It has been a long time since my last article. I have found excuses to keep me from writing, afraid that I wouldn't have anything to say. But each journey begins with the first step, and for me the first step seems to be the most difficult one to take. After that my mind starts to work on its own and words flow through my fingertips. I hope you enjoy my incoherent ramblings :)

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds. 
- Bob Marley.

Photo by: kronic.it

Thoughts have power, moreso when followed by action. And action is rarely present without the thought. You don't just get out of bed in the morning and go to work like a robot who has no say on what it's programmed to do. You think about what needs to be done before leaving the house, and you may even stop to think why you are going to work. Maybe you're saving money for a vacation, or maybe you feel like you are helping to make the world a better place through what you do for a living. In any case, you did not just end up where you are, but you rather got there as the end result of countless actions; actions preceded by thoughts.

Thoughts have power to manifest themselves in physical reality. The Wright brothers thought that a flying machine can be created. They believed it to be possible, even though the idea seemed ridiculous to others. But then again, it was the Wright brothers who created the world's first airplane. It was not someone who thought it couldn't be done.

Edison thought that it is possible to create light in a controllable way with electricity. He believed it so much that he famously invented 10 000 ways how to not create light before coming up with the lightbulb. What if he would have quitted? What if he would have buried his head in his hands in defeat, saying that "it is not possible" and fully embraced that thought?

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Note: My aim is to publish new articles at least once a week, which I've been able to do pretty well for the past 3-4 months, but last week was simply way too busy as I had to focus on work, school assignments, exams, and a few other commitments. I should be back on track now.

I think the topic of liming beliefs falls into "personal development basics," so to speak, but it is something that's useful to think about every now and then. It's also a topic I have never written about before, so hopefully it will be of interest to you :)

Now, what exactly is a limiting belief? Let's start with some examples:

• I love photography but I'm never going to be good enough to make it for living.
• It's always someone rich and famous who gets the kind of girl/guy I want.
• I was bullied as a kid which made me an introvert, and because of that I can never become successful in relationships.
• I am not smart enough to do well in business.
• I would love to write a book, but I don't have the talent/patience/creativity.
• My kids don't respect me because I don't have a well-paying job.
• Women/men don't like me because I'm fat.
• I'm overweight because of my genes, so I can never become fit.

As I've written before, our interpretation of the world and what happens around us is largely based on our beliefs. These beliefs can be roughly divided into two groups; positive and negative, or enabling and limiting. It's the negative, limiting beliefs that prevent us from achieving what we want in life, whereas the positive, enabling beliefs support us when we're reaching for our goals. 

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One of the biggest life lessons I had in 2009 was that my personality is in a state of constant change. The change may be small, subtle, and quiet or take big, life-changing leaps, but it's there and it's continuous. The fact that personality changes over time is not a big surprise in itself; I think everyone can take a look back a few years and immediately see how they were different back then compared to who they are now. However, I've hold the assumption that it takes major life experiences - such as break-ups, marriages, parents getting divorced, moving to live on your own for the first time etc. - for a personality to change, but considering everything that has happened in my own thought and behavior patterns during 2009, I have had to abandon that belief.

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of psychological personality is

a) the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual.

b) the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual.

In psychology, the act of learning implies behavior change. Meaning, that when something is learned, the behavior of the learner changes as a result. If personality then is an organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of an individual, learning changes also the personality of the learner. This does not require major life experiences. With open and curious mind it's easily possible to learn something new every single day, and the cumulative outcome of that learning is a changed personality.

It's very important to realize, that no one is born more confident, social, outgoing, competitive, creative etc. than anyone else. Your early life experiences are paramount in the forming of your personality, which affects how you behave and think in different situations. Although your personality greatly determines how you think and act, the way you think and act also affects your personality. It's a two-way connection.

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We tend to think that as civilized and well-educated people our view of the world is objective and fair. We pride ourselves in our abilities to dissect information, to make judgements based on scientific evidence, and therefore hold the belief that we are rational human beings. My mission today is to shake those beliefs. Our brains are hardwired with blind spots, and perhaps the biggest one is the conforming delusion that we, personally, don't have any.

The brain is very clever at allowing us to justify our own perceptions and beliefs as being accurate, realistic, and unbiased. This is called naive realism. We assume that other reasonable people see things the same way we do, and if they disagree with us they obviously aren't seeing things clearly. This is caused by two presuppositions: One, people who are open-minded and fair should agree with a reasonable opinion. And two, any opinion I hold must be reasonable; if it weren't, I wouldn't hold it. Therefore I can argue my opinion, tell the other side how things really are, and if they don't agree with me it must be because they are biased.

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I have been very hesitant about publishing this blog post. I started writing it couple weeks ago, only to stop after getting my main points down because I felt that this will put me in the same "faceless" group of hundreds or thousands of personal development bloggers out there. Not that there's anything wrong with writing about personal development, but I felt that I needed to approach these things from my own quirky semi-scientific point of view that I've been building.

What finally made me finish this article was, that the things I discuss here have had a positive impact on my own life. And by sharing this there is always a chance to influence others and help them achieve positive results as well.

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