Our lives a primarily shaped by our beliefs about life. For example, if you believe that the people in the world are inherently evil and should not be trusted, your days will be filled with skepticism and the whole world to you would be untrustworthy. Then there are those who trust everyone until they are given a reason not to. These people see more hope and optimism in the world and so they are more likely to live a happy life compared to the latter.
Everyone's beliefs about themselves and their world shape how they see themselves and the world. Someone who doesn't like themselves for who they are are more than likely to not get along with others.
We get our first beliefs about ourselves and our world from our parents. If our parents think they must struggle to make a living, we are likely to pick up that belief about life and struggle to make a living. If our parents are religious then there is a high chance we will adopt their religion as our own. Moreover, our parents get their beliefs from their parents and so on and so on. Who said that their beliefs are good, true and beneficial?
We also get our beliefs from the world around us. In other words, the experiences we go through cause us to come to certain conclusions about ourselves and the world and these self-made conclusions become beliefs. For example, let's say you are 7 years old and you meet 10 elderly people in one week and 8 our 10 of them are mean. You would conclude that most elderly people are mean and even if you were to meet a nice elderly man or woman, you're belief about elderly people would taint how you see them. Your entire experience with them would be tainted based on your previous experiences with elderly people.
Our past experiences created beliefs and we hold these beliefs until we find beliefs to replace them. We have the power to believe whatever we want whether it is true or not, and whatever we believe to be true will be true for us.
You have more control and power than you believe!
We literally live our beliefs about ourselves and our world and for that reason I say we create our own reality. Two people can experience the same event and get different results. In fact, every individual experiences every event uniquely, even if the experience is similar to another's. For example, two people go for a walk on a sunny day and one person might complain of feet ache and the sun being too hot while the other feels good to get a daily round of exercise and vitamin D. The only reason they have different experiences is because they both have different beliefs about the experience itself. The experience itself doesn't come with a meaning. The experience must be given a meaning.
When we know and understand this, it becomes obvious that we should change our negative beliefs to more positive beliefs. For example, the person who believes the world is untrustworthy should change their belief so that they can trust people more often. Trust is harmony and only in harmony can we co-exist in love.
We really do shape our reality and that is the reason why we all can look at one thing and see something different. When we experience a thing, we automatically think of other things and experiences we have already experienced about that thing. For example let's say you are at prom and you hear a song from when you were a child; you will remember other times you heard that song, where you were, who you were with and how you felt about that song. All of these memories will determine how you hear the song today at prom. If the song reminded you of a bad relationship, you probably won't enjoy the song at prom; but instead if it was one of your favorite songs, you would probably end up breaking out on the dance floor into some crazy dance moves.
The saying goes: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Beauty, and everything else, is in the eye of the beholder. You are the beholder and whatever you hold in your eye (mind) is the experience you will have. If you hold anger in your eye, you will see angry people, animals and things almost every where and anywhere. If you behold friendliness in your eye, you will find lots of friendly people, animals and all kinds of things.
If you truly understand this then you cannot say that you are a victim of your life. You can never say you are not responsible for your daily life. You cannot say that life is unfair. You cannot say your life is too hard. You cannot say life is against you. You are the one who holds these things in your mind and say they are true, and so that is the experience you will have. At any moment you can change your perception of a thing and have a totally different experience. The question is, "Do you really want to?"
Beliefs are self perpetuating. The more you believe a thing, the more you will see it and thus you will say, "Look, here is proof!" Yet there are people who hold beliefs quite opposite to yours and they, too, have proof for their beliefs.
That is because life doesn't come with a meaning. Life breaks itself up into events and we decide what the events mean to us. Nothing is ever decided for us. I know many of you find that hard to believe because you don't have the proof, but if you open your mind and believe with the faith of a muster seed, you too will see that which wasn't seen before.
