By now, you’re seeing that there’s value in looking at our underlying beliefs as some beliefs lead to poor life results and some beliefs lead to better life results. If you accepted the challenge of the last article, you’re beginning to see the benefit of adopting a specific belief which is: you are not necessarily the same or the equivalent as your thinking.
In each article, I contrast what I call a Thriving Life Belief (a belief that brings thriving into life), or TLB, with a Languishing Life Lie, or LLL (a belief that leads to languishing in life –> the opposite of thriving). Here’s today’s set of contrasting beliefs to consider:
TLB #3: What we believe – including beliefs about ourselves – is important to our lives and relevant to our most significant relationships.
LLL #3: We don’t need to spend time clarifying or refining our beliefs about ourselves.
Now that we’ve established there’s value in thinking about our thinking and that there’s benefit from separating who we are from what our thinking is, the question to ask is: is it worth it to spend time clarifying and refining what we choose to believe -especially about ourselves?
For today’s article, I’d like to share a personal story. Years ago, when my children were younger, my wife came up with an absolutely brilliant idea. She made these laminated cards which had statements such as “I am loved,” “I am smart,” “I am beautiful,” and “I am God’s child.” She would have our children recite this on the way to school.
“How cool!” I would think to myself. After all, I reasoned, those are all beliefs I want my children to embrace and learn to live out in their lives.
But then, this voice from within started to pipe up, “Sean – do you believe those things for yourself??” I also started to notice many parents around me were finding ways to affirm their children. After all, what parent in their right mind doesn’t want their children to know their worth and value and to believe in their own God-given abilities?
Reflecting on these things, I realized that if I really wanted my children to believe these things, I needed to give them a model of what it looks like for someone to believe these things for themselves and to live them out.
So, I began to answer the question I raised a bit earlier with a resounding “Yes!” In other words, I needed to take the time to clarify, develop, and own better beliefs about myself if I was going to thrive in my life and show my children what a thriving life looks like. I realized over time, that children learn more from action than merely words and that I needed to practice what I was preaching, quite literally.
Over time, I began to see how time and time again, there was a connection between what I believed – especially about myself – and how I related to God, myself, and others. In turn, how my relationships were had a big impact on how I felt my life was going.
Question:
You may or may not have children, but can you relate? Do you think TLB #3 is worthwhile believing? In other words, is it worth your time to think about what you believe about yourself?
Application Challenge:
1. Write out a list of beliefs you honestly have about yourself. Be gut-level honest without holding back.
2. Now, write a list of beliefs that you’d like to embrace that are life-giving.
3. Is there a discrepancy between #1 and #2? What beliefs in #1 do you need to let go of and what beliefs in #2 do you need to start believing and meditating on?
If this is challenging or you’d like to learn more about this, reach out to me and set up a discovery call. Let’s see what we can discover that will help you get unstuck and move forward so you can move towards thriving in your life!
