True Confessions: Core Beliefs

Something I learned about recently is core beliefs.  These are beliefs that shape the way you see yourself, others and the world.  They usually develop from childhood on.  Your brain tends to ignore information that contradicts the belief and focus on information that supports the belief, which makes this belief seem completely true to you.  However, unless you've taken the time to discover your core beliefs, you probably don't know what they are.

The good/positive core beliefs you have aren't the problem.  You want to find the negative ones that are holding you down.  You can learn what your core beliefs are by listing a number of situations from your life that provoked a strong emotional reaction in you.  Then ask questions like

• "Why?"
• "What does that say about me/others/the world/my life?"
• "Why is that bad?"
• "Why am I upset about this situation?"
• "Why do I think that?"

until you come to a statement that is an absolute.

I did this exercise with as many recent experiences I could think of and was pretty horrified with the results. Here were the three absolute statements that came up the most.

God won’t comfort me.
    Why? Because I’ve asked for comfort and haven’t received it.
    Why is that bad? Because it shows He doesn’t care about me.
    What does that say about Him? God doesn’t love me.

There’s no point asking God questions because I won’t get answers.
    Why? Because I’ve asked questions and haven’t gotten a response.
    What does that say about me? I’m spiritually deficient.

I can't recognize the Spirit or promptings.
    Why is that bad? Because my salvation depends on it.
    What does that say about me? My spiritual progression is stuck.
    What does that say about me?  I’m damned.

I'm kind of incredulous that I got this far spiritually with beliefs like that obscuring my perspective.

The thing is, I know that at least two of these are false.  I've felt God's love for me before, so why do I still not believe He does?  I am continuing to progress spiritually; so why on earth do I think I'm damned?  (Spiritually deficient - well, we'll see about that one.  That's a bit harder to disprove.)  This seems to be another "mind knows it but heart doesn't" situation.

The next step is to replace those core beliefs with new ones.  Not exactly an easy exercise.  My new ones are:

God loves me.

I am spiritual enough. (Yeah, that's kind of lame, but I couldn't think of a better antonym for deficient.)

I am making spiritual progress.

Now my task is to change these beliefs.  So far I have three ideas on how to do this.

1. Over the next few months, write down all of the evidence I can think of from my life that supports these new core beliefs.
2. Every time I get upset about something or have a negative thought, analyze what core belief is behind it, and state forcefully an opposite positive belief.
3. Use an affirmation app¹ to remind myself over the course of the day what my new core beliefs are.

I'm sure I will be hitting up Google for more ideas in the future, but I figure that's a good start.

¹As usual, no kickbacks.