> 6 minutes reading time >
It doesn’t matter?
But surely I need to think well of myself in order to pull off this life-thing?
Loving others requires having loving thoughts towards myself, doesn’t it?
And I need to belief I can, have confidence in myself, in order to build that new business, right?
Not to mention worthiness. Once I am rid of the idea that I am unworthy, I will be able to do really worthy stuff.
Right?
Right.
It sounds so logical.
It made sense to me for decades.
I think it culturally makes sense to us, in the western world, since the 60 and 70ies.
But then comes reality.
And as ever, she hits …
home.
And leaves us nothing
but our ass on the ground
and the evidence,
naked,
sitting patiently
where it had been sitting all along
right under our noses
looking up at us,
most probably with a blank cat face.
Because,
Who else
but a person who thinks they are unlovable
will say to themselves in the mirror
‘I love you’
?
Who else
but a person
who thinks they are stupid
will try and collect
experiences that show smartness
?
Who else
but a person
who thinks they are worthless
will try and avoid
criticism from others
?
This is called the boomerang effect.
I see this funny picture in my minds eye of a letter addressed to me.
It says ‘you are wonderful!’.
And on the back of the envelop I see that it comes from ‘the one who thinks you are shit’.
Our minds are smarter than that.
We know when we lie to ourselves.
I used to follow this spiritual teacher
who had us sing the I love you song
It went like this:
I love
I love you
I lohove you
I love you
I love you
I lohove you
I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you
yes it’s true
And it gave us all a wonderful feeling 🙂
For sure!
For a moment ..
but then did worse than nothing for what we actually thought about ourselves.
Because who else
but a person
who thinks they are unlovable
needs to sing
the I love you song?
This spiritual teacher actually complained to me how so little of students got enlightened, after I ‘got it’.
But we both didn’t get it.
A person who loves themselves
might sing the song,
just for fun!
But their love for themselves would actually
sound louder
in all the moments
that they didn’t sing the song.
It would be that natural and self evident for them.
Like knowing the colour of their eyes.
How often do you think about your left pinky toe?
Unless you stubbed it?
Unstubbed toes don’t need attention.
None whatsoever!
So here’s the thing:
It doesn’t matter what you think about yourself.
Yeah, you already said that, Leonie.
But it’s true.
Let me prove it to you.
No matter what you think about yourself, you still want good things for yourself, right?
Robert Fritz
Think about this for a moment.
The bad opinion,
the negative belief,
can coexist,
in the same person,
with desires
AND ACTIONS
to create
whatever it is
you want to create.
There is one thing
and one thing only
that needs to leave
And that is the idea
that we need to THINK well of ourselves
in order to DO well for ourselves.
There is no actual causation
between
having a negative belief about ourselves
and not doing well for ourselves.
There is a correlation
Which means that we see lots of people
who think bad about themselves
act in ways that hurt themselves.
Pretty easy to think that the one thing
causes the other thing,
right?
However,
it is not the belief itself
that causes the hurtful behaviour.
This is the crux, as we say in rock climbing.
The most challenging aspect of the route
If we get through it, we will be better for it.
It tests our skill and fitness,
our mental and emotional fitness in this case.
So here it comes again,
the crux of this story:
It is not the negative beliefs people have about themselves
that cause them to act in harmful ways towards themselves.
It isn’t.
So if it isn’t that what does?
Our wanted, repetitive behaviour pattern is caused by the idea that the negative belief we have about ourselves needs to be
healed
fixed
argued with
transformed
understood
proven wrong
gotten rid of
#fill in your personal version of saying NO to the negative belief#
This NO to the negative belief
gives it huge importance and weight.
Here is how this normalized insanity looks like in close up:
There is a thought
saying that another thought
is very important.
And if you think this sounds pretty crazy, then that’s another thought!
But don’t believe me.
Check it out yourself.
Is it truly the belief that causes the messed up behaviour
or is the fighting with the belief,
that causes the behaviour that you would love to be able to quit?
Many therapists and healers,
alternative
as well as
officially accredited,
earn their living
helping you dig
into the past
to understand
why you
think
the way you think
about yourself.
In order to start and think differently of course.
And it’s not to say that that is useless,
especially for trauma and other nervous system ailings I’d say, go get therapy!
It will help you live with and in reality.
But for the deep rooted negative beliefs,
the ones that have ghosted us for decades:
it will NOT
MAKE
THEM
GO
AWAY
as do prove the people who seek the help of structural thinking sessions.
They have often been everywhere
in the land of therapy, self help, personal or spiritual development,
and they sure learned many things along the way
yet nothing ever made
the belief
leave their skull
once and for all.
And even though they sometimes, over the years, did manage some control
they still find themselves behaving in ways
that drains their energy
and undermines the life they would like to create.
That’s because none of these healers ever showed them the obvious:
that our collective belief
that we need to THINK well of ourselves
in order to DO well for ourselves
actually proves untrue in reality.
The proof is in the
eating
of the pudding.
The eating of this collective belief
that we have cross fed each other
over the last 5 decades or so,
has not turned us,
into a people who think well of themselves.
Quite to the contrary I would say
judging by the increase of all kinds of mental illnesses.
Here is that bit of reality again, that this letter wants to shout from the rooftop because it is so damn freeing:
The bad opinion,
the negative belief,
can coexist,
in the same person,
with desires
AND successful ACTIONS
to create
whatever it is
you want to create.
Reality is
ever our friend,
yet not always friendly.
Not always friendly because,
well,
sometimes
reality
simply
sucks,
even beyond bearing.
But even then
she is our best friend.
(Isn’t that a cruel trick of the creator?)
Because,
knowing our current reality
knowing where we
TRULY
are
right
now
in relation to
what we want to create
is the best kept secret of successful creating.
Because, well, it is way too obvious, isn’t it?
Not a secret at all really.
And not half as sexy or inspiring as a 10 step guaranteed success program.
People who have a negative belief hanging around in their head have often missed this part of reality:
that all their attempts at healing, transformation, fixing, proving wrong or counter-thinking their negative belief
HAVE ACTUALLY NOT MADE THE BELIEF GO AWAY
It did create misery though.
So the strategy did not work.
The strategy of saying NO to the negative belief in various ways.
Knowing this bit of reality really solidly leaves us with just one way to go and that is:
create whatever it is that we wish to create.
The negative belief might itch sometimes,
make us cringe, or make us want to draw back or attack.
But we will realize where that comes from,
from wanting to make the belief go away,
from that oh so subtle fight in our head,
and we know down to our toes where that got us
so we don’t go there.
Here is another often overlooked bit of reality:
having a negative belief
is not as pleasant
as having a positive one.
And there’s nothing to be done about that,
just how life is.
Apparently.
Sometimes if feels good,
sometimes it doesn’t.
I told you this is not sexy.
All
it
does
is
turn
oscillating
creators
into
advancing creators.
And fortunately,
that is all most people want out of life.
Want a reality check session?
The title of this article comes directly from one of Robert’s books: Identity, why it doesn’t matter what you think about yourself. A highly recommended read.
Credits:
Cat picca: Anna Shvets from Pexel
Drawing are all made by me.
Picture of book cover Identity by Robert Fritz
Writing style inspired by the Judy Cohen and her Mind Tickler letters.
