Monday 5 May 2014

You Can Believe Anything You Want To!


HOW MY LIFE COACH HELPED ME CHANGE MY THINKING FOREVER!

“This is my truth, now tell me yours!” - Aneurin Bevan

I would like to share with you a eureka, aha, revelatory moment from my life. It was a day the world, or at least my perception of it, changed forever. For more than a decade and a half I had made a study of Self-Help and Personal Development literature, listened to tapes and attended presentations, it was my hobby and my passion. Then, suddenly these words were spoken to me and everything began to change: “You can believe anything you want Andrew!”

These were the words of my Life Coach Sharon; we had been meeting via telephone over a number of sessions as part of my training to become a Coach. I disagreed with her, as someone from a conservative evangelical theological background I knew there were certain things that I just couldn’t believe. This statement expressed for me the tension between the two world-views I both held so dear. The road of my life was diverging into two possible pathways; one was fundamentalist biblical Christianity, and the other self-help and personal development.

I should have seen this coming from a mile off and yet because I believed that the ideas for personal development had originated with the study of the bible by Christians who were looking for the best way to live this life, it was a shock to the system. I told Sharon although I knew that it was possible to believe anything, that there were certain things that weren’t credible to believe, like: “the Moon is made of cheese,” and “the Earth is flat” or “the bible’s teachings are not true.” With some sadness in her voice Sharon maintained her assertion that you can believe anything and made her apologies; she had another coaching appointment, someone else was waiting to speak to her and she was gone.

I was left there totally stunned with this new challenge and over the next couple of weeks between my coaching sessions I ran this problem through my mind. Why can’t I believe anything I want to? What is it that is preventing me from taking on new beliefs? Why won’t I allow myself to change my mind? What would be so harmful in adopting new empowering beliefs that would help me to get where I wanted to in life? Why couldn’t I get rid of negative disempowering beliefs especially when they had been deeply held and had resulted in me being thwarted in my life’s journey?



The first thought that came to me was that I must respect my elders. By this time both my parents, grandparents and their many siblings had all died. Surely it would be disrespectful to jettison the beliefs that they had instilled me with? They had taught me their values and beliefs to help me and to make sure that I would get the best possible results in my life. Why would a loving son, grandson and nephew want to give the two finger salute to those he loved? Also these beliefs and values weren’t just theirs alone they stretched back two millennia and were to be found in the bible.

I had to believe those things which had been taught to me because: people had been willing given their lives to promote their Christian faith, rather than recant. Why would I recant, when such bravery had been shown down the centuries in the face of death, around this belief system that had created the western civilisation that I now enjoyed? Then I began to zone in on the true culprit here, I couldn’t believe the things that would help me to get where I wanted to go, not because of the disrespect it would cause to others, even Jesus, it was because of the disrespect it would show to me.

It was my own world view that I was being invited to challenge here, not anyone else’s with the words “You can believe anything that you want Andrew!” There is of course strength in numbers and to say that you belong to a belief system with almost two billion adherents, of which almost two thirds of a billion are evangelical, (http://uk.ask.com/question/how-many-christians-are-there-in-the-world-today)  gave me a huge sense of security and belonging. Why would I want to give up that, to become someone with ideas that didn’t fit in with others? Why indeed?

I began to see that the real challenge here was like asking the question “Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?” the title of a book I read many years ago and took many long chapters to reveal the answer, right at the very end: “Because I’m the only me I have and if you don’t like me then I don’t know what I’ll do!” My question here was “Why am I afraid of giving up my beliefs?” and the answer: “because if I give up my beliefs then I will stop being the person I am!” Then the beautiful dawn of my new consciousness level arrived as I said to myself “So Andrew, what you are saying is that you are your beliefs; you identify yourself as a conservative evangelical Christian, but is that really who you are?



I have lived in the light of that dawn ever since; I am not my belief system, I am the one who orders my belief system until such time as it no longer serves me, then I change it. Beliefs give us certainty and that is a good thing, but unchallenged beliefs lead to a standing still in our lives which like all other living things are meant to grow. It is from the security of our certainties that we can journey on into the excitement of uncertainty and the possibility of new experiences and growth. It is my delight to share with you Sharon’s words to me “You can believe anything you want to!”

And what is more, I encourage you to do so; either with a Life Coach like myself or on your own but go on I dare you to allow your spirit to dance free and to boldly go where you have never gone before. Your present certainties will remain the sold ground and the springboard that will allow you to discover that you are the creator of your life, the master of your destiny, the one who chooses what to believe based on what serves you to get where your heart is telling you to go.

Love and light to you from Andrew (aka Barnabas)

To download a FREE audio copy of my article please visit:

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/kl9kv0d9fl72e3l/EJ_001_-_YOU_CAN_BELIEVE_ANYTHING_YOU_WANT_TO.mp3

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