New Beliefs lead to New Habits

Have you ever tried to change a habit and struggled to stick with the new habit? Mapped out a new exercise regimen and ended up with unused exercise equipment in your garage? Or a new healthier diet plan that fell to the wayside while you returned to the old style of eating and gained the weight right back?

Why do some health habits stick and others don’t?

It is clear that restorative, body supportive habits promote health recovery and we know that this is good for us……. So why is it so hard sometimes to give up a particular food or bad habit and nurture a new one?

Well, to understand this fully, we have to unpack how our spirit/body/mind connection influences our day to day habits. The reason is this:

There is an underlying self limiting belief that is hard wired into our subconscious mind and it is quite simply blocking the new habit.

One would think that life pressures or timing issues lead to these broken promises to ourselves, but truly it is this deep down self limiting belief, often from early childhood, that creates an inner conflict that interferes with making and keeping the new habit.

Day to Day Life Example

Let’s take a real life example to see how this plays out, and then we will look at how to generate a new, expansive belief that aligns us with our souls longing which is unlimited. The habit is possible once we clear the inner conflict and align with our infinite nature.

Let’s say you decide to give up sugar for the New Year, thinking that it will help to keep weight down and lower inflammation. Your body may feel better if you stick to fruit and avoid processed sugars. It seems like a no brainer……if you apply your sensitivity to it, you may notice a difference as soon as you switch to choosing fruit over processed sugars.

For a while the “feel better” will carry you in your new habit.

But let’s say when you go out with friends or to a party, sugary treats are everywhere and you start to go through an emotional trigger around it. Suddenly you feel left out or no fun. You could tell yourself “oh just one bite of dessert is fine” but if this emotional trigger is not examined, it could lead to a spiral relapse into decadent desserts.

Sugar becomes a way to relieve the feeling of inner sorrow or loneliness.

Let’s examine the feelings of this emotional experience around the decision to stop eating sugar; to figure out the self limiting belief that is undermining the new habit.

You might “feel” left out and no fun when deprived of sugar, which means that the cycle of thoughts are racing around feelings of inadequacy and lack of love.

Perhaps there is an underlying belief of lack of love around food choices. As a child, perhaps you were rewarded with sweets for good behavior so stopping sweets is triggering that early belief and brain patterning. The feeling of not being good enough, and not being “part” of the family experience gets triggered when sugar is withheld.

If we look at this thought/feeling/behavior or action pattern, and remember family meals where the dynamic was anticipation of dessert in exchange for good behavior…… we can see a self limiting belief that one will only get love when there is dessert! This belief is a true heart longing, and will seriously undermine the capacity to resist sugar.

So what to do? The answer is actually simple, but not easy to do. Once the old belief is identified we can search and find the inner conflict that is creating the suffering and pain.

The self limiting belief is along the lines of “I will not receive love unless I eat sugar.”

Unlimited Beliefs

So we ask ourselves what are new ways that I receive love now? How can we free ourselves from the box of the old belief and move into an open ended belief that is aligned with where we are now?

Perhaps we can tap our resources; reach out to supportive friends or a life partner and set up fun activities that don’t involve dessert! Or create a new kind of reward system that you nurture and reward yourself for your good behavior with fun activities that you look forward to rather than sweets as a reward.

We can move to experience love in a different way. There are many ways that one can receive love, only some of them involving food…..so a new belief will free us from the attachments and triggers of food and love. The new belief could be along the lines of

“There are unlimited ways that I receive love and have fun.”

The How To’s If you have a habit in mind that you wish to change, walk through the following steps to drill down on the old belief that is limiting you.

This is a system from Kundalini Yoga Therapy helping you to cultivate new beliefs that support healthy habits leading to health recovery: 1.) Take out a piece of paper and draw a line across the top and one line down the center of the page.

2.) The new belief will go on the right side of the page and the old emotions and belief will go on the left.

3.) Pick one area of your life where you are struggling and take a moment to feel into the frequency of that struggle and what you would like to change about it.

3.) Brainstorm a bit on the left side of the page and see if you can pin down the feelings, the thoughts and the underlying core belief that is limiting you.

4.) Jot down that core belief

5. ) Now contemplate how that belief is holding you back from what you truly long for in life. Your soul is unlimited and expansive in every way, so breathe deeply, close your eyes and feel into your higher self guiding you towards your inner freedom!

6.) Write down this new belief on the right side of the page. Try to keep the new belief concise!

Letting it All Sink In

To let this new belief truly sink in, Kundalini Yoga Therapy advises the following technique that allows the subconscious mind to coordinate with the breath to imprint the new belief.

Inhale deeply and gently suspend the breath, and mentally repeat the new belief three times. Then state the new belief ONCE out loud as you release the breath. Continue this cycle for 9-11 repetitions.