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How to harness the power of belief as a musician

Honestly, I genuinely believe that every single one of you who is reading this post has within you the potential to create incredible music and live a happy and fulfilling life.

There is one thing, that once mastered, can unlock your true potential and start a cascade of events that can entirely change the direction of your life. This super power is so effective that it has bound humanity together, enabled us to co operate and unite on a mass scale and given us direction and meaning in our lives.

The people who truly understand how to gain this power and use it to their own advantage and to the advantage of humanity have become great leaders, experts, influencers and inventors and have changed the world as we know it.

It is the power of belief itself. 

True belief can be self fulfilling and the good news is, you don't have to be told what you should believe in.

Whilst there are many influences in your daily life that have the ability to shape your belief system, it is possible to be intentional about what you believe in and follow certain processes in order to establish and reinforce a belief system that can help you be the person you want to be.

How belief has shaped our societies

Throughout history, religion has played a huge part in shaping societies and offered a single set of shared beliefs to many people. The requirement for faith is referenced in many religious texts and the process for establishing faith is practiced through prayer and ritual.

Belief and faith isn't just tied to religion, but it is interwoven through the very fabric of society that enables law, money, information, countries and leaders to exist. Without faith in these systems, they would simply not function.

We hold many internal beliefs that have been shaped by our experiences and the people in our lives. We may have parents who have helped establish a belief that we are capable of achieving anything, or the opposite may be true and we might feel like we are never good enough.

What we are not told is that beliefs can be created and manipulated, either for good or for bad and that they can be an extremely powerful tool not just for influencing others, but for driving action and change in ourselves.

Belief, according to science

One of the most well known examples of how belief can cause measurable changes in neurobiological signaling pathways, or in other words can quite literally re-wire our brain, is the Placebo Effect.

This is a phenomenon in medicine where someone believes they have taken or done something that will have a medicinal effect, but have in fact taken or done something else that in itself has no medicinal properties, yet still show measurable improvements or changes in their condition.

For example, participants in a clinical study for a painkiller who have in fact been given a sugar pill may still show in improved response to pain because they believe they have taken the painkiller.

Establishing new beliefs

Our belief system and our habits are intertwined in our subconscious. They enable us to function autonomously, freeing up energy for our conscious mind to do other things.

They are ingrained through repetition, some of which may come from external sources via our parents or teachers or TV or social media and some of which might be created and reinforced by ourselves through our own repeated thoughts and actions.

Creating new beliefs and habits requires clarity, persistence and a true desire for the things you want to believe in to be true. But with the right approach, it is possible to change your habits and beliefs and to instil new ones that help you become the kind of person you want to be and to create the kind of change you want to see in the world.

Choose to believe

In order to establish a new belief, you need to decide what you want to be true. This is important and should be something that is aligned with who you are and what kind of influence you want to have on the world. It also needs to be possible, not necessarily realistic, just possible. You'll need an open mind and a genuine desire for your beliefs to become true.

It's not mine or anyone else's job to tell you what to believe, but staying true to yourself and your own principles will increase your ability to believe in something.

Teach yourself through repetition

An effective way to establish a belief is through repetition. This has been used in religious practice in the form of prayer, by candidates campaigning for government, by corporations who want you to believe in their brand through repeated advertising or by your parents who want to create a principle that you will carry for the rest of your life.

Try saying your new beliefs to yourself twice a day - when you wake up and before you go to bed.  Repeat enough times and you will believe it to be true. That's really all you need to do to get started and from there the rest will flow...

Practice and create action

Once you truly believe something, it will begin to affect the decisions you make and the action you take in your life, which will create a chain reaction of events directly influenced by your new beliefs.

This has the power to set you on an entirely new trajectory in life, one that is not left to chance or overly influenced by people or organisations who don't necessarily have your best intentions at heart.

By practising your beliefs every day and intentionally incorporating them into the decisions you make and the things you do, not only will your beliefs continue to grow stronger, but they will actually start becoming true. It might happen quickly, it might happen in 20 years time, but with enough practice and dedication your beliefs will become such a large part of who you are that everything you do will be built around what you believe in.

Summary

As music makers, the power of intentionally creating our own beliefs can help us become better at what we do, have a clear purpose and stamp out negative beliefs such as self doubt, imposter syndrome and other things that stand in the way of our true potential.

With practice, repetition and the right mindset it is possible to entirely transform our lives and the lives of those around us when we genuinely believe in something.

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