Hello lovely human! Welcome to The Life Changing Experiment. While there is no quick fix, exact formula or guaranteed path to mental health, consistent small changes can really add up over time. This newsletter is both a prompt and an invitation for you to try out life-changing ideas and strategies, take new actions and observe with scientific curiosity those things that work best for you. Thanks for being here. I can’t wait to hear how your experiments go! Much love, THIS WEEK'S EXPERIMENT Test Question: Background: While your decisions may have some basis in objective truth, you might be unaware just how much your unconscious beliefs are shaping your perception and filtering your experience of the world. It is worthwhile becoming aware of your beliefs, because many times these are the things that are often holding us back from living the lives we want. Procedure: Make the unconscious conscious By becoming aware of your beliefs, you can assess whether you really believe they are true. Often times you will find they don’t stand up to rational examination. Some unhelpful things I used to believe are:
You can choose new beliefs Seeing that your beliefs aren’t “the truth”, but rather stories you have told yourself about the way things work, gives you the power to choose different beliefs. How do you make a new belief your own? Start acting as if you believe it! Behaving differently and taking different actions that reflect your new belief are the key. Some of my new beliefs are:
If it is so easy, why don’t more people do this? Challenging your beliefs can feel destabilizing. It can push you outside of your comfort zone and make you feel defensive. But I am a big believer in taking calculated life risks based on a cost/ benefit analysis. What is holding onto the your old belief costing you? What benefit might a new belief give you? How are your negative beliefs stopping you? This week, catch yourself when you are making an external circumstance the problem. Ask what you currently belief that makes you feel incapable of making changes to impact the situation. What new belief might be more empowering? If you did believe that, what new actions might you take today? Do that. Repeat. Our beliefs aren’t set in stone. The only way old beliefs have power over us is if we continue to choose to believe them. Ideas and perspectives FROM OTHERS: “You are imperfect, but you are worthy of love and belonging. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” |
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Hello lovely human! It seems like it should be the easiest thing, doesn't it? To be ourselves. But past experiences and our ever-present fear of rejection and judgement make the whole thing is much harder than it should be. I have a book coming out later this year called Turn Fear into Courage. As someone who has lived much of my life with my fight, flight, freeze, fawn response turned all the way up, and who has expressed fear in so many ways – people pleasing, perfectionism, imposter...