Module 1
Lesson #5: Nurturing Beliefs
Some people have had more luck than others in life where they have been impacted in positive ways that the nurturing of their beliefs have been positively developed to serve them. For the rest of us, this isn’t the case. We are all the result of the things that have happened to us in our life and these experiences shape the way we perceive and interact with the world. Experiences teach us what is safe, risky, fearful and pleasurable and is what Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov termed as classical conditioning. He explains this as a learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus (what happens in our environment) and a naturally occurring stimulus (what happens within us).
Fortunately for us, the beliefs we have developed due to these instances of conditioning can be changed. They are not part of us but rather a response to a trigger, they are an idea or a belief of what that trigger means; if a response to a conditioned experience can be changed, so can your beliefs!
Take a minute to look at all your conditioning experiences like a garden; you plant the seeds in your garden, look after it and help it grow fruitfully and healthily. When you go to maintain one day you find that there’s small weed in the garden bed – you definitely didn’t plant any weeds, they are weeds for a reason as they multiply and kill your healthy garden. Yet they continue to grow as they are forced by the environment to find a place to multiply for survival.
Think of these weeds like your experiences in the environment, experiences with parents, schools, religion, media, social media, friendships, culture and ideology. When all these contributing environmental factors keep pushing weeds into your garden, nothing else can grow there. If you don’t tend to your garden and clean the weeds out then you have one unhealthy garden bed, just like your unconscious, emotional mind.
It’s not easy to sit in the garden and clean all those years of weeds at the one time. It takes time, strength and persistence to rip out all those deep-rooted weeds, otherwise you’ll never have anything worthwhile growing in your garden. Note to self: do it regularly to maintain your emotional garden!