As the late, great Gil Boyne described it, one of the critical factors that puts a ceiling on performance and keeps people from reaching their full potential is confidence in the wrong things (i.e., “I am confident that I will not succeed at….”) Essentially, this is a negative belief about self. If you tell yourself: i always find a way to sabotage myself, I am just no good at public speaking, my organizational skills are terrible, I am not good at networking, I can’t speak up in meetings, or any other negative idea, you are highly likely to manifest just that: the negative outcome that you are thinking about and believing. And that is unfortunate, because most negative beliefs about self are not facts at all; they are just ideas that have been acquired somewhere along the path of life that inhibit performance.

Perhaps you had a classroom experience in grade school in which you stood in front of the room to present some information and you forgot what you were going to say…and the whole class laughed at you. You blushed, felt deeply embarrassed, and slunk back to your desk. From this one experience alone, you may have developed the ‘confidence’ that you will not succeed at presentations and public speaking. The neurology of the brain has absorbed the painful experience as a memory, laden with negative emotion and, from this point forward, you think to yourself, “when I stand up in front of a group to speak, I am going to do something stupid and everyone is going to laugh at me.” The negative experience and belief may not even be consciously accessible to you, but they are tucked away, down deep within the unconscious mind. And so, on you go, speaking in public, getting in your own way, time after time, and reinforcing your negative belief with each unsuccessful public speaking experience. And perhaps you find yourself avoiding speaking in public at all. You may have great, ‘positive’ confidence in other areas of your life and career, but in this one string of memories about bad experiences with public speaking, you have ‘negative’ confidence, or negative belief about self.

The good news is that you do have the capacity to recondition your mind in a positive way, choosing and reinforcing beliefs that support your successes. Over the past few decades, with the evolution of technologies that can look in on brain activity, it has been discovered that, contrary to what was previously understood about the brain, this amazing structure is constantly changing and developing new neural networks.

The brain is now described to be ‘neuroplastic,’ meaning that it is continually reshaping and restructuring with each new experience. For example, when you meet someone for the first time, your brain gets immediately busy creating a new configuration of neurons that will enable you to recognize that person the next time you see him or her. And neuroplasticity is great news for all of us because it means that people can take charge of reshaping and restructuring beliefs and thoughts in ways they may have never imagined. You can introduce your mind to positive beliefs through methods including autosuggestion and imagery, and condition your mind in the direction of your choosing!

The brain uses the same neural mechanisms to imagine something in the mind as are used when having a new experience in the world. So internal imagination and external experience are extremely close relatives. What is imagined is real to the unconscious part of mind. So give your mind positive images and internal experiences and, by doing so, log good memories in mind that support your goals and successes.

When we were very young, we did not have control over what messages and ideas were downloaded into the brain. But as we mature, we have far more control over what beliefs and thoughts are invited into our own mental homes, and what negative ideas we throw out on the scrap heap. Shouldn’t this be taught in schools? Shouldn’t this be taught in corporations? People are the masters of their own minds. It’s just that sometimes they are not aware of this empowerment, and they allow whatever wants to meander through the mind to enter and set up shop in neural networks. But you will not allow that to happen, right?

Have you ever considered just how much our beliefs shape our reality?  Sometimes you get a clear view of this phenomenon when you encounter someone who has experienced severe trauma in their lives.  One can come away from trauma with powerful negative beliefs that shape their world:  There is something fundamentally wrong with me; I am defective in some way.  I am not safe; the world is unsafe.  It was my fault; I should have done something different.  Or, I am powerless;  I can’t do it. It’s easy to see how such negative beliefs create powerful negative emotions and drive certain behaviors while restricting others.  How does one thrive and achieve success when carrying around such burdens?  Clearly, it’s a far more difficult path to success in business and in life when perceptions are distorted with self-blame and loathing.

Consider an alternative extreme, wherein someone is protected, loved and showered with praise throughout their youth.  This person ‘believes’ in herself, knowing that she can achieve anything she sets her mind to accomplishing.  This person’s beliefs may be as follows:  I am smart.  I am a good person.  I am lovable.  I am empowered.  And how do you think will her behaviors will differ from someone carrying around negative beliefs about self?  She behaves like what she believes:  empowered!  Even when beliefs are unconscious, held below the level of conscious awareness (which most of them are), we can see the resulting confidence, or lack thereof, in one’s behaviors.

Our beliefs do indeed shape our behaviors and life experience.  They are like the software program that defines how we experience the world.  So what can you do about it if your beliefs are holding you back? First, you can take note of the fact that your beliefs are shaped by 1) past experiences and 2) messages taken in from parents, teachers, friends and all of those people in your social environment. In other words, they were learned.  This is one of the most important things to understand:  you have been programmed by your environment.  When you understand this concept, you can begin to take charge of the experiences and messages that you absorb into the unconscious mind.  And you can do that through a process called self-hypnosis.  You can decide what experiences and messages are absorbed, and which beliefs are fostered…and simply allow the unwanted beliefs to fade away from lack of use.  This is a proven fact and you can start leveraging it today.