Believing What We Want to Believe

“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes that see reality”

~ Nikos Kazantzakis      Earthschool Harmony

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Reality is often a reflection of our inner beliefs about the world around us: Beliefs about ourselves—like WHO we are, WHY we are here—beliefs about our perceived tasks in the world—including our own sense of purpose and motivation for doing what we do while we are here.

If you have no idea as to what ARE your ‘inner beliefs,’ here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Are you an active participant in your life or are you a passive reactor to whatever the day provides for you? Do you make daily plans and then actually see them through, or do you sort of ride the wave of whatever the day presents—if you feel like it?
• How do you normally face your daily challenges? Do you take a deep breath and raise your head high to meet the coming difficulties and then plow ahead with courage to face the unknown before you, or do you sigh and shrink away from the challenge and perhaps even go back to bed and hide under the covers until you think the worst of the difficulty has likely passed because it’s just easier that way?
• Do you take responsibility for yourself and for your actions to change your own life for the better, or do you place blame on others for your life’s current failures and expect to be rescued by ‘someone other than yourself’ when times become hard and things get too rough to handle?

Since I’ve always been a firm believer in the “LIFE is what you make of it—NOT what it makes of you” theory, I’m a head-strong, plow-through-it type of person. Things haven’t always worked out for me the way that I had hoped or had planned for them to; but whenever I got knocked flat on my rear (many times) by an unexpected glitch in my original plan, I at least had the courage to stand back up, dust myself off, and try a different tactic to achieve whatever it was that I truly desired.

In my opinion I think our chief LIFE problems arise NOT when we occasionally get knocked down during the living process—because that is simply inevitable, but our actual LIFE problems begin if we fail to get back up and try again—and then KEEP trying until we progress our lives forward in some way—even if we have to alter the original plans to do it. We must keep trying.

And we can start small:  If by chance you are undergoing a physical injury or a mental/emotional challenge, you simply start wherever you are and move forward from there. Then day after day, you move forward a little more, and a little more. You do what you need to do as long as you need to do it.

Meaning, if for instance you can’t currently walk without assistance; then daily you keep putting one foot in front of the other until you have progressed a yard by yourself; then the next day a few more steps and a few more yards, then a few days later you can walk half a mile, then a mile, then two, then three, etc.  I’ve personally had three serious back injuries—from ruptured discs to fractured vertebra, so I know what I’m talking about here.  If you want your life back, you often have to work for it.

Living in general can be hard—it can often be grueling and quite painful, but that’s how you make it through this LIFE. You never give up, and you just have to keep moving forward—always forward.

But first of all you need to BELIEVE that you CAN DO IT!  So it’s important to focus your beliefs on what you most want to do with your life or on whomever the person is that you most want to BE during the time you that are allotted here in this plane of existence.

Sometimes we get lazy, and we tend to fall into the trap of ‘believing what we want to believe’ about the world around us or about ourselves, or about our families or our friends; and if those beliefs are ever shaken by actual TRUTH arising that counters the belief, we THEN must make the choice of believing the newly exposed TRUTH and all the repercussions of that, or we sink back into the previous fantasy belief that so captured our attention in the first place—because it was what we WANTED to believe was true—even though it wasn’t true.

Well a suggestion is that maybe you could examine what you ‘want to believe’ about yourself, about this world, and about LIFE in general all around you; and see if those inner BELIEFS are making you happy or sad or angry or resentful, and then make a choice to CHOOSE a BELIEF that moves you forward toward a better, more harmonious way of living—toward a better LIFE for yourself and for those you love.

It’s always your choice: You can believe what you want to believe about most anything—that is easily done. But can you believe in moving forward with your life into a better future for yourself and for all of us together?

That belief might take some effort to achieve it. But as one who has spent some time getting knocked on my rear and then struggling to stand again, and to take the steps forward toward a better future life for myself, I know it is possible to change your life for the better—all because you believed that you could do it. 

Until you did.