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Thirty-six Core Beliefs Influence How She Lives

By Barbara Levine, reprinted with permission

Page Two of Four

I believe life has many goals. I choose my goals, which teach me life's lessons, thus fulfilling my purpose. I believed I would eventually reach my goal of better health and improved physical functioning so long as I took each step necessary to complete the journey. I keep my end goal in mind so the process is just what I have to do, or go through, in order to get there.

I believe a primary purpose of life is to have fun. A key to my survival is my keen interest in what happens, good or bad, and my belief that everything that happens to me is an adventure. While going through many of these adventures, I may hate or fear them and wish I could avoid them.

I believe we must play life like a game. I'm still learning to do this. As a game it is fun, but when I play it for real, I often suffer. It's funny, because I don't like riding the roller coaster, which many people ride for excitement. But, I guess one could say the roller coasters I get my kicks from are some of the problems I've had in life. Sometimes I even think the more, the merrier. Just kidding! Cancel that potentially harmful seedthought!

I believe in taking myself seriously and also laughing at myself. I often told myself, "You are 'hot stuff' for having gone through brain surgery and surviving to report on it." Perhaps, at a subconscious level, the tumor and resultant surgery served to validate my whole existence.

I believe the mind is like a tape recorder. We have memory tapes which often get stuck, so we replay them over and over. Yet we can erase the pattern of memories being re- played with the tools I've written about. The content of the un- conscious part of your mind often affects you as much as the content of your conscious mind and maybe even more. So it's important to get to know the hidden you and work to change any harmful unconscious programming.

I believe an important part of healing is learning to be comfortable with our emotions. The language of emotion is sparse, possibly a result of our difficulty handling emotions. Take the word "love." We have one word which we say to express the feeling of love for everything from food, to sex, to people. Surely we don't love each of these in the same way. We need new words to make distinctions between those different feelings of love. Learning to love and accept ourselves is basic to human education. So is learning to use language to express emotion in a positive way. Ultimately when we learn to truly love and accept ourselves, we'll be able to live well and love each other and every thing we encounter.

I believe in the power of affirmation, visualization, imagination, and prayer as tools for change. I use some of these techniques daily. My first chosen affirmation, repeated over and over again early on in my quest to help my physical body, was, "I give thanks for my pure, perfect, whole, and holy body." A massage therapist I used then also kept telling me how healthy I was. At first I didn't believe it or her. My subconscious mind was invalidating the goal I was affirming by rebelling against the affirmation. Unhelpfully, I would say to myself, "Barbara, what makes you think you are healthy?" But the therapist's positive belief about me and my practice affirmations worked well together. I soon realized that my body is a perfect vehicle for learning my life lessons, which made it easier to accept and give thanks for my perfect body. After a while I noticed how much better I was feeling. I found myself wholeheartedly affirming I was indeed healthy and had a body that worked very well.

CONTINUED on Page Three

© Copyright 2001, Barbara Levine, owner of Aslan Publishing