Our beliefs have more power over our lives than a hurricane. The most powerful are disguised as assumptions or certainties about who we are. They don’t seem like beliefs at all. And yet what we ‘know’ about who we are can liberate us, or constrain our lives as surely as prison bars.

Here’s a conversation with Kahla (name changed) from a recent class in presentation skills. After some arm-twisting from me, she has just finished speaking with seeming confidence.

There it is… I am… my single greatest challenge in presentation skills classes. Faced with my opinion, with the unanimous opinion of her classmates, and with the proof on the video, Khala still could not accept that she had done well. She could do confidence, but she could not yet be it.

Why not? Confidence is what she came for.

Because “I am…” describes her self-identity. Change at that level is a threat! The conscious mind wants it, but the subconscious folds its arms and won’t budge. Many people fiercely protect unhappy self-identities no matter how painful because it’s about survival of what we perceive to be our core self.

Over our lifetimes, our most frequent and vivid thoughts, feelings and attitudes sink deeply into our subconscious – so deeply we don’t realize our self-identities are being self-made. Within wide parameters (think of a highway with a thousand lanes) we are entirely the creators of our lives (which lane we choose to drive in). You are mostly the creator of you.

Want to change lane? Want to get out of prison?

Get a piece of paper and write as many I ams as possible (including I am nots). Then stand back and observe each not as a certainty, but as a disguised belief. Ask, Is it serving me? Is it making me happy? Can I replace it with a more helpful belief? By observing, you begin to take back conscious power.

Now, what will you have to do to make the new and more helpful belief stick? What do you have to do to become your altered I am... ?