Your beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Dr. Henry Beecher of Harvard Medical School proved that the brain has the ability to override the effects of drugs. The power of belief is absolutely crucial to healing and health. He spent much of his career studying this and how we can make it come alive and use it to heal ourselves and have medicine work better.

One experiment that Dr. Beecher did was with 100 student volunteers. He had them take two test drugs. One drug was in a red capsule, the other was in a blue. The students were told the red capsules were a super stimulant. You take these and they’re going to wire you right up. The other drug in the blue capsules, were said to be a tranquilizer that would rapidly take you out.

Actually the truth of it was that they were reversed. The red capsule actually was a barbiturate and the blue capsule had amphetamine in it. But the interesting thing that Dr. Beecher noted was that the students reacted as they thought the pills were supposed to be, not as they actually were.

In other words, the red capsule which they had been told was a stimulant, was actually a barbiturate. They felt hyper, they felt up, their hearts rates increased, their body sensations got bigger and their brain waves got more excited.

When they took the blue, which was told to be a tranquilizer but was actually an amphetamine, they reacted to it as if it really was a tranquilizer. Their heart slowed down, their body sensations diminished, their brain waves slowed down. Their bodies aligned with their beliefs, not with the drug that they took; incredible.

Your beliefs control your reality, because you think they are true and they are real. People treat beliefs as if they are a thing, an object, but they aren’t. They are just a concept and a feeling of certainty about something. It’s that feeling of knowing. It’s that feeling of ‘yes, this is true’.

Your emotional feeling about a person, place, thing, piece of knowledge, etc., is what makes the belief come alive. You believe this because of your references that support your thoughts about it. It’s the feeling you engage when you evaluate things that gives conviction to your statements, and power behind your beliefs.

For instance, how about the thought ‘you’re smart’. Well if you compare yourself to other people who are on your level or a little below – if you compare yourself to Jim and Sue and Paul and Pete, all those guys – yeah, I do better than them.

If you are thinking, “I study better; I remember better, I do pretty good. I learn fairly quickly compared to most people in my sample. I retain things pretty well. I tend to remember things probably as long, or longer, than most people do. I feel very comfortable when I’m studying new information. It doesn’t make me uneasy. I do it relatively well.” If these are your thoughts, all of these come together to support your belief that you’re smart.

But if you were to compare yourself in intelligence to Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Linus Pauling and the gentleman who memorized word for word the entire encyclopedia, you may not evaluate yourself quite so highly. You may not feel quite so smart.

Your beliefs about smart are relative. And they are relative to whatever you reference your beliefs with. You have amazing potential to be a great you. Believe in you, and the potential awaiting just below the surface.