Are you what you are now? Or, are you all what you ever thought you could not be!

Interesting paradigm of challenging your own beliefs!

Have you ever thought about how much of your actions are a reflection of your own beliefs! Both conscious and sub-conscious. Beliefs that were fed into you when you were growing, beliefs that you adopted throughout your lives as you moved from one life decade to another.

It will therefore not be wrong to say tht all of how we behave, perceive, act and we think is a sum total of all the believes engrained within us.

Everything that we approve of or disapprove of is psychologically aligned to our believes and disbelieves.

So then, does it become necessary to silently trust and have a set menu of beliefs cookbook and keep scanning through it each time we want to accept something now, or does it make sense to question your beliefs from time to time?

Have we ever thought about how much we are doing, not doing just based on our belief system?

What exactly is belief- it is our projection of our inner self to the outer world. It defines everything from how we live to how we eat to how to manage etc etc .

What we are entrusted within the growing-up years is an acquired belief system from your immediate environment. But does it necessarily mean everything is set in stone? What if at some point in life you need to reverse your ways and start believing in unconventional things.

From my own personal experience — my beliefs in life brought me so far but after a while, they started pushing me down, my beliefs became the main cause of all my problems, of how I took decisions of how I reacted to circumstances.

Of course after a lot of setbacks, failures, and a series of mishaps I decided to questions everything that I thought was. But what did it exactly mean?

1. Self Diagnostics- first step is to understand that each of your actions, reactions, and behavior is structured by your own beliefs.
2. Critical Analysis -Take up a major belief that you have had in your life so far and look at how it has shaped some of your decisions. Has it all turned out to be good? Could things have been better if you would have decided otherwise? Write down critically and give it a 3rd persons view.
3. Challenge your belief- If at all anything you want to try in life try to challenge your own beliefs — go unconventional, try all the things you have never done or assumed you cannot do [based on your triggers from your belief system].
4. Observe the limitless possibilities- Once you open up to challenging your beliefs, go the less taken path, observe the subtle changes it brings laterally
5. Wait for wonders to happen — once you try new unconventional ways of doing things see how you will suddenly free your perspective of self and the world changes in your mind. You from many boundaries set up and you will be amazed at some of the things you are able to do now.

In the last couple of years, I experimented with myself and challenged all of my core belief systems. Some of the results are below and I am surprised I was able to do them just by shifting my mindset. Sharing some of them:

1. Getting up early-All my life I believed this theory about myself that I cannot get up early for whatever reason. Right from school, college, work-life I always slept in late and got up late. I could never depend on myself to believe that I could get up early. So I decided to challenge this belief and started setting up an alarm for 5.30 AM, pushed myself out of bed every day -and I couldn’t believe what happened next, not only it became a habit -it contributed in the following ways -Because I got up early I was able to set up a regular meditation and workout routine as there was more than enough time [this was a side effect of getting up early]. I now have tremendous discipline and overall mental and physical health improvement.
2. Failure to draw/sketch- It is funny but again I kept myself away from doing any creative work until now because of the same belief system which kept me from trying it. Last year I decided to take up sketching — I started really small with a downloaded cartoon character. It was far from being perfect! But hey I soon found myself sitting for 2–3 hours sketching sessions drawing portraits and being completely engrossed in the act, oblivious to the passing time . Again I was shocked I was capable of doing it. The side effect was my concentration, creativity increased in all my activities, my work, and I saw tremendous overall improvement.
3. Unplanned random trips — Again i forever never attempted this in a lifetime and always assumed that trips are supposed to be taken with a company. Last December I took my first solo trip to Ladakh -Himalayas. Trust me it changed my entire perspective of life and how to live it. That solo randomly unplanned trip took off so much pressure from life of being overly organized, well planned, and just allowed me to go with the flow. It turned out to be the best ever trip of my life! I ended up doing things that I never imagined myself doing -staying up with the locals, wandering around in the villages, trekking, etc., etc. This changed my overall perspective in life -of what we can control and what we cannot! We can and only should plan for them now! It is definitely good to have long-term planning and vision- but while you are in the now make the most of it! Live it. I have become much more mindful and acceptable of life and circumstances after this trip!

Therefore, unless you push your boundaries and explore yourself it is hard to say what you really are! Are you what you are now? Or, are you all what you ever thought you could not be!

These were my way of challenging my beliefs and trying to move ahead and explore the “What if “.

“Free yourself from yourself”!

I am sure each of you have yours to share! Would love to know about your self-exploratory journey!