What exactly is a belief? We all have them. We create a personal vision and perspective towards food, relationships, jobs and basically… Life in general. A belief is something we keep thinking over and over again. You plant it the day and time you experience pain or pleasure with that person, an object, or even a specific place. Let’s say you were stung by a bee while you were on a field trip when you were 6 years old. You would come to believe that bees are pests and would avoid them at all costs. You would instantly exclude yourself from any positive aspect of what he offers. You will not be interested that they have worked hard all their lives to collect pollen that produces honey. You might even come to resent honey just for the fact that it’s associated with bees.

So if we hold on to old beliefs that don’t serve us for long, they become embedded in our life experiences and we find it difficult to make decisions. We create fear and instill it within our system when we don’t try to look at it from a different angle, or create a whole new perspective on it. We are unable to divert our focus from the negative aspect of it. That is when we create limitations for ourselves. We find fewer and fewer things to eat as we read and come across one more book or article that says what not to eat. It’s a true miracle that anyone can find something to eat these days, almost every ingredient on this planet has been discarded by someone, somewhere, in this world.

You read something positive about apples today and it filled your fridge. A week later, you read something that reflects and portrays the negative side effects and you throw it all away. We have long built “belief systems” about it. We were “educated” about it at school, at home, and from the people we surround ourselves with the most since we were born. The question is, when will you begin to build your own belief system based on your own personal and individual awareness of things that serve you well, to discover what is good for you and your well-being? Or will you pass on your own limiting beliefs to your own children, grandchildren, and even future generations? The ones that your own parents and teachers so significantly gave you?

Make the deliberate decision to see the best and the good in everything and you will open up a whole new world of diversity and choice and alternative options to enjoy every moment of your life. Embracing different cultures, vast choice options invented and created for the sole purpose of allowing you more paths to discover what is best for you. Are you going to go to the buffet and choose the things you love and leave the rest just for others who appreciate them and see the value in them in their own way? Or would you rather condemn the items you don’t like while letting the ones you potentially would have enjoyed become stale and bad for the time you’ve wasted putting your attention and hands where it shouldn’t belong?

Take a percentage of this and a fraction of that, pretty soon they will all add up and combine over time. Just like in the bank, it doesn’t come in a lump sum. But when it matures, you will reap what you sow. It’s in the little efforts you make for yourself. You can’t make decisions based on other people’s opinions all the time without thinking twice and consulting the most important person, and that is “you”. You can’t hope to grow an apple tree you really want when you let someone else plant a seed corn for you in your garden. That is your brain, your magnificent limitless mind of a machine. The quality of our thought is directly proportional to the manifestations of our life. Remember, think your own thoughts and don’t look to others for final decisions. Take advice, comments, and opinions with a pinch of salt, but don’t put it in your soup if you know it won’t taste good.

Create a unique and personalized belief system based on your own life experiences, not others. Go to the buffet and try each thing on that gorgeous multi-tiered shiny tray and then decide which ones felt just right for you. Not everyone enjoys the unique flavor of the exotic durian, the king of all fruits in Asia. But if you find that you like it, then wonderful, keep creating more opportunities to re-savor it and remember the pleasure it brings you. If it doesn’t resonate with your taste buds, move on to the hundreds of other fruits available on the market. Don’t go around telling your peers how bad it tasted and broadcast your own negative beliefs towards a specific thing to others. It’s definitely convincing to do it. We were innately inclined to want to share, but we have to learn to do it selectively.

Hopefully, in the future, we’ll only do it with the things that will actually benefit or help others in one way or another. If not, it only takes a fraction of a second for someone else to assimilate it if they are not deliberate creators of their own mind and life. Create your life as you want. Visualize it, then proceed to own it. That is what it means to be your true authentic self. Have something unique and truly special that you have meticulously crafted with your quality thoughts at the end of the day so you can call it your own. Live a fuller and more abundant life because we sculpt and shape our character and the conditions of our lives by what we think about every day.