Your beliefs shape your life. How’s your life right now? Any areas you’d like to change? If there are, you have the key – your beliefs. Even more amazing is that it’s really not that tough to change your beliefs. It can happen in an instant. I know. I’ve changed lots of them. Change your thinking, change your life. I’ve proved it –several times over.

Now – while I’m a natural optimistic, I also have a brain that likes science, truth, and proof. And I’m happy to report that science is starting to find evidence for this belief business.

Dr. Bruce Lipton, cell biologist and author of the “The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness” says that we are not victims of our genes but are co-creators of our lives and our biology. He finds his evidence in the relatively new field of science called epigenetics. Let me give you just a taste of this science. Science used to think that a cell’s nucleus, which contains the DNA, was the brain of the cell and absolutely necessary to its functioning. Well, they’ve since found that they can remove the nuclei from cells and yet they continue to live and function. It turns out that the real ‘brain” of the cell is the membrane, which reacts to and responds to outside influences, adjusting to an ever-changing environment. This environment includes our thoughts – what we are unconsciously telling our genes to do.

Ok, so what does this have to do with changing your life for the better? Well bear with me a bit more in the scientific realm. Our perceptions are in the subconscious which controls 95 percent of our life. And like an iceberg, most of this is underneath the ocean, out of our site, out of our awareness. Our conscious mind processes a much more limited amount of information and is busy keeping us safe while we drive our cars, cook dinner and check our emails. Much of what’s in your subconscious was programmed in there during your first six years of life. And for many of us, most of these subconscious thoughts are pretty darned limiting.

So how to change those thoughts that are limiting? Here are the techniques I’ve used:

Visualization – creating images of what you’d like, on paper, in your mind, or with words
Visioning – sitting quietly and asking yourself a few questions – letting ideas just bubble up from your inner source, then jotting them down.
Affirmations – short, positive statements to help reprogram your thinking
Meditation – a period of quiet –either letting your thoughts just come and letting them go or contemplating a quote or spiritual passage
Power questions – asking yourself a powerful question – ex. what do I need to do to embrace this new idea?
Role models – finding someone who has already accomplished what you want to do or has qualities you admire and then patterning yourself after this person
Support groups/teams – you get to be heard deeply, get new ideas and have an accountability structure to keep you moving forward
Success! - I find it easier and easier to shift my beliefs as I experience small successes along the way – you will too!

“My mission is to help individuals acknowledge what they love to do and to do more of that. As a Religious Science Practitioner I provide spiritual coaching to help others disarm their worries doubts and fears.” Ann Ronan, Ph.D. is a former staff member of Brown University in Providence RI, volunteer faculty member of Loma Linda University in Southern California and co-author of When Work Isn't Working: Spirituality at Work 101. Visit http://www.authenticlifeinstitute.com or contact Ann Ronan at ann@authenticlifeinstitute.com.