If Enough People Imagine and Believe in Something, It Will Happen…
By
Bill Cottringer
“I can believe anything, provided it is incredible.” ~Oscar Wilde.
If enough people believe in something, it will happen…”The ‘Yes-but’ rest of the story is…True, but maybe just not quite in the exact way or at the precise time as imagined and believed.”
Are the New-Age Spiritualists, who are predicting something very BIG, in the way of a major change in consciousness for 2012, correct? (In relation to the end of the Maya calendar of time). Maybe. Consider the major transformations that we have experienced:
- Going from the “Manufacturing Age” to the “Information Age” and all the beliefs that transformation has affected.
- Seeing the explanation of physical reality going from a traditional physics perspective to a quantum mechanics one, and all the new beliefs that transformation has caused.
- Shifting from a basic competitive “win-lose, either-or” mentality to a cooperative “win-win, and-and” one and all the beliefs that have come and gone with that change.
- Changing form a reckless abuse of the planet’s resources to a more thoughtful, stewardship-like sensitivity and all the belief changes involved with that shift.
Furthermore, look at the titles of the books that are so popular today—“The Secret,” “A New Earth,” “The DiVinci Code,” “Eat, Pray, Love,” “A Purpose-Driven Life,” “The Divine Matrix” and all the Harry Potter and Twilight fantasy books and movies. It is obvious that something BIG is in the air.
Behind all failures and unhappiness are “wrong” or incomplete beliefs, while true r and more complete beliefs drive all successes and happiness. Obviously we are all on a success and happiness quest in this life—just do a Google search on these topics or spend a few hours roaming the aisles of a book store to see the most popular subjects, and verify this if you need to.
A very important question that is emerging from this success and happiness quest is, “Why are “wrong” beliefs so easy to adopt and yet so resistive to being changed into correct ones, even with compelling disproof of the old and even more coonvincing proof of the new? A big part of the answer is that beliefs can happen very quickly and yet once formed, are very difficult to bring to the surface in order to understand how they work.
Consider this definition of a belief:
“A belief is a dense packet of energy that is made up of intensely animated thoughts and feelings about the truth of something, based somewhere on a continuum from hard evidence and trust in the validity of the source, to pure, unsubstantiated faith, stored deeply somewhere in the unconscious departments of our minds and hearts.” A bit wordy and over-intellectual, I know, but…
We can have beliefs that are little, medium or big. We can believe evidence about something someone says about us, we can believe trusted authorities that if we try hard enough we will succeed, and we can believe that pure faith moves mountains, even without any proof.
Beliefs are really a self-fulfilling prophetic vicious circle—positive or negative—of the thoughts, feelings and experiences we have, with no clear entry point to know where one stops and the other starts or which effects which most. And oddly, you seem to have to lighten your grip on your really BIG beliefs that drive your whole approach to life, before you can undo all the littler false beliefs that have resulted in failures, which you have accumulated along the way. No wonder beliefs are hard to change!
In the meantime, here are a few practical ways I have managed to grow my own mental flexibility in order to begin to question and rearrange my beliefs in their relationship to the positive success and happiness and the negative failure and unhappiness, I have enjoyed and endured in my journey.
1. Becoming more honest and candid with myself in accepting the likely truth that I don’t know nearly as much as I may pretend to myself and others, especially regarding the results of my basic beliefs, which may be very limiting (Sure I know a lot, but compared to what?).
2. Courageously and inquisitively searching for some kind of positive value and benefits to the painful, negative events I despise most and of which I don’t understand their necessary (although growing tolerance and acceptance of these negative events helps a lot too).
3. Slowing down to notice the most important things I have been failing to notice all along, so I can gradually be more effective in seeing and dealing with reality the way it really is; digging deeper and getting past all the convincing and intriguing illusions, delusions and other surface symptoms of how reality really isn’t (this is very hard to do because this is all too close to who you are to be objective about it).
4. Growing my patience to understand the time-revealed ultimate truths such as the title to this article and the rest of the story, or the reality that I am always being encouraged, guided, pushed, pulled, carried, dragged or flown to a better place for my own good, no matter how bad the current circumstances seem (fortunately this happens with or without my agreement and cooperation, it just happens).
William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA, along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer living in the scenic mountains of North Bend. He is author of several business and self-development books, including,
Re-Braining for 2000 (MJR Publishing),
The Prosperity Zone (Authorlink Press),
You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence),
The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree), and
Do What Matters Most and
“P” Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers), and
Reality Repair Rx (Publish America) This article is an excerpt from an upcoming book
Reality Repair. Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or
bcottringer.pssp.net
