Many people ask, “If I am supposed to change my thoughts to change my life, how do I do that, and how do I keep them changed?”

This is a great question and has a great answer. Our thoughts come from our beliefs. We can’t just change our thoughts if our beliefs remain the same. Where do beliefs come from? Beliefs come through us from many places, persons and experiences. Beliefs come from our upbringing. Beliefs come from the religious affiliation that we might have adopted. Beliefs come from our experiences.

The great master teacher Jesus once said, “It is done unto you as you believe.” He knew that all his healings that took place were coming from the person’s belief in him as healer, but that it was the belief that did the healing. We are the healed and the healer. There was a healer during the 1800 named Phineas Quimby. He is said to have used Jesus’s method of healing, and he said, “Man is his belief.” Dr. Quimby, through mental healing, healed at least 12,000 people over a ten year span.

So, it is our belief that is responsible for everything in our lives. How do you change a belief? It takes time and discipline, contemplation, prayer and meditation. Ernest Holmes, writer, mystic and founder of the Science of Mind gave this formula. He taught his clients to pick an opposite belief. Contemplate its meaning. Meditate on the new belief, and affirm it all day long.

So let’s say you have thoughts of lack all the time that have manifested in never being able to make ends meet or pay your bills on time. If you continue to think these thoughts of lack, you are just going to have the same experience. However, if you get to the belief behind them of perhaps “I am never enough or there is always limitations everywhere,” as example, you have the opportunity to turn this belief around. How about: “The Universe is abundant and overflowing. I am more than enough. I always have more than enough.” Now at first this might seem like a lie, but keep at it. Contemplate it, meditate on it, give affirmative prayer/Spiritual Mind Treatment.

In the scientific world, this would be called rewiring your brain and firing and wiring your neurons in a different direction. I promise if you keep at it, your experiences will begin to change. However, there is one more step and it is most crucial. You must live as if it already is. This doesn’t mean going out and build your debt, but it does mean to begin to give a little more. And, when someone offers to buy your lunch or you find a penny on the ground, know that these are all reflections back to you that your beliefs are changing. I call them signs of land.

Have fun!

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita Andriello-Feren, Co-Founding Spiritual Director CSL Kaua1i and Author