SALT LAKE CITY — In this edition of LIFEadvice, Coach Kim shares how people with any spiritual beliefs, or none at all, can change their perspective and their behavior.

Question:

I love reading your articles. The advice is expressed in plain language and is a very practical approach. However, it often refers to God and implies that there is a being that gives or provides things in our life. This is very relatable to theists. Not so much for atheists. Is there a viewpoint that can be expressed for those of us who do not believe in a divine being?

Answer:

I am so glad you asked this question. There is a way to get to the same place without involving belief in a higher power.

As a matter of fact, most of my articles are focused on how our beliefs, both conscious and subconscious, create our behavior. Most of these beliefs are established in childhood — as everything you see, hear and experience makes you draw conclusions about who you are, how your value is determined, how safe or unsafe life is, how defensive or protective you should be, and many more things.

In an article for Healthline.com, licensed psychologist Juli Fraga explains that by the time you are 7 years old, you have formed a pretty thorough set of policies and procedures on everything. You adopt procedures on how to handle conflict, how to get love, how to fit in, how to stand out, what right behavior is, and what is wrong. Fraga explains that this subconscious programming then drives all your choices and behaviors for the rest of your life. Unless you do the work to become aware of your beliefs and change them.

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It’s a good idea to watch for behavior that isn’t serving you and see if you can see a belief behind it. Here’s an example: If you stress over what other people think of you, that is probably because as a child, someone important to you once said something like, "Don’t go out like that! What would the neighbors think of us?" At that moment a belief was formed: "I should be afraid of what other people think of me.”

That is not true; it is just a belief, and it’s a damaging one. You might choose to write a new belief like, "What other people think of me is irrelevant because I am the same me no matter what they think.”

If you want to change any behavior, you must first look at the beliefs that drive it. If you want to change how you feel about your life, you must first change the way you are looking at your life. If you want to change your self-esteem, you will need to change your foundational subconscious belief on how the value of human beings is determined.

For many religious people, their faith forms the foundation of their subconscious beliefs. So, I often talk in my articles about looking at your spiritual beliefs and making sure they are love-driven not fear-driven. This means looking at what they believe about the nature of God, why they are on the planet and what the point of all this is.

I often talk about whether you are subconsciously programmed to see life as a test or a classroom. If you feel that your value must be earned and that mistakes lower your value and make you less than other people, you subconsciously see life as a test.

When a religious person has a foundational belief that life is a test, I encourage them to consider changing that belief to one that says life is a classroom, where God allows you to erase and try again as often as you need to — and one where all humans have the exact same intrinsic value they cannot change, no matter what they do. As they practice giving this to others by giving up judgment, it starts to dramatically change their self-esteem.

My atheist or agnostic clients can similarly focus on how they determine the value of human beings. I encourage these clients to play with a new belief that all human beings have the same unchangeable value no matter what they do. No one can have more value or less value than anyone else. This doesn’t involve God, atonement or faith, but it accomplishes the same thing.

Every one of us could benefit from playing with a new belief about the universe. We could choose to see it as a place of growth and evolution, where nature itself is pushing all things to grow and heighten their existence. This would mean our purpose for being here on the planet is to become the best version of ourselves we can be, growing and learning and helping the next generation to do the same.

This means you could see the universe is a place of order, not chaos, and you could choose to believe it is constantly conspiring to grow you in some way. This often happens through opposition, like the way a tree in the wind grows stronger than a tree without the wind. You could choose to use everything that happens to you to grow you and bless you in some way. This perspective shift could help you experience less stress and loss, and more peace.

Viktor Frankl taught us that the last of the human freedoms is the power to choose our attitude in every situation. This important freedom is not one we grasp, own and exercise nearly enough. Instead, we let our childhood programming drive our behavior and emotions while we are asleep on autopilot.

No matter our belief system or faith, you would benefit from owning the power to choose your perspective; and if you struggle with this, look for a coach or counselor who specifically works on changing subconscious beliefs. A simple shift in belief can completely change how you feel about anything.

You can do this.

Last week's LIFEadvice:

Coach Kim: What is your fighting style?

In this edition of LIFEadvice Coach Kim shares the different ways we fight, forgive and apologize and how to honor each others needs here.

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