When engaging in self-improvement or energy work or studying the Law of Attraction, we’re often told that we have to release our negative and limiting beliefs. Heck, I talk about it a lot myself on this site. But what exactly do we mean my “releasing negative beliefs”?

At our core, we are pure, positive energy, vibrating at a very high frequency. Everything outside of us is also energy, including our thoughts. A belief is just a thought that we’ve activated, that we’ve given a lot of attention and focus to over time; so its vibration is quite strong. Negative beliefs are thoughts which carry a much lower frequency than the one that our inner being is vibrating at. This creates a vibrational discord, and it doesn’t feel good.

With me so far? If not, please read the free e-book 7 Steps of Manifestation for a complete explanation of how this vibrational stuff works in regard to the Law of Attraction.

Now, when you carry these lower frequencies with you, they can cause you to react to situations in ways that don’t serve you. You react from a place of fear, you limit yourself, you lash out at people without meaning to; you generally don’t allow yourself to be who you really are. And you don’t feel all that great about it. “Why do I always do that? Why did I say that?” You wish you could behave differently in the moment, but something – a negative belief – is causing you stay stuck in a pattern. So, obviously, it’s incredibly beneficial to release that limiting belief. But how?

There are many methods that allow you to release limiting beliefs, from psychotherapy, which works on a purely mind-based level, to Shamanic healing, which can be done on a purely energetic level. In my experience, most of our limiting beliefs are anchored in our mind, so for the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on using mind-based methods to achieve energetic shifts.

Beliefs can be formed in two ways: We can pick up the vibration from our environment, or our mind can form a belief based on an event.

Every time someone thinks a thought, it is activated. There is a vibration. This vibration doesn’t go away simply because that person stops thinking it. It can be picked up by someone else who taps into that thought’s frequency. Now, let’s say that a particular thought has been activated my many, many people – a whole community, culture, country or even the whole world. That vibration would be quite strong. A new born baby, having just come into the physical word and eager to begin translating energy through its physical senses could then easily begin to pick up on these strong vibrations. This is why you can carry cultural beliefs or global beliefs within you, even if your particular family didn’t teach them to you.

You can also form a belief based on an event. A lot of these beliefs are also formed in our childhood and are, more often than not, the result of a complete misunderstanding. A child will interpret events through a very limited filter. They try to put things into context, but lack any kind of perspective to do so effectively. So, for example, if a little boy sees his parents arguing, he may well come to the conclusion that the parents are fighting because of something he did wrong. This singular moment can cause the boy to form the belief that he is bad in some way. Later in life, this can cause the man that boy has become to feel unworthy or like a failure, no matter what he does.

The main point here is that often our beliefs are formed in seemingly minor and quite innocent ways, especially from our adult perspective. That fight was quite traumatic for the little boy, but as a man, he would look back on his parents’ argument and think nothing of it. Everyone argues, right? It’s no big deal. And he may never connect his feelings of unworthiness to that seemingly harmless moment.

In order to release a negative belief, it can be quite helpful to figure out at what moment it was formed. It is not absolutely necessary, but if you can figure out where it came from, the release is so much easier. Be aware, though, that you’re probably not looking for some huge, traumatic event. It could’ve been a simple argument, a moment of disappointment, some harsh word that caused the child you used to be to draw a conclusion about themselves or others.

But what if you can’t figure out where the belief came from, or you’re trying to release a belief you picked up vibrationally? In either case, the following still holds true:

Identify what it is that you believe now. Don’t expect that belief to be logical, it will often not be. Then, find a way to shift your perspective on that belief. In other words, you have to find a way to actually justify the new belief to yourself. That new, more positive belief has to make sense to you. This is why you can’t simply look in the mirror and chant “I am worthy. I am worthy.” You could, over a great deal of time, shift your energy a bit with this method, but unless you’re willing to spend hours and hours every day chanting to yourself, there are much easier ways.

If you can identify where the belief came from, an incident from your childhood, for example, one method which works is to allow the child which experienced that incident to process that event by going up the emotional scale on it. Don’t try to just analyze the event as an adult. The child who experienced it won’t care that everyone fights, and to him, it IS a big deal. It’s scary when adults fight.

Another method which works incredibly well, is to use Byron Katie’s The Work. Check out her website. She offers tons of free information which fully explains the method, and even shows videos of The Work in action.

You can get some help. Find a good therapist, coach, EFT practitioner or shaman to assist you with identifying and releasing the limiting beliefs you have. Often, figuring out what limiting beliefs you hold is the hard part. A good practitioner can help you find those beliefs and release them much faster than you could on your own.

In any case, when you do finally “release” the negative frequency, when you shift your perspective and accept the new belief, you will feel a rush of energy. This is the point when people often start to cry or breathe more heavily. What you are feeling is your vibration on that subject rising. By releasing that lower frequency, you’re allowing your vibration to return to its natural, high state. The bigger the sensation, the greater that energetic shift was. It feels amazing.

If you’ve released a particularly strong vibration, something that was affecting a large part of your life, be prepared for some “aftershocks.” You might well experience little mini-releases of related vibrations. What’s happening is that the belief you shifted was connected to a lot of other vibrations, and releasing it has caused a kind of domino effect. When you take down the big one, all the rest will fall one by one. You will also notice that your thoughts and behaviors will change over the coming days, weeks and months. You will behave differently – your reactions are now based on your new belief. Pay attention to this and react as deliberately as you can. Try to cement that new belief in place. Hold your new vibration intentionally. This is particularly important if the people around you have always reinforced the old belief. You can be affected by their vibration if you don’t stabilize yours.

As you experience the identification and release of negative beliefs and the after effects of doing so more and more, it’ll become easier and easier to do so. Don’t be surprised if the energetic shifts you experience each time become less and less spectacular. As you have less lower frequencies to release, and the ones you have left aren’t really that low, the shifts you experience may seem a bit anti-climatic. You might even miss the amazing feeling of releasing some really huge, ugly belief structure. But don’t worry. When you get to this point, you will generally feel so good and be in such a great mood, that this disappointment will be short lived. 😊