Belief Tool #2 We Have Many Illogical Beliefs that Drive Us A belief gives us a feeling of certainty about what things mean and who we are. If you want to know what your beliefs are, look at your life. Your life is your beliefs manifested. What we believe encompasses what we do, what we say, and how we react. Anything you want to change in your life must be changed from the belief level if you want the change to be permanent. You cannot just treat the symptom; you must dig deep and get to the belief that caused you to get there in the first place. For example, if you believe that you will always be overweight, it will be very difficult to lose weight per- manently. Beliefs and reality like to be reflective of each other. When reality starts to contradict a belief, a tension is created in our life and this tension makes us uncomfortable. Many of us have no idea when this is happening; we just think we are stressed. At this point, we have two choices to reduce the tension: change the belief system or change the reality. Because most of us don’t realize we have the negative belief, we have no 114 • If IAm So Smart, Why Can’t I Lose Weight?