and I plan to run a marathon by training two hours per day for the next six months and entering the marathon after that time.”
This is why belief in your own strength and power needs to be coupled with a plan of action of how you will actually achieve it.
It also needs to come together with a plan of action about how to absorb and learn from failures.
In order to have a plan of action, we need to move on to the second point: having a mission.
2) Belief in your unique mission and purpose
You believe in your own power and ability, and you have a plan for how to put it into action.
But for what goal or mission?
Before you say something like “making money,” let me point something out:
There’s nothing wrong with making money and that’s actually a great thing to have as a focus. But it’s not a mission in and of itself.
Money is a tool that gets you closer to a mission or can help you in it.
For belief in your mission you need to know what it is.
Think about a challenge you deal with on a daily basis or something you find very troublesome. Then think how you could help improve this for others and make a profit from it.
You’ve now come one step closer to your mission.
For example, your mission may be:
- To care for your family and those you love
- To protect our environment and the creatures in it
- To improve the urban environment of the neighborhood where you live
- To help those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction
- To design clothes that are comfortable and affordable
And many, many more options…
Always believe in your mission and you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams!
3) Belief in your own promises to yourself and others
When you believe in your own power and have a plan for how to use it to accomplish a mission, you’re well on the road to success.
But you need to be able to trust yourself.
All too often, we make commitments to ourselves and others and then don’t end up sticking by them.
This becomes like a bad habit that’s really hard to quit, because the more we don’t do what we tell ourselves (or others) that we will do, the less pain and regret we feel the next time.
That’s why self-discipline and standing by our word is so important.
It’s not really about morality or being a “good person,” it’s more about actually developing and growing.
If you say you’re going to finish a job by a certain deadline but then decide to chill and have some beers all afternoon instead, you’ve failed for the day.
It might have been a great day, sure, but you’ve set yourself up for the opposite of success.
Take breaks! But don’t say you’ll do something and then quit or make excuses.
You need to be able to believe in the promises you make to yourself, because without self-respect success is never going to come.
4) Belief that you can and will stand up for what’s right
Next up in the beliefs that will help you achieve success is to have a moral code.
Your moral code is up to you, and I won’t dictate it.
But I will say that if your values shift with the sands you’ll never be able to successfully build a life or relationships.
As you go about your life, you will have to make up your mind about what you will stand for and what you won’t.
Many opportunities may present themselves but come at the price of going against something you strongly believe.
On the other hand, many things you strongly believe are right may end up not working out well in your work or personal life and leave you doubting yourself.
That’s why you need to be rooted in what you believe rather than swayed by the outside world.
For example, if you believe that cheating in a relationship is always wrong, then even when your boss offers you an amazing promotion if you’ll sleep with him and you feel like sleeping with him, you don’t do it…
5) Belief that nobody else is coming to save you
A big part of standing up for what’s right and being true to your own values is being responsible for yourself.
When we’re a child our parents or guardians care for our most basic needs and ensure that we survive.
But as we age into teenagehood and beyond, life presents a path to adulthood that’s about taking care of yourself.
The more that you believe somebody else will come save you, “owes” you or just expecting somebody to come through for you, the more codependent and un-successful you will be.
Don’t get me wrong, collaboration and working together with others is essential and very valuable.
But you should always believe deep down that you are responsible for yourself, and that even your problems and tragedies are not going to be fixed by somebody else.
6) Belief that you are where you need to be
The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has an insightful teaching about being unsatisfied with life.
As he says, there is nothing wrong with wanting more in life and hungering for something more: a relationship, a new place, a different life.
The problem comes when we convince ourselves that we can’t be satisfied or be ourselves until we get what we want.
For example, say you really want to live in California but haven’t been able to get the money together. You’re feeling depressed and have big ideas about how this will end up happening.
But for now and the past two years it has not. So you wake up feeling like crap.
“Once I get to California I’ll be able to start my life for real,” you tell yourself.
Wrong move.
Your life starts for real right now. Even if you hate where you are, you need to work with it and do what you can.
Don’t focus on what’s not good enough if it’s out of your control.
As Tolle says, either change the situation, accept it or focus on other things until you are able to change it.
Projecting anxieties and hopes into the future won’t help you.
Believing you’re where you need to be right now, even if you hate it will help you.
For example:
“This really sucks living in my mom’s basement and being 35. But right now I’m focused on doing my best each day, saving money and building a healthy relationship with my parents. This won’t be forever, but this is where I need to be right now and there’s no shame in it.”
7) Belief in a higher power or spiritual path
Whether or not you’re religious, believing in a spiritual truth or higher power can be very empowering and help you achieve success.
Think of it as believing there’s a design of some kind behind existence.
Even if that design is nature itself or just a general belief that life is worth living, this boosts your level of hope enormously.
In the search for spiritual truth, however, there are many detours and dead-ends.
I hate to say it, but a lot of the modern New Age movement is an example of that.
Fancy gurus tell you what’s true or encourage you to have “positive vibrations,” saying that you are attracting misfortune and disappointment into your life.
All too often, you end up spending way too much money for basically being told that your teacher is better than you and that you’re just too stuck in “negativity” and lower levels of consciousness.
The truth about spirituality is a lot different, and it’s something I found out from the world-renowned shaman Rudá Iandê.
In his free masterclass on freeing your mind, he takes you on a powerful journey in transcending limiting beliefs so you can bring more freedom and authenticity into your life.
It’s really refreshing, because Rudá doesn’t believe he’s any better than you or I. He doesn’t want to be your guru, and he isn’t forcing you to believe anything.
He’s just exploring some basic facts of life and how to find our own truth in a world of illusions and snake oil salesmen.
I highly recommend checking out the masterclass here.
8) Belief in the good intentions and potential of others
Not everybody has good intentions, that’s for sure. But a surprising amount do!
The most empowering belief here is to believe in the good intentions and potential of others unless and until they prove you wrong.
This does not mean to be naive or to just hand over all your trust and confidence to anybody you come across.
You still want to keep your wits about you, of course, and be generally cautious about how much you trust people right away.
What it does mean, is to approach life and other people as potential allies and friends, rather than as opponents.
It can definitely feel like the world is a zero-sum game where either I win or you do.
But a win-win scenario is often possible even where we only see competition.
And a big part of it is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy as well, because if you see others as your competition then you’re going to treat them as that.
But if you see them as allies, your whole perspective has changed.
9) Belief in your own ability to attract the right partner
Love is hard even for the luckiest of us, but there are belief structures that can help us in finding an empowering and satisfying partner.
Chief among those is the belief that you have what it takes right now to attract somebody you will truly love and care for.
You can improve and work on yourself as much as you want, but you need to be sure that your innate value is assured. You don’t need to be someone else to be loved.
This means you do not need to look hotter, stronger, tougher, cooler, more academic, less academic or anything else to attract a mate.
Somebody who finds you fascinating and sexy can easily give you some style tips or weight loss advice.
You need to be able to keep working on yourself and improving while still knowing that you are good enough and have innate value.
Never try to “earn” or deserve someone’s romantic or sexual interest.
Here’s an example of this belief in action:
“I’m confident in my interests and values in life to attract the right person to me who will love me for who I am, and I’m resisting the temptation to try to fit trends or be someone I’m not in order to find love or sex.”
10) Belief in your ability to attract prosperity and wealth
In addition to a belief that love will find you if you live your best life, you need to bolster yourself with a belief in prosperity.
This isn’t even ultimately about money, because if you think about it wealth means much more than just dollars and cents.
Everything good in our life including our own health is a form of wealth.
However on the financial side that’s certainly important as well, and it’s crucial to have a firm belief in your ability and means to earn money.
You have what it takes, you take responsibility and you’re willing to put in the time and effort to succeed.
You see yourself growing as an entrepreneur or business person and you are optimistic about what the future holds.
11) Belief in supporting others but never becoming codependent
Belief in the value of service is a great thing and can be a definite sign of maturity and growing as a person.
But this is far different than codependence, which is where you put your happiness and wellbeing in the hands of others.
In order to succeed in life, it’s crucial to avoid codependence.
We all fall into it in various ways with friends, family, romantic partners and more.
But the more we become aware of how we expect other people to take responsibility and “fix” or deal with our emotional state, the more we can consciously stop being that person who behaves that way.
The journey away from codependence can be long, but it’s worth every step.
12) Belief in the value of pain to fuel growth and maturity
We instinctively seek to avoid pain and seek out pleasure and comfort.
All too often, however, pleasure and comfort are growth killers.
They make us complacent, lazy and even entitled.
It’s crucial to understand that pain and struggle can be accelerants to growth and maturity.
Seek out your discomfort zone and challenge yourself, as people like veteran and ultra marathon runner David Goggins advise.
There is so much opportunity to learn who we are and what we’re capable of when we stop running from pain and face it head-on, or channel it into something productive.
None of us will get anywhere if we only try to stay safe and comfy.
Push your limits and see what you can do.
13) Belief in a better and more rewarding future
You have to believe that the future is going to be good.
But there’s a right and a wrong way to go about this.
The wrong way is getting hooked on what I call hope-ium: this is the drug of hope that makes you vaguely wish or hope the future will be great.
You use it to soothe yourself and avoid much dramatic action or change.
Instead, you want to believe in the future in an action-oriented way.
The future is going to be better, but you’re also going to make it better by being better even if it sucks crap.
This is the attitude of a person who succeeds:
Proactive, not passive.
14) Belief in forgiving but not forgetting
The idea of forgiveness is very prevalent in religions like Christianity and the New Age movement.
The basic concept is that by forgiving you are letting go of the hate that weighs you down and the bitter vibes and “low” energy that’s making your life worse.
Fair enough, but then again if you really think about it, there are some things that are very hard to forgive:
Someone harming your family or child, for example, or a person physically or sexually assaulting you, cheating you of money or bullying you.
Why should you forgive them?
The key belief here is thinking of forgiveness as mutually exclusive from forgetfulness.
You can forgive someone, but it does not (and should not!) mean that you forget what they did or easily trust them again.
An example of this belief would be:
“OK, this person is a snake who cheated me in business and behaved very rudely. I won’t trust them again, but at the same time I am not going to focus on this.
“Good luck to that person in changing their ways. I’ve done my part in warning potential future partners of his about how he acts in business and now I’m moving on while always remembering to steer clear of him and people who show those similar signs of fraud.”
Done!
15) Belief in the innate value and joy of being alive
Life is all too often short, difficult and confusing.
But that’s part of what makes the good times so valuable, and looking back you’ll find that even the difficult periods helped you grow, learn and love more.
It’s important to believe that life is worth it, because if it’s not then what are we really doing here?
Philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche took the somewhat darker view of life being a kind of existential torture chamber…
And they make some good points about the suffering and hopelessness that often surrounds us.
And yet going for a walk in a quiet field of wildflowers as the morning dew lingers…
Or kissing your sweetheart as the sunsets on the pier and a street band plays in the distance…
These are all special moments that show the value of life even when we’re feeling down or confused about why we’re here.
On a deeper level, the connections we build, the love we give and the pain we transform into useful and empowering experiences and creations also reminds us that life is worth living.
It’s a core belief we all need to rediscover, especially in a technocratic age so full of nihilism.
The bottom line
These beliefs only matter if they’re true.
Nice words mean nothing if they’re not backed up by reality.
But that’s the thing:
These beliefs reflect a certain reality which you can experience for yourself regardless of your external circumstances.
No matter how derailed your life has become or how tired and stressed you feel about the confusion and seeming indifference of the path you’re on, these beliefs will get you back on track.
You may not be able to control the external events that happen to you or how others treat you and react to you…
But you can control what you do with that and the beliefs and value system that you filter these outer circumstances through!
You can control what decisions and actions you make based on the life you want to live and the person you want to be!
