Happiness and Well-Being.

Are you aware that deep within yourself, you have beliefs which have been developed over your lifetime and these beliefs affect your happiness and well-being. A positive belief system creates different life experiences to a negative one. One offers optimism, whilst the other instills pessimism.

Creating a major shift from a negative to a positive belief system takes time, and your first step will be to discover the beliefs which cause you to feel more crappy than happy.

Your positive and negative internal beliefs raise or lower your self-esteem and confidence. They often operate in the background, as instructions or commands, that condition you to live and behave in a certain way. The following examples give an indication of how thoughts can affect behaviour: "Be careful of strangers" or "everyone is friendly" offer completely different ways of interacting with people. As you become more consciously aware of your beliefs, you have an opportunity to change the negative ones. The above example: "Be careful of strangers" may have been a useful belief for a child, but for an adult can infringe upon their relationships with others.

Some people seem to naturally experience happiness and well-being whilst others appear to be plagued by problems or mishaps. Each person's belief system plays a large part in the way their life unfolds.

What is a belief?

A belief is an interpretation, meaning or conclusion drawn from a life experience that in turn becomes the foundation for the way you view life. It is something that you accept and believe to be true, based on the supporting evidence of the experience. A belief is different from a fact. A fact is something that actually exists. It is a reality or a truth. A belief may or may not be true. One example of a belief that is not a fact is that, for many years, people believed that the earth was flat.

Here are some examples of positive and negative beliefs which I have heard people express recently. They highlight how differently people expect to experience life.

"I am so incredibly lucky. I always seem to have good luck".

"Everything always goes well for me".

"I usually get a great parking spot when I go out".

"I have a great life".

"I always have the worst luck".

"Everything always goes wrong for me".

"I hate my job".

"It's one drama after another".

The glass is either half-full or half-empty, depending on your philosophy of life. Optimism and pessimism influence both how you feel and how you experience life. So, there is only one question to ask you: Which type of thoughts will you choose?

Adapted from: From Crappy To Happy