We need to take action to get results. The action is to find my bad beliefs, change them and find evidence that the changed belief is true.

Finding your bad beliefs is incredibly simple once you understand:

BELIEFS cause THOUGHTS which cause FEELINGS which cause ACTIONS which cause RESULTS

Which I hope you do. For bad beliefs you already know about great. Put them in your spreadsheet.

For the bad beliefs you don’t know about you have to identify any bad thoughts, bad feelings, bad actions and bad results you are consciously aware of first. Then put them in your Excel sheet and work backwards till you get to the bad belief.

So for example let’s say I’m single and don’t want to be. This is a bad result. As we know bad results are due to bad beliefs. So under the column RESULT we would put “single”.

Then working backwards I would ask what actions am I taking or not taking for the reason why I am single. Let’s say it’s because I don’t ask out any women. Then we would put “avoid women” under the ACTION column.

Then working backwards again I would ask what feelings am I experiencing when I am avoiding women. Well I get nervous around women. Especially if she is very attractive. So under the FEELINGS column I would put “nervous”.

Then working backwards again I would ask what thoughts am I having to make me nervous. I would realise that thoughts like “she wouldn’t like someone like me” and “I’m not that great” and “she probably wants someone more handsome or richer than me”. So put these thoughts under the THOUGHTS column.

Then working backwards again I would ask where do these thoughts come from. I would realise that I have a bad belief of something like “I’m not good enough”.

Boom.

We have just found a bad belief by identifying a bad result and working backwards. Throughout life I would have been finding the evidence to support this bad belief. And guess what, because of my Reticular Activating System, I would have found it. Consistently.

Your spreadsheet would look like this: