If you are interested in personal and spiritual growth, you’ve surely encountered the topic of working with your (limiting) beliefs. It’s literally everywhere and it’s here to stay as a core component of the growth of our individual and collective consciousness. In more practical terms, working with your beliefs is a way to reclaim your power over your inner world and as a result generate a different external reality for yourself in any of the core areas of your life where you might feel blocked or unsatisfied (career, money, social life, intimate partnership, health). I’d like to share with you a practice that you can use to examine a belief’s tree-like structure as a way of bringing awareness and shifting it. But first, a little bit of background.
Most of the beliefs literature and tools currently in circulation can be traced back to the work of spiritual teacher Esther Hicks. She was the one to rekindle the term ‘Law of Attraction’ referring to the idea that our inner dialogue ‘attracts’ an external reality that corresponds to it. Instinctively, we usually think the opposite – eg. if I have little money, I will think that I have little money. What Esther says is that because you think you have little money, you will behave in ways that generate that kind of external reality (in the form of places you go, people you meet, circumstances you find yourself in). Your belief of having little money will have you play small and cautious, which in turn will make sure your situation stays the same.
Based on that knowledge, what you do to change things is you generate a belief that says that you ‘have enough money’, which gets you to loosen up and expose yourself to circumstances where you can actually increase your income. To generate that belief, you basically define the new statement (‘I have enough money’) and repeat it to yourself or find another way of having it sink down to your subconscious.
I’ve been using this method for a year now and I can say it has made a huge difference to my life, ever since I first learned about it from my amazing coach Laura Fredrickson (who is the person to talk to if you really want to dive into the topic of your money beliefs). However, in one of my recent breakdowns/awakenings 😀 I found that the term ‘belief’ is not a static statement, but actually has depth. It’s a 3D structure that you can imagine as a tree. When you approach beliefs work from that perspective, you are working from a space of deeper awareness that can facilitate the speed and depth of your process.
Let’s look at the tree. If we take the ‘not enough money’ example from above, you can imagine that your belief will actually have:
- a crown – an upper part that is full of leaves – the thoughts that cross your mind on a daily basis that affect different aspects of your life, related to that specific belief. For example: “I can’t afford a vacation”, “I need to check how much money I have left in my account”, “I am afraid to ask for a raise”, “I can’t treat my girlfriend to dinner” etc. If you stay on that level, you might tell yourself that you can and will buy yourself a vacation, but that’s like a leaf falling from a tree. The tree is still there.
- a trunk – a solid middle part that corresponds to an aspect of your identity, a story about yourself that you tell yourself, eg. “I am a person who doesn’t have enough money”. On that level, you can work with your beliefs with more success, because you are addressing the issue on a deeper level. However, if you cut the tree here, some of that trunk/identity might still hang around for a while.
- roots – the deepest part of each tree/belief is related to the question: ‘Where is that idea about myself coming from?’. And you guessed it, it’s coming from your past, most probably childhood. On this level, what helps is to take some time to meditate and ask your subconscious to bring up at least 3 memories as to where is that idea coming from, allowing yourself to experience them as vividly as you can. You might get images of your surroundings as a child (that might have been less than affluent), voices of parents who shamed you for wanting a toy because they don’t have enough money etc. At the end of your meditation, take a moment to tell yourself ‘I have deep love for this child, he/she’s been through so much! But this is NOT me. I am not that child anymore.’
Once you are done exploring the whole structure of your tree (helps to paint it actually and write all this down on top of it), you will notice your awareness has grown. It’s not you anymore, it’s a tree that you are looking at, you’ve disidentified with it. It is just like any other tree in the forest of your consciousness! That forest in itself is just a small speck in the vastness of the universe that you are, if you zoom out to include your body, your subconscious, your awareness, your energy and the way you are connected to everything around you.
Zooming back into your forest, your next task is to look for another tree that corresponds to the belief you’d like to nourish in yourself, eg. ‘I am a person who has enough money’. It might be just a sapling or a more mature tree. Take some time to draw and examine that one too. What are the leaves, what are some examples of events/areas in your life right now where you are feeling you have enough money? Even if it’s something small, like yesterday you bought yourself a more expensive snack, because fuck it, that counts, put it in. Then look at the roots – what are some memories that you have in which you felt like you had enough money? Again, you might want to go in meditation for this one and ask your subconscious to bring in a couple of positive examples from your childhood.
Once you are done, your job is to nourish that new tree you discovered in your forest and allow the other one to grow old and die away in its own time. How do you nourish the tree? Just like a real one, by bringing attention to it. Can be just a mental reminder every time you see a sapling or have a question about buying something or not, can be a drawing you stick somewhere where it’s easy to see. Even better – take time to attend to its leaves and roots, the points where it receives nourishment. Look for new leaves growing, what is some new evidence you are seeing of that belief (of having enough money in this case). Check with the roots, remind yourself of those good moments in the past or look for new ones you haven’t seen before. You can do it in writing or just by setting an intention to bring your awareness to it as a daily practice.
And remember to have fun with this. It’s your forest and you get to shape it and grow with it!
If you feel like you could use some support with this, reach out to me. I am always happy to co-create coaching and shamanic spaces with beautiful people on a journey of soul and purpose.
About The Paradise Vlog
I believe we already are in paradise, regardless of where we are and what’s going on in our lives. I believe life is a journey towards becoming aware of this and enjoying as much of it as we can in the limited amount of time we have here. The ‘The Paradise Vlog’ youtube channel is the space where I share my process of shedding patterns and beliefs that obstruct our view in order to replace them with presence, joy and wonder. It’s also my invitation to you – an invitation to connect and journey together in creative ways, as we help each other see through to the greatest expression of ourselves. I also love creating spaces for growth-oriented people to connect to their soul power and life purpose. I do that in the form of coaching, shamanic work and workshops. Reach out if you feel curious to explore these topics with me.
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