Do you believe in marriage?

Do you believe you are suited to being in a long-term relationship?

Do you believe your partner is has what it takes to be in a long-term relationship?

Do you believe people have marital struggles because they are with the wrong person?

Do you believe a good marriage is always harmonious?

Do you believe most marriages are doomed to failure?

Who is responsible for your happiness, yourself, your partner, or both of you?

I have started this week’s column with a barrage of questions and I hope you will take a few minutes to answer each one.

The thoughts you have about marriage and romance have a great deal to do with how you approach and perceive your relationships.

Beliefs impact almost every area of your life and have little to do with facts or logic. They develop during the early years of your life. The people you were around, the experiences you had, and the assumptions you made, contributed to the beliefs you developed.

These beliefs seem so natural that without encouragement you may simply accept them without question. But don’t think that because you have held onto these ideas for a very long time that they are helping you, or that they are true.

If your parents have been married and divorced multiple times, you may jump to the conclusion that you don’t have the genetic makeup to stay married. There isn’t any scientific evidence to support this idea, but you may hold onto it with a fist of iron.

Even simple beliefs like thinking you must eat your savoury food before your dessert holds little if any factual evidence to support it.

I recommend you take time to think about the principles you absorbed from your childhood.

When you ask yourself why you believe something to be true, you may discover that you’ve held onto a bizarre idea that doesn’t serve you. Beliefs don’t need facts or logic to root themselves in your mind as truths.

If you want to change your relationship, start by changing the beliefs you hold about it.

Awareness is always the first step to transformation. Get clarity about the life or relationship you want by visualizing your perfect day. You need to know what you want before you can manifest it.

Once you know where you want to go, examine the ideas you hold about that area of your life. Do they help you move toward the dream life or relationship you want? If the answer is no, it is time to discard it or make some adjustments.

I’ve always wanted to have a happy life and marriage. This wasn’t possible while I held onto the belief that it was my husband’s responsibility to look after me and make me happy. When I realized that idea was preventing me from achieving what I wanted, I adjusted my thoughts.

I now believe I am responsible for my feelings of well-being. This has empowered me to take responsibility for myself and create the life I want.

Holding on to your existing beliefs feels safer than creating new ones because it means you don’t have to change or step into the unknown. Both are scary actions for many people. You may feel safer, but you may also prevent yourself from manifesting your dreams.

If you don’t believe something is possible, you probably won’t try to make it happen.

Remember that your beliefs formed from the world you lived in as a child; they are not written in stone or always based in fact.

Follow these steps to change your life.

• What do you want your life, or relationship to be like? Concentrate more on the feelings and emotions as opposed to material goals.
• Examine your beliefs around the applicable area of your life.
• Which beliefs are helping you achieve your goals and which ones are hindering them?
• Change or tweak your limiting beliefs so they reflect the life you aspire to and strength the beliefs that are serving you.

If you want to have a close relationship with your partner, but you believe you no longer have anything in common, it will be difficult to create the feeling of closeness you desire. Tweak your thought to reflect your belief that a connection can be re-established.

We don’t have anything in common now, but we have the power to change that.

As Napoleon Hill wrote in Think and Grow Rich, “Whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.