Don't Believe Everything You Think

Life is difficult.<> Those three words open M. Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Travelled. Is life difficult? It is. As much as I've resisted this, even with all that I know about the power of an ever evolving mind, I have decided to accept that life is difficult. And it is in this acceptance that life gets easier, for acceptance shifts our thinking about a thing. As our thinking changes, our experience also changes. When we think life is supposed to be anything that it isn't, like easy or fair, then our unfulfilled expectations and frustrations with life registers as pain.

Besides, it's not the situations, i.e., what's going on out there, that causes us pain. Rather, it's what we think about what's going on that keeps us up nights. You see, we are meaning makers. Stuff happens. Then our minds go to work giving those expressions, events and experiences meaning. Let's say your beloved says he's coming over, "I'll see you in a couple of hours," he says. Those two hours go by and there's no knock at your door. Three hours pass, still no knock. Nor has your phone rang. Ask yourself this question: What did I make that mean? Then listen for the answers. They were largely negative, weren't they? He's doing it again. He's always doing this. He's with someone else! Why does this always happens to me? I knew this wouldn't work. Now ask yourself: It is true? Can I be absolutely sure those things are true? If you would be honest with yourself, you'd have to answer "no." You can't be sure that any of that stuff that you made up is true. And yet, those thoughts have destroyed your peace. Thoughts that your mind thought!

There are horror movies living inside of us. When something happens that looks eerily familiar to something that happened in a painful past experience, our minds go to work. Only the mind isn't very creative, it reaches for one of those 60, 000 thoughts that you had last year when someone did something that you didn't like, something that felt like betrayal. I offer you what a therapist blessed me with years ago, she said, "DeBora, don't believe everything you think." But why shouldn't we believe everything we think? Well, because the mind is a cesspool; it's full of waste, poisons, and toxins that don't serve our highest and best good. The mind is the dumping ground for old tapes from painful childhoods, tapes created by unconscious, wounded other people. It's these old tapes that come on when we're triggered; they tell us we're fatally flawed and unlovable, that we're not good enough, smart enough, educated enough, pretty enough, the right height, skin color, shape, size...you fill in the blank.

Ignore your limiting, condemning thoughts. Better still, blast them with some Denials (talk back to them, denounce them) and Affirmations (affirm the truth, "I am beautiful and powerful and loved). We are much, much more than we think we are. Whatever life brings, we have the power within to meet it. You can believe this, this which comes through your mind from that "still small voice" within: You are MORE than enough...and you are deeply loved. This you can trust and believe!