I WAS BROWSING THROUGH OUGH the Sunday morning newspaper while casually sipping a hot mug of lemon tea when I chanced upon a piece of feature story which made a
reference to something called the “4 minute mile”.

This aroused my curiosity and I went on further reading what it really meant. It made a reference on how people in the past believed that it was impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than a minute. That was the belief until one day sometime in the year 1954; a person named Roger Banister proved the age old myth wrong. It seemed to be a great achievement and the year after that about 300 runners did the same thing. It seemed really amusing to read this piece of information and I started pondering over various things like
these which easily make people change their beliefs. Is it not true that our belief determines how much potential we will be able to tap within ourselves? Do we really believe in whatever we do?

Some questions have mixed thoughts, the unsure trust whether we may or may not be able to do something. I believed since school days that I am bad at mathematics. Since then on it became a conviction that I cannot solve any mathematical questions just because I think I cannot. I then realized that I never even tried to learn the basics of the subject and stayed away from it. How could I then get over this ‘maybe false belief’? We as human beings, always have various beliefs about people. It can be called prejudice or the assumption than a person may be different from what they really are. This reminds me of a story which my lecturer told us once during a literature class. It was about a person who saw a man entering a toddy house. He went there to drink and this person framed him as a drunkard, something that any
one of us would naturally think. The next day he saw the same man in a temple, and he remarked “A drunkard has come to the temple”. Isn’t it strange we hold beliefs about
people so easily and so naturally that we do not make the effort to reconsider the whole issue? Have you heard about the placebo effect? People who are told a drug will have a certain effect will many times experience that effect even when given a pill without those properties. It’s all in the mind.

Another remarkable incident that I remember reading in some work of fiction, the name I don’t recollect, was about a woman who met an attractive young man in a singles bar. They had a casual conversation for a while and he offered her a drink. She liked him instantly and figured out he was a decent kind. He then offered to drop her back home as it started to pour and as it was quite late she obliged heartily. While driving back, she realized that they were moving through strange narrow and dark roads. ‘Oh god where is he taking me?’ she thought but did not have the guts to ask. She cursed her decision to get into his car. All of a sudden she saw him taking a turn back into the highway just near her house. Smiling, he said: 'I took a short cut'. Did this story end the way you thought? Review your beliefs now and find out which ones are empowering and which ones you need to change.

Consider this. What happens if you put an animal in a pond? Any animal, big or small, will swim its way through. What happens when someone, who does not know how to swim, falls in deep waters? You drown. If an animal who has not learned swimming could escape by swimming, why not you? Because you believe you will drown while the animal does not.
These cases show the power of our beliefs. There is no other more powerful directing force in human behavior than belief. Your beliefs have the power to create and to destroy. A belief delivers a direct command to your nervous system.
No belief is right or wrong. It is either empowering or limiting. A belief is nothing but the
generalization of a past incident. As a kid if a dog bit you, you believed all dogs to be dangerous. To change a particular behavior pattern, identify the beliefs associated with
it. Change those beliefs and a new pattern is automatically created.