It's Always About Me (Part II)

# 009 March 18, 2009

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Philip K. Dick (author of “Blade Runner”)

It’s always about me… my thoughts, my ideas and my perceptions. What is it that makes up these thoughts, ideas and perceptions? Where do I get them, how did I get them?

Believe it or not, most of what we believe is not by choice. As a child, we didn’t choose our religion or moral values, they were there before we were born. Our parents believed them, taught them to us and that is what we believe. What we believe is ingrained in us from childhood.

Yet, as we grow older other people impress thoughts and ideas upon us. Our friends, teachers and others tell us what they think and we absorb this information. Even with the additional knowledge or beliefs given to us by others, we still draw our core values according to the belief system we are given as a child. In essence, we make agreements (deep down inside us) to believe what we are taught. Right or wrong, we stick with these beliefs. Often we stick with those beliefs, even when we know they are wrong.

It is these “agreements” that shape our lives and our relationships for many, many years. In a certain sense, our belief system is like a book of law that permeates our subconscious. Whatever we have in our mind, our internal “book of law” is our truth. We may not want to believe or agree with it, but because it is “ours” we believe it. This is how we are programmed as children and young adults. We stay this way because to change would take us out of our comfort level.

Whether good or bad, moral or immoral, these laws rule our lives. If someone or something goes against our “inner law” it makes us uncomfortable. This discomfort with something that may be at odds with what we consider the “truth” causes inner conflict and self-doubt. Think about it, what percentage of our communication problems come from our inability (or refusal) to be clear and concise with ourselves first and others second? We do this because of our “inner conflict” and fear of change.

When we begin see things as true in the world, and this truth ultimately conflicts with the rules and laws that were ingrained in us as children, we begin to lie to ourselves. We trust what we believe (because that is what our parents or others told us was true) and our beliefs set us up for suffering. This causes us to need to be right and others to be wrong. If others are right and we are wrong – then everything we’ve ever believed may be wrong…

As a result, we resist life. Life is growth, life is change. We resist growing emotionally and changing mentally. To grow emotionally and mentally is hard. We don’t like hard. We say, “I’m an adult… I learned all that when I was young”. We may have learned “that” when we were young, but what we learned was not necessarily the truth. To admit this is to admit that someone you loved and trusted may have taught you incorrectly. They may not have done this purposely, but it may have been wrong nonetheless.

This often causes us to want to accept others point of view or opinions (on the surface), while creating a conflict deep inside us. We want to be accepted. If we cannot accept ourselves deep down inside, we certainly want to be accepted by others. We fear not being “good enough”. We create an outward image of how we should be in order to be accepted.

We want to be perfect, but we cannot be. We reject ourselves and end up trying not to have certain conversations with ourselves. I call these the “unspoken conversations”. “Unspoken conversations” are the conversations we know we need to have, but we refuse knowing they will cause us pain. These “unspoken conversations” are the ones that hurt us, either by our unwillingness to have them, or by our inability to have them.

This in turn harms our relationships with others. If we cannot be honest with ourselves, how can we truly be honest with others? This leads to the conflict I discussed in Part I. We question others thoughts and actions. Because we cannot trust ourselves and what we really believe (often because we do not know what we believe) then how can we trust others?

Inside, we develop an image of perfection. We judge others by this image of perfection and naturally they fall short of our expectations. How many relationships have been lost because a person cannot possibly meet the other person’s expectations? First we must learn to be authentic with ourselves, and then we can be authentic with others. It has been said, authenticity is not something you have; it is something you choose. I believe this.

In order to grow and change we must first understand that we have been programmed since childhood to believe certain rules or “laws”. We, as adults have “agreed” to continue to believe these laws because to change them now causes us pain. As a result of refusing to change we cause ourselves to have conflicts with others and our image of perfection. There is no way for someone else to live up to our image of perfection.

“When we learn to accept people who disappoint us by no longer requiring them to satisfy us, then we’re free to love them, to reach them for their sake without having to protect ourselves from feeling disappointed by their response to us.” Dr. Larry Crabb, Inside Out

In order to love others we must first learn to love ourselves!

Stay Tuned for Part III

With warmth and regards (as always),
Allen
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