Beliefs are like keys to a prison cell: they lock or unlock our access to the outside world. We live in our own veritable prison of experience, and escape only by careful consideration and examination of what we have come to believe. They do indeed , as Gita Bellin says, stand between us and our relationship to others and to ourselves.

     If we dislike ourselves, it is only because we believe it to be so since we remain worthwhile human beings regardless of our self-perception or the world’s opinion. When our beliefs cause us to remain discouraged, what words could provide greater inspiration to change than the poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849-1903):

1) Out of the night that covers me,                2) In the fell clutch of circumstance
     Black as the pit from pole to pole,                I have not winced nor cried aloud.
     I thank whatever gods may be                      Under the bludgeonings of chance
     For my unconquerable soul.                         My head is bloody, but unbowed.

3) Beyond this place of wrath and tears        4) It matters not how strait the gate,
    Looms but the horror of the shade,               How charged with punishments the scroll,
    And yet the menace of the years                    I am the master of my fate:
    Finds and shall find me unafraid.                    I am the captain of my soul.

     If you want to change for the better, begin by looking at your beliefs.
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