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You gotta have faith, faith, faith.
Apart from being one of my favorite song lyrics from the 80s (George Michael, RIP)… it’s really true.
I’m not getting all religious on you. Not at all. We all operate on faith, all the time. And the more faith you have, the better life gets.
I’m sure I couldn’t function very well without it.
Faith allows me to operate more efficiently, and to feel relaxed and peaceful. It allows me to file a lot of things in the “this is handled” folder of my brain, and as a result I can stop spinning my mental wheels. And when I do that I have greater focus, am more open to new opportunities and I unleash the flow of abundance in my life.
I avoid burning my mental energy on imagined problems that may never happen.
But the word “faith” can bring with it some weird connotations. So let me tell you what I mean when I say “you gotta have faith”…
I have faith that my body will do what my brain tells it to – like walking, chewing and laughing. And lots of other stuff that I don’t have to consciously tell it to do as well – like breathing, blinking and digesting my food. If I didn’t have faith in all of that, then I’d probably worry about those things. All the time. And that’s really what faith is so good for: stopping worry and anxiety.
So how do I build more faith?
Much of my faith is subconscious – it’s based on my belief system. I check on the integrity of my subconscious belief system as regularly as I can.
“Are the things that I believe actually consistent with and supportive of what I want from life?”
That’s a vital question to keep on asking. Especially because what I want from life can change over time.
Beliefs are subconscious and therefore below the level of conscious awareness. So, how will I know if there’s a problem in that area, you ask? Good question!
It usually shows up in the form of repeated frustrations. A feeling like I’m trying and trying but not making much progress. When that happens, and it’s a pattern, then I know that I have some subconscious belief change work to do.
(I talk about HOW to change subconscious beliefs in my book The Abundance Code, available on Amazon).
Some of my faith is that which I consciously choose to have. This is when I decide where to place my faith and how to build it.
For example, on a day to day basis I choose to have faith that the friends and family members I’m close to can be trusted. I have faith that they love me, and they have my best interests at heart. I also choose to have faith that my heart is resilient. If I get hurt I’ll practice self care, get the support I need, and do what I can to recover. This faith allows me to open myself up to love.
I choose to have faith that my body is well and my health is good, even if I could still improve it some more.
I choose to have faith that my daughter is a healthy and happy teenager, and that she’ll talk to me if there’s something she’s really struggling with.
However, I’m not really into blind faith. I like to check up on it from time to time. Otherwise I find that my worries creep back in.
I’ve already mentioned how I check up on my subconscious beliefs. On the conscious level, I check on the assumptions underlying my faith from time to time. I get regular health exams. I initiate conversations with my teenage daughter about life, her friendships, and how school is going. I make sure she has access to counselling. I get counselling myself from time to time about my relationships and having healthy boundaries. These are just a few of the ways I check on things.
Here’s a practical example, that involved quite a simple shift for me in order to build more faith. I used to wait until my tank was empty to put more gas in my car. I waited for the little “low on gas” light to come on before I went to the gas station. What that meant, is that if I happened to be a fair distance from a gas station when the light went on then I’d worry about whether I’d make it or not. I didn’t have faith in my car going very far once that light was on. And rightly so.
One day I realised there was no rule that said I had to wait until the light went on before I refilled my car. Duh! I’d just kind of made that up and allowed it to be the way I operated. So instead, I decided that I could go ahead and refill the car when the tank was still ½ or ¼ full. It might mean slightly more frequent trips to the gas station, but I’d never again have to worry about running out of gas. With my new rule of operation in place, I could put the question of having enough gas into the “this is handled” folder in my brain. That freed up space for much better thoughts and created more peace of mind.
I don’t view faith as a static thing. It’s something I have to maintain. And when I do check up on it, and work actively to build it, then it becomes an amazing asset in my life. It allows me to put more and more things in the “this is handled” folder. And that allows me to relax, be open to more opportunities, create more abundance in my life and have more fun.
That’s what I mean when I say “you gotta have faith.”
As always, let me know in the comments if this post has helped you in any way.
To YOUR Abundance,
Julie Ann Cairns
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