Understanding Self Sabotage: 10 Principles That Will Change Your Life

By Bill Harris (1950-2018), late director and CEO, Centerpointe Research Institute

What you believe has a powerful effect on your life.
Your beliefs, including those you are not consciously aware of, are actively working RIGHT NOW to attract things that you DON’T WANT in your life.

Let’s explore 10 powerful principles about your beliefs and how they either sabotage your hopes and dreams…

…or magnetically attract the things – love, success, health, peace of mind – that you DO want in your life

Because, when you master your beliefs, you can use them to create whatever you want.

To do that, you must develop the awareness to go inside and watch to see how they generate what happens in your life, inside and out. So, let’s begin:

1: We don’t consciously choose our beliefs.

Based on early life interactions and experiences, especially with our primary caregivers, we all develop beliefs about who we are and what our relationship is to the rest of the world.

We don’t consciously choose these beliefs.

We soak them up when we’re too small to evaluate them. Beliefs become core components of how we see other people, the world, and ourselves.

2: Whatever you believe, your mind will find a way to make it come true.

Beliefs, in combination with other aspects of your internal cognitive world – what I call your Internal Map of Reality – create or attract the results, circumstances, and experiences of your life.

This drive to create consistency is so strong that people will do almost anything to be right about their beliefs, including creating failure, suffering, and unhappiness.

And when we lack awareness, we don’t even know we’re doing this

Beliefs shape your life because you make life conform to whatever you believe.

Of course this works both ways. If you believe something positive, you’ll attract, interpret, and create positive things in your life.

3: Significant negative emotional experiences cause us to focus on the wrong things.

These experiences cause us to say to ourselves, in effect, “There’s danger out there, and I have to avoid it.”

Then, whenever something reminds us – consciously or unconsciously – of a past traumatic experience, we attach the original negative emotions to it and re-experience the negative emotions we originally felt, even if there’s no actual danger in that present moment.

Quite naturally, we feel that we need to focus on that danger in order to avoid it

Since focusing on anything gives your mind an instruction to create or attract more of it when you do this, you ironically end up getting the very thing you’re trying to avoid.

4: Since everything is true to the person who believes it, evaluating beliefs based on whether they’re supposedly “true” or “false” isn’t helpful.

This is true because you’ll create or attract or make up whatever evidence you need in order to be “right” about what you believe

The best way to evaluate a belief is by examining the consequences it creates

Since all beliefs are true to the believer, believing something “because it’s true” is useless, at best, and often dangerous

It’s fallacious, circular logic. And, once you decide to believe something, you’ll begin to create the experiences and evidence that will back up that belief

You must be willing to decide what to believe, based on what you want:

• Believe that you can make money, and you will.
• Believe that you can have great relationships, and you will.
• Believe that you can be happy, and you will be.
• Believe that you’re lovable, and you will be.

5: The “Witness Posture” will replace beliefs that don’t serve you (with ones that do).

When you watch, with awareness, the process of how what you believe creates what happens in your life this process almost magically causes any belief that isn’t resourceful to fall away and whatever is resourceful to remain.

This works because watching with awareness creates choice. It’s impossible to do something that doesn’t serve you, and do it with awareness.

Now, a lot of people misunderstand what I mean by “doing something with awareness.” They think that because they know they’re doing something, they’re already doing it with awareness.

But cognitively knowing something isn’t the same as doing it with awareness

Watching with awareness means that you’re seeing what you’re doing – much of which is happening internally, including the consequences – in real time, as you do it.

6: You can choose what you want to believe, and in doing so, choose your results.

Once you’ve watched the creative process with awareness and have caused a self-sabotaging belief to fall away, you can then consciously choose a more resourceful belief: one that creates the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical results you want.

You don’t have to believe what seems to be true based on past experience. Beliefs are nothing more than instructions to your mind to make something happen.

Instead of accepting results you don’t want, you can choose beliefs that create what you do want.

Once you actually see, with awareness, exactly how you create “no one loves me,” or “I’ll always be poor,” or any other belief that doesn’t serve you – the negative belief will fall away and you’ll be able to consciously choose a new belief that will give you the results you want.

7: A key step in replacing beliefs that don’t serve you is to discover what you currently believe.

Over the years I’ve noticed that most people aren’t aware of what they believe; They’ve never examined their beliefs.

If you have less-than resourceful beliefs, you’ve been suffering their negative effects for years, probably without realizing the connection between your beliefs and your results.

If there are areas in your life that aren’t working: you need to figure out what you believe in those areas.

8: What you believe determines your results in life.

If you’re getting a certain result, you probably believe that it can and will happen to you. Then you unconsciously find a way to make it come true.

Let me make one thing clear. Though what you believe does manifest in your life, this doesn’t happen by some sort of magic.

What you believe manifests in your life because the belief leads you to DO something to make it manifest.

What you create happens because focusing your mind motivates you to act.

It’s important to note that some things will happen in your life that are not created by what you are focusing on. There are random events in life, things caused by other people’s agendas, and things that happen because of genetics.

But, when you focus on what you want, and take action to get it, you have so much power that you either overcome random events, genetics and other influences, or you find a way to turn them into something positive.

And positive thoughts lead to positive action… and positive results.

9: As long as you continue to hold the same beliefs, you’ll continue to get the same results.

There’s no way to continue to hold the same beliefs and get different results. To get different results, you must be willing to adopt different beliefs – the beliefs of others who are getting the results you want.

First, decide which results you want. Then, figure out what beliefs would create those results, and adopt those beliefs. If you do, you’ll get the results implied in those beliefs

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

There is no way to change your results other than to change the contents of your Internal Map of Reality, and one key component of that map is what you believe

Once you know what your beliefs are and have decided which new and different results you want, the next step is to decide which beliefs would create those results

And for that, we go to Belief Principle #10.

10: To get what you want in life, you have to focus consciously and intentionally.

If you’re having trouble in your life, you’re very probably imagining a lot of what you don’t want.

Your ability to imagine isn’t the problem. It just needs to be directed toward what you want.

And, as you focus on what you want, be alert for ideas, for opportunities, for resources you can use to get what you want, for people who might help you.

Then take action. And no matter what happens, keep going! Often success comes after many “educational failures”

Read books by people who share your new belief. Socialize with people who share it. Find a mentor who will help you adopt the new belief.

Look, you’re already an expert at creating what you believe and focus on.
It’s just that up to now you haven’t consciously and intentionally chosen what to believe and what to focus on

Your focusing has been happening automatically, and as long as you continue to do it that way, you’ll continue to create the same results

To get what you want in life, internally and externally, you have to do your focusing consciously and intentionally.

And when you do that, you will automatically start attracting the things you want in life, instead of those you don’t.

About Centerpointe Research institute

Centerpointe Research Institute was founded by the late Bill Harris in 1989.

The Institute produces as it’s flagship a product called ‘Holosync®,’ an audio program formulated to recreate the brain wave patterns of experienced meditators.

If you use this program daily, you can achieve the same results in 8 times the time it takes for traditional meditation.

If you would like to get a free e-book called ‘The New Science Of Super Awareness’ by Bill Harris, please visit this web site.

When you sign up, you will also be able to get the audiobook version for free. You can also get a free demo of Holosync® as well.