What’s Your Story?

“Why does this happen to me?  nothing good happens in my life.  What’s the point of doing this? I will fail anyway.  I am ugly, I am not good enough, I always fail, only bad things happen in my life. I am used to failure, only bad things happen to me, everyone thinks I am stupid, I am blamed for everything, anyway.  My life is full of pain, no one wants me, No one wants me, I have no friends, who would want to be my friend? This world is a dangerous place, people are generally bad, I can’t trust anyone.  I don’t feel safe, Life is a struggle, they will leave me anyway …” Do you tell yourself any of these? Then, you have a set of core beliefs that you are unaware of, that are ruling your life.

What are Core Beliefs?

Core beliefs are deep rooted beliefs that have been formed at a very early stage in life and we haven’t managed to change them.  Most of us are on auto-pilot, functioning from our unconscious state of mind.  Unless we become mindful of our thoughts, feelings, emotions, understanding, patterns, actions and belief systems, we carry on being the robot that walks around the planet in an unconscious state of being.  Until we become aware of our mental patterns, break the toxic ones, the dysfunctional one, we cannot have a peaceful life.

Most people suffer and are stuck in a loop of dysfunctional patterns, which are endless.  We feel completely defeated by the lack of order and the continuous pattern of chaotic manifestations.  So, why did we get into this loop of emotional, mental, physical, spiritual chaos?  When we are born, we learn from our environment, people around us, our parents, family members, teachers, friends and everyone around us.

We’re constantly learning new things, behaviours, patterns and adding to our belief systems.  Most of our core beliefs were formed when we were between the ages of 0-5 years.  At an early age we learnt the important lessons about our own safety and security.  We learnt that to remain safe we had to do or not do certain things.  For example, we will either, take flight, freeze or fight when faced with a challenging situation.

Depending on which mode we feel the safest in, we build our responses, our actions, reactions, thoughts and belief systems around that default mode.  So, if we feel safest in freeze mode, we grow up with that response, so we will most likely be quiet, become numb, freeze, dissociate from people, events, situations, get out of our own body to stay safe from what we deem to be dangerous to us.

Then, we build narratives around our default system.  So, if when we were a child, we froze each time we felt in danger, we then tell ourselves stories, these stories revolve around our default system of flight, fight or freeze mode.   We then build over our default modes, we build stories, the stories we tell ourselves, for example: “bad things always happen to me, no one is here for me, no one will come if I cry, when I am in pain no one is here for me, I have no one, I am ugly, I am not good enough”.

We aren’t even aware of these belief systems that are there, they were formed so early on that we don’t even know they are there.  Then we meet people, who are always triggering us and bringing all of our core beliefs to the surface.  So, when we react to someone in a strong way, that person has triggered our core beliefs and default mode.

Or core belief, whatever it may be – is triggered.  We then react – if we believe that we are unlucky for example, then all feelings, emotions would surface – relating to that core belief.

Identifying core beliefs

Mental checks – reveal to yourself your fears.  What are they? for example a fear of getting into deep, meaningful relationship may be due to the fear of abandonment.  So, you won’t get into a meaningful relationship, because as a child you didn’t feel loved, you felt abandoned, rejected and now this program is still running on the high.  This is your way of flying away from commitment, because, your core belief is “No one loves me, I am unloveable, no one wants me, they always leave anyway”.  Become aware of your core beliefs.  Write them down.

Mindfulness and Core Beliefs

Be mindful of your thoughts, feelings and your self talks.  The stories you tell yourself aren’t true, what you see is not real, this is the wounded 0-5 year old’s perspective, we are always seeing things from that child’s perspective, with fear, wanting to hide, fight or freeze when things happen.  Find your default mode.  Do you freeze, take flight or fight when something happens?

Journaling

Journaling is so powerful, write your deepest fears, feelings, patterns in your journal.  Reveal the deepest, darkest parts of you in your writing, usually the core patterns comes out when we are writing about ourselves.

Breaking the Patterns

Now that you know why you do what you do, you need to break the patterns.  Change your perspective, the “truth” you have been telling yourself all these years are not truth at all.  They were wounds from the fearful child.  They were made when you were unconscious, now that you are conscious, keep changing your perspective, question all your belief systems, be aware of your default mode and change it.

Mindful Existence

Name your core beliefs i.e, ” I believe that I am not worthy of love” .

Rephrase your story – I used to believe that I was not worthy of love, now I am learning that I am loveable.

Forgive Yourself

These core beliefs were made when you were a baby.  You were unconscious, fearful.  Now you are an adult, in full control, in charge of your life, safety, security, you are safe now.  You can change your story, you have to.  Now, forgive yourself for what you weren’t aware of.

Wishing you a mindful life.

Kiran G