The word ‘actor’ means someone who can take action. Your personality, your character and the way you express yourself come alive because you bring them to life. For the person who believes that his/her astrological symbol and what is written about it is as it is, this person will to some extent mirror and reflect what he/she believes to be true about the astrological sign. The belief system provides them with a framework from which to experience life, no matter how rigid or flexible it may be. The belief system will determine how a person experiences and expresses reality. A year later, we may discover that the same person has changed their reality by believing and acting in a different way. Just like an actor, their actions will reflect how they think this character will act in a given situation. How they behave will be determined in large part by how they have seen others act in a similar situation. Simply put, the individual interacts with reality based on the structure of his or her own beliefs.
I’m not talking about positive thinking. Positive thinking in itself can sometimes create more problems than it solves because individuals do not examine their beliefs in light of what they want. Their positive mindset spreads icing on a stale cake. You wouldn’t repair your roof without first finding the leak. In the same way, if you start telling yourself that you are valuable and deserving, without also examining why you feel worthless, you may experience a conflict within yourself where one belief works against the other. Sometimes it is necessary to create a new faith. But in many cases, if you discover what you currently believe about yourself and how you came to that idea, realizing this perceived limitation can give you more options.
A 65-year-old person may slow down, experience memory loss and lose sexual vitality. That same person meets individuals of the same age or older who are vital, quick-witted and sexually expressive. This experience may cause that person to examine his or her beliefs about aging, which causes changes in lifestyle and now we see them expressing vitality in life.
As you look back on your life, you will notice times when you changed your environment, your friends, your job, etc. – and you begin to see that these changes also brought about a change in your personal attitudes and actions.
The obvious point I’m trying to make here is that changing your beliefs changes your lifestyle and your experiences. You may feel like circumstances are taking over your life, when in fact you are creating those circumstances yourself. Examine your life situation, as well as your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes, and you will discover how you actually created that experience. Then change your beliefs and actions, and you will notice how your circumstances change. It’s magic – the magic of your creative mind.
Harold may feel stuck in his current job because he has a family to feed and children to study. Harold is not wrong – he is right in his beliefs. Harold experiences frustration, something inside him pushes him and tells him that he can experience more in life. One night he dreams of becoming an architect and building custom solar homes. In the dream he sees himself as very prosperous, because he can provide for his family very well and has greater vitality and spontaneity in his life. This dream causes Harold to examine his inner feelings, and in doing so, he realizes that he always wanted to be a builder and designer, but his father always told him to get a steady job and keep it.
Three years later, after attending design school, we see Harold expressing and experiencing a very different reality. Believing in life is believing in your dreams. Dreams that are acted upon are the things in the mind that bring about the reality you want. Too often, people avoid or try to suppress their feelings of frustration, boredom and dissatisfaction by hiding these inner feelings with drugs, drink, positive thinking or other means of shutting them out; they never realize that this frustration, or what some people consider negative feelings, is the emotional drive for a new realization.
Original article @ Cool Zen healing