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Our beliefs are truly a magic to behold. My previous article touched upon what beliefs are and an easy way to become more aware of them in your life. As you become aware of your beliefs, you are likely to find a number of beliefs that no longer serve you. This is OK. In fact, this is a great step toward taking control of your life and becoming the master of your experience. Once your beliefs are identified, the next step is to strengthen those that work and weaken and uproot the ones that don’t.

To manage our beliefs effectively, it’s good to understand certainty and doubt. These states of being are powerful tools for consciously shaping the beliefs we have about our past, future and present experiences. When understood, they are an effective way of removing our disempowering thoughts and building up or creating the new and empowering thoughts that will shape our lives.

Finding certainty and doubt

First of all, certainty and doubt are all in the mind. They are just a way you structure a thought so that you know that’s what it means. Certainty has a structure. Doubt has a different structure. These structures are how you know what you know.

Let’s start with finding certainty… Think about something you are really certain will occur. “Will the sun rise tomorrow morning?” “Will you be going into work tomorrow?” (Even if the answer is no, you’ll still be certain that it’s the right answer.)

Now think of something you really doubt. It could be the thought of having an enjoyable interaction with someone you find disagreeable. Or maybe it’s something like getting a big promotion or being a millionaire. Whatever it is, find that doubt and really experience it.

Now what was the difference between the two? Maybe it’s a feeling, or a voice or an image. Maybe it’s some combination of those. For me, it’s mostly a feeling, but whatever it is for you, just notice that difference. Understand what it means to doubt something and what it means to be very certain.

Jump back and forth between the two as many times as you need to really understand how you know you are certain and how you are doubting.

Doubt

Now that you’ve found your doubt, lets bring that powerful state to bear on your limiting beliefs. Dredge up some limiting belief, such as not having enough time, or not having enough money, or not enough talent, or that widespread belief that public speaking is worse than death… Whatever it is, experience it. Really hold that thought. Really experience it.

Now lets weaken it. Bring your state of doubt to that thought as you think it. Really doubt it. It’s not true. What is truth? Not this limiting belief. If it helps, start considering all the ways it could be wrong, even if they are only small at first.

Often, once is enough to forever weaken this bad belief to the point it will naturally disappear in time. But if you want to accelerate the process, repeat as often as you like.

Certainty

Now lets strengthen an empowering belief. Find something you wish to strengthen. My personal favorite is “Everything is working out perfectly.” But whatever it is, bring your focus to the belief first, hold the thought and put yourself into the state of certainty and watch that belief strengthen.

Begin noticing situations that prove that belief. Even if they are only small at first, you’ll be able to find something. Then find another and another. Keep your state of certainty as you find the proof. If you can’t find any proof at all, don’t worry it will come. Proof always comes after certainty.

An example

Beliefs come in all shapes and sizes. Here’s an example of shaping small, time-bound beliefs taken from my own life.

I am often meeting new people, either in the context of my profession or in a social situation, or meeting others in what could potentially become a stressful situation. This is one area of my life where I use doubt and certainty with amazing success.

Lets say I have a professional meeting with an individual at a company. I know that this individual is going to pose some seriously challenging questions and want some very good answers to these questions. Lets also say, I have never met or spoken to this person before.

Let me tell you, this is an easy situation for the mind to go wild with worries, building up future beliefs of negative outcomes. In fact, in our society, it’s almost a natural response to start architecting the future disaster about to unfold. Well, whenever I find myself in this position I start using doubt and certainty to build an empowering belief around the meetings outcome.

First, if I find myself starting to imagine myself stumbling over questions or acting foolishly, I bring doubt to these thoughts. I allow myself to imagine them and as I do, I bring such a sense of doubt to the imagining that they suddenly shift in my mind from a certain future event to downright absurdity. I tackle each of these worrisome imaginings quickly and individually.

As I’m tackling each of these disempowering thoughts, I’m often flipping them around and adding certainty to the flipped thoughts. For example, if I’m caught up imagining / believing I’ll fumble on a question, I flip it around and imagine myself giving an amazingly persuasive answer and then shower that thought in the state of certainty.

And just to make sure the meeting will go incredibly well, I think of how nice it will be to meet this person. How it will be like old friends meeting up. How it will be so relaxed but productive. How mutually warm the conversation will be and how we’ll both have an enjoyable and positive experience. And I shower each of those thoughts with certainty.

And it works like a charm every time. Go try it…