THOUGHTS HAVE POWER

December 6, 2024
0 comments
Montrose Star
Posted in THE POWER OF YOU
0

How our beliefs become our identity

By Dr. Julie Hollingsworth, PhD, LCDC, ICADC

We live in our own minds, but we are not alone — often, we carry with us the beliefs and judgments of others. From infancy through adulthood, what other people think helps to shape what we believe, and the beliefs accumulate.

This is how we get a belief system from our caregivers. It starts as a passing statement, a facial expression or an opinion about someone else with whom we have something in common, and then it is repeated. Before we even know that a seed was planted, we have learned to accept their perspective as truth, and the more it is repeated the truer it seems. We rarely question where the belief came from. Over time these beliefs combine, and soon we have a system of thoughts about ourselves that we did not intend to create.

Our caregivers can nurture us in this way. They build us a foundation of mostly encouragement — they smile through our squeaky beginner concerts and hang our stick figures on the fridge to prove we’ll be artists one day. Good self-esteem comes, in part, from these early messages, but it’s inevitable that something less positive will sneak its way in eventually.

We collect negative messages the same way as, if not more easily than, the positive ones. Even the healthiest of us hold on to them at some point and form them into thoughts about ourselves. This is not inherently a problem. Having only positive thoughts about ourselves can be just as damaging as having only negative ones. Some negative thoughts may be true and can keep us grounded. Some positive thoughts can keep us going when we fail. Balance is, as always, the key.

We live our lives based on the beliefs we have about ourselves; they have a power of their own that seems to drive us forward. If we believe we will become an artist, we spend time perfecting our art. If we believe we will amount to nothing, we waste our time hating ourselves instead. We, in general, like to be right — we may surround ourselves with people who confirm our beliefs, thus making them stronger. This is the self-fulfilling prophecy, the pattern, the rabbit hole we send ourselves down, that can be passed down through generations as we share them with the people around us.

How do we break the chain? We start by recognizing that there is one. When we understand we are living our lives based on other people’s opinions rather than reality, we notice the holes in their logic. This can be disconcerting, but it makes it easier to let go of what isn’t serving us, and we find that we can form our own opinions instead. After all, their thoughts were ultimately based on their experiences, not our own. They projected them onto us, and we can let go of the ones that don’t serve us, because they weren’t about us in the first place. We can also hold onto the thoughts that do serve us, and we can form new ones.

We can choose to be kind to ourselves, even if it’s foreign to us. We can say, “What I thought of myself had nothing to do with reality. What I see to be true is what I believe, and I see that I am free.” We can stop ourselves when we fall on old patterns, and we can start new patterns in the moment that better reflect what we need. This is how we form new belief systems.

New belief systems may lead to new behaviors. Suddenly, we will amount to something one day, so we’d better start working. Maybe we already are something, and we should show it. What would happen if we allowed ourselves that freedom? Where could we go if we chose thoughts with the power to help us instead of hindering us?

It is time to find out. It is time to believe something nice about ourselves, something that reflects reality and can be held in our hearts, something that will drive us where we would like to go. It goes beyond us, though. Just like our caregivers nurtured us with encouragement, we can nurture the people around us. We know that we are likely to project our self-beliefs onto others, and we know that we can control what those self-beliefs are. We must work on ourselves so that we can truly break the chain. The only way to change the messages we send to the people around us is to change them within ourselves. Each of us is capable of this change. We need only stop and choose, repeatedly until we succeed.

^{Julie Hollingsworth, PhD, LCDC, ICADC is a Doctor of Esoteric Studies, Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor, and Energy Psychology Practitioner (free consultations available). More information: DrJulieHollingsworth.com or 713-526-HELP.}