Episode 22 - Questioning Your Beliefs

Transcript

Woman: This program is brought to you by PersonalLifeMedia.com.

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Renée Stephens: Welcome to “Inside Out Weight Loss”. I'm your host, Renée Stephens, and together we're accessing the control panel of your mind, body system bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life.

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Renée Stephens: The next step in changing those beliefs once you know what they are, once you've identified them through the exercises that we've gone through in the last several episodes, is to question those beliefs. So beliefs are things that we hold inspite of inconclusive evidence and that’s why they can be so difficult to change.

Today on the show, we'll take a big step forward in changing your limiting beliefs. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the experience. Go ahead and set your intention for this episode, by now you know how to do this. Drop inside for a moment and become present with you. Take a deep breath [breaths deeply] and as you exhale, you can even let an audible sigh escape. Who knows that there are people around you, they may even follow your lead.

What is your intent for today’s show? Is it to revel in gratitude and appreciation? Is it to amuse yourself and have some fun? Is it to experience a deep and transformative breakthrough? Perhaps, just to be present with the energy of the other listeners out there sending you their love and support. By now, you know my intent. Mine is to help as many people as I possibly can in the weight struggle and replace it with peace, joy, and fun.

It's time to open up energetically and connect with all the other listeners of this show across space and time, feel their presence, send them your support, and feel theirs as it comes back to you 30,000 or more times magnified. Talking about the return on investment, there's a power of group intent, a power of the collective that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

We've been talking these last few episodes about limiting beliefs. We discussed what they are, taking something as true inspite of inconclusive evidence. This is why beliefs can be so hard to change because they're not evidence-based. In fact, we train ourselves to ignore evidence that conflicts with our belief and pay attention to evidence that supports it. It's selective filtering and we all do it.

Here's an example I know we can all relate to. Think about politicians on the other side of the fence. So if you're a Democrat, think of Republicans and if you're a Republican, think of Democrats. Even if you can think about people that you've had conversations with or heard people, talking heads on television, talking about the debates and the issues, even when they're presented with evidence that seems to completely refute what they're saying, what do they do?

So if you're a Republican and you present you think is conclusive evidence to a Democrat about an issue, what's the Democrat going to say? Is he going to change his opinion? If you're a Democrat and you do the same with the Republican, is the Republican likely to changes his opinion? No, because the Republican and Democratic convictions are belief-based, evidence is not necessary. The beliefs will be held inspite of inconclusive evidence. They actually come from somewhere else.

All right, enough about politics because I know I'm on slightly dangerous territory here. But I'm in a mood to have fun today so I couldn't resist.  So beliefs are things that we hold inspit of inconclusive evidence and that’s why they can be so difficult to change. But today on the show, we'll be talking about how we can change those beliefs because after all, we create them so, therefore, we can create new empowering beliefs to replace our old limiting beliefs.

We also discussed a pervasive limiting belief in our culture. We discussed the belief that it's hard work to loss weight. We learned five great questions to help you identify your own limiting beliefs wherever they lurk. When you know what you want and you're doing all the right things, if you're not getting it, then there's a darn good chance that there's a belief under there that’s getting in the way.

You remember, perhaps from last episode, I talked about those people who are sure that they're doing all the right things, that they're being good, that they're eating the right way and they're still not losing weight. Then we talked about the two different situations that I find. One is that we have what I call “selective amnesia”--and we've all done this including me--where we conveniently forget about the blow out and remember weeks of perceived deprivation. But really, it's the blow out that balances it out or negates all of those days of low intake.

The other situation is when there truly is a limiting belief, a holding on by the body almost as if the body is in starvation mode because our caloric intake is very low. It holds on that maybe because it goes into starvation, maybe because of a belief or desire or a payoff that we haven’t yet realized in holding on to the weight. Perhaps the weight is serving us in some way that we haven’t yet figured out a better solution for.

For example, if being overweight is perceived as protection, as a safer way to be or one of the things that one of the Yahoo! Group members wrote is “Well, I'm overweight because if I were skinny, then the people who liked me, I won't be able to tell if they're my true friends or not. If they're my true friends, if the opposite sex is truly interested in me for who I am, then they should like me no matter what my weight, so I don’t want to confuse matters by losing weight.” That sort of belief, that sort of thinking can be underneath a resistance to releasing the weight.

We also talked about harnessing the “placebo effect” or the belief that you're being healed because it's that belief, the belief that we are being healed, that something is working for us and transforming our bodies rather than the treatment that’s often what's working. So when we go to the doctor and the doctor hands us a prescription medication, we don’t really know if it's our belief that that’s working or the actual substance that works. How can we possibly know? In drug trials, they don’t know. People have the exact experience with placebo and with the presumably active substance. So let's harness our beliefs.

By the way, have I told you the story about my son’s bumps? Kids are wonderful at believing what parents tell them, what adults tell them. So, interestingly, I had an experience awhile back when--it's a little embarrassing I have to say, but these are the things that if you’re a parent, you will perhaps have some empathy with.

My family came down with a case of glamorous pinworms, not fun. In fact, it was my daughter who got it and we had to take this very strong medication to kill the pinworms. Maybe I should use the placebo in this case. Anyway, so in order eradicate it from the family because it's apparently fairly easily communicable especially between children, I gave my son, myself, my husband, all of us, we got the anti-pinworm medication.

My husband, of course, was out of town at this time. So it's bedtime and about half an hour before, I had given my son this anti-pinworm medication. My daughter had had it, I had had it, everything was fine. I gave it to my son, he's lying in bed, time for the story and kiss goodnight. I noticed he's got some red bumps on his body and I'm thinking, “That’s interesting.” So we have story and the bumps are bigger, and they're getting bigger. OK. I realized very quickly that what we have going on here is an allergic reaction and I have visions of a night in the emergency room, all on my own with the two kids, it's not pretty. I'm scared.

It's time to take a short break now to support our sponsors who make this show possible. We'll get back to the rest of the story very shortly. This is Renée Stephens and you're listening to “Inside Out Weight Loss” on Personal Life Media.

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Renée Stephens: We're back now. Before the break, we were talking about the time when my daughter got pinworms and I had to give my son a very strong medication and he started having an allergic reaction right before bedtime one night. So I remembered something that I had learned from one of my mentors and I said to my son, “Oh, look at those bumps” which he was then beginning to scratch. I said, “Look at those bumps, aren’t they interesting? You know, I really like bumps like that. In fact, I had been wanting to have some bumps like that.”

“You may not know this,” I said, “but I actually have a bump collection and I have been looking for that kind of bump for a long time! They're really interesting!” I said, “You know what? It would be really great--I don’t know if you'll agree to this--but I'm wondering if I could actually buy those bumps from you? Could I buy them? Would you be willing to sell me those bumps? I know that you may like them, they maybe valuable to you but I like to buy them.”

So my son said, “Well, OK, you can buy the bumps.” I said, “How much? Don’t overcharge me.” I think we agreed on a quarter or a 50¢ to buy the bumps. So I said to him OK and I got out my two quarters and paid him for his bumps. He has a lot of detailed questions like “How are you going to take them? When will you take them? Where do you keep them in the backyard?” I told him all of the answers that I bury them in the backyard and I can only take them while he sleeps. By the morning, I should have taken his bumps.

So he goes to sleep and, of course, I'm checking on him very frequently to see what the progress of these rapidly expanding welts are on his body. I'm scared and I'm certainly ready to hop in the car and take my kids down to the emergency room if it's necessary. So I'm watching him and I go in, half an hour, an hour later, something like that, a couple of times. Guess what, the bumps are getting smaller. By the next morning, the bumps were down to little red dots.

He said, “Mommy, look, you took the bumps but you left some little red dots.” I said, “Oh, darn it. Sometimes, those guys, they are little hard to get all at once. But tonight, I'm going to take the rest. I'll take the rest of them.” So the next night, we went over it again. I took the rest of them. The net is that within about three days, there was no trace of these bumps. They were completely gone. I think my son was five or six years old at the time.

This is the power of belief, and beyond that, this is the power of how we can change our physical experience, how we can heal ourselves. The control panel for our bodies while it maybe subconscious to us or unconscious to us, most of the time or all of the time, we can access that. We can access it through belief, we can access it through hypnosis. That’s what happen for my son and that was pretty darn compelling. So ever since, I've been known as the person who buys the bumps. I don’t like bumps. Funnily enough, I had a bump myself and my kids said, “Well, why don’t you buy your own bump, Mom?” I said, “Oh, that’s a good idea.” So I had to buy my own bump.

OK. Well, since we're on a bit of a [xx] role, sorry about that inventory, I have another story to tell you. This is a really interesting story. Last week, we talked about the belief that we can't lose weight because--did you do your homework? Did you write your answers to that question to uncover and release these limiting beliefs? It's actually kind of fun. I know you may not believe me but it is, I promise you.

When you know that you're doing your spring cleaning and you think about how great it will be to have a clean subconscious aligned for your health and well-being, it actually becomes fun to identify these limiting beliefs knowing that you're about to release them and replace them with empowering beliefs. I love finding limiting beliefs! It's like, “Aha! I've got one!” and I promptly start daydreaming about the fabulous implications of releasing it and replacing with an empowering belief. Oh, yes, back to the story.

So, some of you have mentioned to me that you have a belief--and I've heard this from lots of people actually over the years--that it's in your genes that you cannot lose weight because it's genetic. Your mother’s fat and your father’s fat and your sister and brother and uncle are fat, something like that. Whenever I hear that, whenever people say to me, “Well, it's in my genes”, then I know that that’s a code phrase for “I don’t believe that I can change.” I know that it's a code phrase for “I don’t believe that I can change.”

In fact, even science now is coming to realize that it isn’t nature or nurture, but rather we all have genetic markers or genes that can be turned on or off depending on our experience and our mindset. That’s what's being revealed again and again now in genetic science.

So I had a client who was suffering from terrible constipation. I thought, “We're on this team, let's go for it.” So she had constipation her whole life and it was really bad and in fact, her mother had told her when she was a girl that if she was constipated, she should eat more. I guess the idea is that in in one end, out the other. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to work too well for her but it did cause her to have a weight problem, among other things.

Anyway, so her mother had suffered from constipation and her daughter suffers from constipation. So she really thought that it was genetic, and yet, she decided to give it a go with me to change the constipation because she had really tried everything else and “Why not?” she figured. So I took her to a guided hypnotic journey to get things moving, so to speak, and after that, well, guess what? They did move, and it's been about a year and a half since that time and I spoke with her recently.

She said, “You know, that miracle you performed on me, when you got me go into the bathroom everyday, that is so wonderful. I am so absolutely ecstatic about that shift.” So now, her belief has been changed. She now knows that it wasn't genetic at all, it was more a learned way of being that had been passed down from generation to generation in her family. She was able to unlearned it and relearned a healthy way of functioning.

OK, so now you've done your homework. You have your list of why you can't lose weight. You've written down, “I can't lose weight because” or maybe you haven’t but you have it in your minds. Some thoughts about, “I can't lose weight because.” So what's the next step? The next step in changing those beliefs once you know what they are, once you've identified them through the exercises that we've gone through in the last several episodes, is to question those beliefs, to bring them into doubt.

You're not going to go from Republican to Democrat or Democrat to Republican with a snap of my fingers. You're going to question your beliefs. If you've changed your political views, for example, on a given topic, you probably did so through a process. It began with questioning your old beliefs, hearing something, having a thought, something happens and you think, “Wait a minute. Let me think about this again.” That’s really the magical moment; that’s the moment when things open up. When the beliefs open up, your psyche opens up to be reviewed, to be reevaluated, to make sure that indeed you want this belief or you perhaps would like to improve it and get one that works even better for you.

So how do we do this? How do we question them? Well, question them by literally questioning them. You're going to write down counter examples, what's known as counter examples are examples that seem to disprove your belief. So let's take some examples. “I can't lose weight because I've never done it before.” OK, so how do we question that? Well, how do you do anything for the first time? How do we learn? Remember the example of the baby learning to walk? We learn by trial and error. Notice it's not trial and success, it's trial and error. We learn by screwing up! [xx] speaking, we have to find out what doesn’t work first.

So if you haven’t been successful yet at losing weight is because you've been doing research on what doesn’t work. Now, some of us are really, really thorough with this research. Some of us--ever the optimist,--will even try the same thing again and again, hoping that by some magical alignment of the planets and the stars, what didn’t work before will work now. Great. Once we've tried the starvation diet and each of the 12 astrological signs, maybe we're ready then to move on in our research to a new approach, a different approach to see if we get better results.

When we lose weight in an easy and lasting way, it will in fact be the first time that you do it because it's lasting. Not that there’ll be some experimentation along the way and there’ll be some self-correcting, absolutely. We all know about self-correcting. You'll get it a little bit right and then you get it more right and more right and you'll perfect it as you go along. But when it's easy and lasting, then of course, it will be the first time that it's easy and lasting and it will also be the last time you will have found what works and you will stick with it. There has to be a first time.

So the notion that you can't do it because you've never done it before doesn’t really make sense. Of course, you've never done it before that’s why you want to do it now. Can I interject the favor or belief of mine that is slightly off topic here? I used to believe--I don’t know why this is coming to me now--that if no one saw me eating, if it was secret and especially if it occurred at night while standing up and I only took small slivers of cake each time, it didn’t count and no one would ever know.

OK, back on topic. So if you have that belief that you can't lose weight because you've never done it before, then I want you to write in your journal some examples of why that belief just might not be true. Why? In fact, it might be a false belief. OK, that is your homework in your “Inside Out Weight Loss” journal. You can even share the results of your homework on the Yahoo! Group.

We're almost out of time for today. But I like to share with you, before we close, that next time on “Inside Out Weight Loss”, we'll be going through some other of the most common limiting beliefs and some questions that may bring doubt to those beliefs and open up the space in your subconscious mind for new and empowering beliefs.

That brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you for being present. As you know by now, perhaps, there's an “Inside Out Weight Loss” Yahoo! Group moderated by listeners. Go to the blog at www.PersonalLifeMedia.com/Renée and click the link on the right hand sidebar under Blogroll. It will take you to the “Inside Out Weight Loss” Yahoo! Group and I encourage you to join. Also, if you've started an “Inside Out Weight Loss” podcasting club, I'd love to know your format so I can post it on my blog.

Did you know that I have “Guided Journeys” for sale on my site? Well, if you did or did not, they are the same focused journeys that I use with my private clients that are powerhouses of change. Check them out by going to the blog and clicking through to my website or go directly to MindForBody.com and click on Products.

For other shows on the Personal Life Media Network, please visit our website at PersonalLifeMedia.com. There's loads of great content to feed your mind, body, and spirit. This is your host, Renée Stephens, and I'm on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet replacing it with light, love, and fun. Join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves. Take good care.

One final note, if you'd like to help me on the weight struggle and free as many people as possible to live their best lives and you have a corporate gathering, event, or conference that you'd be interested in having me speak at, please send an email to [email protected]. I look forward to connecting.

Woman: Find more great shows like this on PersonalLifeMedia.com.