Conflicting Beliefs
Cause Your Stress

For years I’ve been saying that beliefs are the basis of reality. Beliefs generate thoughts and emotions, which in turn create all your experiences. It is that simple and there are no exceptions.

Your beliefs are the result of programming from your current incarnation and from your past lives. And many of your beliefs are faulty and self-defeating. They are blocks to your happiness and success. So if you’re not satisfied with your life, you need to begin the process of reinvention by changing beliefs.

But in this column I’d like to apply beliefs to stress. Stress manifests as a conflict between beliefs: 1) We have a belief about how things are, and 2) we have a belief about how things should be. When these two beliefs do not align, the result is stress.

Your belief about how something is, is not necessarily reality. You may think it is reality, but that doesn’t make it so. Reality just is. You can not change what is. And if there is no possibility of changing it, why resist it? Remember Buddha‘s words: “It is your resistance to what is that causes your suffering.”

So stress is caused by a conflict between your interpretation of reality and your expectations of how things should be.

Exercise: 1) Recall a recent stressful experience. 2) Capture the emotions that accompanied the experience. 3) Explore your belief about how things were (your perception of reality). 4) Explore your belief about how the situation or other person should have been. 5) Explore the conflict between the two that caused the stress. 6) Also consider the experience from the perspective of your expectations being in conflict with what is (reality).

“Belief is an impediment to reality, and that is a very difficult pill to swallow for most of us. We are not seeking reality; we want gratification, and belief gives us gratification, it pacifies us.”

-- J. Krishnamurti

* * * * *

The following Dick Sutphen books and CDs relate to this week’s column: “Reinventing Yourself -- A Metaphysical Self-Renewal System” -- 180 pages -- B927 -- $9.98. / “Enlightenment Transcripts -- The Master of Life Spiritual Potential Principles In Fast-Reading Dialogues” -- 128 pages -- B923 -- $3.98. / “Radical Spirituality” -- B938 -- $12.00 / “Self-Mastery Course (Nightingale Conant multi-tape album -- NC102 -- $99.95 / See over 300 mind-programming tapes and CDs at www.dicksutphen.com and www.sutphenpublishing.com.

Astrology charts and special computerized charts and reports to help you create your own reality are available by clicking here.

  E-MAIL LIST

To be included on Dick Sutphen’s Master of Life Column e-mail list, click HERE and in the SUBJECT slot type “Subscribe”.

Back to:

• Dick Sutphen Articles