Perpetuating misery

Ruthless Compassion Institute

If you hold on to false beliefs about yourself, others & the world, you put yourself in a small, enclosed box with no chance of escape except by letting go of these lies. Beliefs that you're inadequate, incompetent, unlovable, undeserving & doomed to failure & rejection will become self-fulfilling prophesies as you'll ignore any evidence to the contrary, due to the selective attention associated with false beliefs. You'll inadvertently recreate the fears & beliefs that you're carrying by unconsciously putting yourself in familiar, counter-productive situations & by unconsciously behaving in ways that provoke expected reactions. This is how false beliefs are self-perpetuating. The way to break free is to see that any beliefs which create & maintain misery couldn't possibly make sense & therefore couldn't possibly be true. You're no less worthy of love than anyone else & no more likely to fail. Guaranteed though, if you keep adhering to these false beliefs, they'll become your very unhappy "reality."

Henry Ford ~ If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.

The human mind is born with a myriad of cells ready and willing to absorb information at an alarming rate.  I once argued with my brother telling him that a child will believe what you tell them.  He said that children understood make believe.  He gave the example of his son understanding that actors in the movie are just people in a costume.  My candid reply, "If you tell him he is stupid, will he believe you?"  There you have it, parents are entrusted with these tiny souls and in the child's eyes are the givers of all truth.  So how would a child know that they are not stupid or ugly or boring if that is what their parent told them?  Parents make choices everyday to say things to children that they would never say to another adult.  I actually heard one woman say, "They need to get used to it any way."  I was appalled and decided that we would not be friends.  Then I considered what I said to my children. I worked hard at making sure what I said would build them up and not tear them down.  Sometimes I felt like such a failure.  Now I look at these amazing adults that I love and felt some how I did something right, too.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me IF....

There is that tiny little word.  IF a child knows from his parents mouth that they have value and worth, then cruel words from stranger have no meaning since they already know who they are.  However, IF it is the parent that tears down the child from a young age, believing they are anything else is an uphill battle.  In the book a Child Called It, this is taken to the extreme.  His mother wouldn't even call him by his name.  When I started counseling, we started with the basics who are you?  I thought I knew. A woman that tries hard even though I wasn't the smartest but I worked hard.  My role care taker of the family.  My counselor asked me again who are you?  Again I give information about what I did for my job and other information.  KavinCoach shook his head, "I didn't ask what you did, I asked who are you?"  This is one of those times that I felt like I had fallen into Alice's rabbit hole and lost in a world of words that had no meaning to me.  My answer is a work in progress.  I didn't know when I started counseling that I would be faced with such difficult questions.  I realize now that part of the teenage experience is deciding, "Who am I?"  I knew in high school that there was a bit of a problem.  I took a class called "Search of Identity" which used literature to explore what identity meant.  I was fascinated and knew then that I didn't know the answer.  I left the class with more questions than answers.  I now know that there is a word for knowing who you are, individuation.  Great word meaning "the process by which social individuals become differentiated one from the other."  I think individuation is synonymous with teenager.  Unfortunately, my focus was on being what my parents expected of me, not who I thought I should be.  

Another tough question came on the heals of "Who are you?"  Then came "What do you want?"  What did I want?  I am still working on these questions.  Simple questions that seem like it will take me a life time to understand the answers.  

Growing in rocky places