Hey!

Welcome back to your daily mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going to

talk about changing your beliefs.

Now, beliefs impact really

everything in our life, but

especially difficult experiences.

When a difficult experience arises in our

life, the belief we have about what that

means will condition all of the different

emotions and thought patterns that follow.

And it will often condition

whether we're resilient through

the experience, or whether we get

pulled into a downward spiral.

So there's a helpful acronym that I think

will help us start to explore the beliefs

that we have around certain events.

It's called the ABC model and it comes

from cognitive behavioral therapy.

So A, stands for Activating event.

B, stands for Belief.

And C, stands for Consequence.

So what's an activating event?

Really anything that can happen to you?

Difficult conversation you have,

um, a thought that arises in your

mind could be an activating event.

Um, a car accident, loss of a

loved one, a relationship breakup.

All of these forces that arise in

the world that we don't necessarily

want to happen, but they do.

And so maybe consider an activating

event in your life or something

that you're going through right

now during a difficult time.

Whatever that is, this

is the activating event.

Now, the belief is, well, what

we believe about that event?

If it's a relationship breakup,

the belief we might have is,

I'm always going to be single.

What's wrong with me?

No one loves me.

I'm unlovable.

I'm not gonna find another relationship.

This is my fault.

Those might be the beliefs

that we associate just as one

example or a few examples.

The consequence though, is

what happens from that belief.

So again, using the example, we

already have — the relationship

breakup, activating event, the

belief is no one will ever love me.

The consequence of that,

is going to be what?

Probably a whole series of thoughts, about

why no one will ever love me, all the

things that are wrong with me, that will,

that, that allow me to defend that belief.

I'm feeling down, upset, depressed,

not wanting to get off the couch and

start dating again because why would

I, no one will ever love me anyway.

So do you see how the belief

about the event conditions

everything that comes after that?

And what condition is downward

spiral and not being resilient.

Here's the thing with the ABC model.

We can't change the activating rep.

That's going to happen.

And we can't change the consequence

because that's conditioned by the belief.

What we can work with

is the belief itself.

So continuing with this example that

we've already introduced, if we change

the belief to maybe, oh, you know

what, everyone goes through breakups.

I'm not the only person to

go through this and different

people are for different people.

So maybe I needed to experience

this person to understand more about

myself and to understand what works

for me and what doesn't work for me.

And yet it's painful, but this is going

to make me stronger and it's setting

me up for whoever might come next in my

life that will really be worth my time

and who I really can commit my life to.

That's just an example of a belief,

a long belief, but do you see how

that different perspective would

condition a whole different series

of thoughts, emotions, and actions.

So when it comes to navigating a difficult

event in our life, we want to look at

what the belief is, how that's impacting

us, and then how can we start to change

that belief to lead to more resilience,

more positivity, and better actions.

So we'll explore this

more in our meditation.

As always, thank you for your practice.

I'll talk to you shortly and take care.