1500 years ago people told us the earth was the center of the universe.  A little over 500 years ago people told us the earth was flat.  Somebody, maybe you, came up with the idea that food was a friend, a reward, or a comfort.  Many of us still believe ice cream tastes good.  Ignorance continues to this day to masquerade as knowledge.  What we believe could actually be destroying our very quality of life.  Here’s the challenge:

When we were young, each of us had a need to be told, “Don’t be selfish. Children should be seen and not heard. You are special. People won’t like you if…” What our families told us had a very powerful and shaping effect. Many of us today do more than remember what we were told. Too many of us believe what we remember to a fault. The lives we live today, the decisions we make, the risks we take or don’t, even the relationships we choose or regret choosing, remain as living testimonies to so many early influences of what we were taught to believe.

Part of what it means to grow up and become mature is to possess the freedom, perhaps the courage not to believe everything our families taught us. Rather than blindly following to a fault every precept or admonition, growing up requires us to review, challenge and if necessary, correct some of the ideas and perceptions that have gone into making us the people we are today.

Don’t believe everything they told you just to be obedient or to avoid conflict. Believe only that which makes sense or has been proven by inquiry to be true. A previous call to my radio broadcast illustrates the point well. The call began with this challenge, “Say something positive about religion; I’m an unbeliever.” My response was that there are no unbelievers. Everyone believes something. I went on to ask the caller, “What is it that you believe about religion? I have a suspicion that whatever it is you believe, it is in the way of you believing something else.”

For many of us today, lessons learned decades before continue to shape our perspectives.

Your family of origin did not own the corner on truth. As we grow in maturity, we may discover many of the beliefs our parents taught us were faulty. At best our parents were deceived because they failed to question the actions or attitudes of others they didn’t understand. At worst, our families conceived ideas as a means of controlling unacceptable impulses living within them. The strength of their insistence by precept or example may have made believers out of us. Do we now believe what is true, or what we have been persuaded to believe is true? And how can we know the difference without exposing what we believe to cross-examination?  No influence can be so trusted as to justify the “innecessity” of learning to ask questions and raise suspicions as appropriate for understanding.

As a clinician over the past thirty-six years, I have exhumed and collected a number of false beliefs, metaphorical bone fragments from the psyches of people I sought to help. I included a small sampling of false beliefs in this story to illustrate how common, and thereby, unrecognizable they are. You may never have thought to challenge such beliefs because they are so commonly ingrained in our day-to-day existence as to be invisible.

Take the time required to examine the following faulty beliefs. For greater impact, read them aloud, and then observe your response to learning the truthful alternative.

False Beliefs & Truthful Alternatives:

 

F.B. 1. There’s no one I can trust.

T.A. 1.  Trusting others is made all the more unnecessary when you learn to trust yourself to know who to trust.

 

F.B.  2.  No one is there for me.

T.A.  2.  Some people are there sometimes for some things, rarely everyone all the time for everything.

 

F.B.  3.  People just don’t understand.

T.A.  3.  The worst that can be said is that others understand differently.

 

F.B.  4.  There is a way to say what needs saying so others won’t misunderstand.

T.A.  4.  Say what needs saying, how people interpret what I say is not my responsibility.

 

F.B.  5.   The longer I suffer the more it proves that what I care about matters.

T.A.  5.  Long suffering proves faulty emotional management.

 

F.B.  6.  Life doesn’t make sense.

T.A.  6.  If I find the proper context, life makes sense sometimes the sense of non-sense.

 

F.B.   7.  In order succeed in life you need to be extremely disciplined.

T.A.   7.  Success with anything in life depends upon effective strategies not mere discipline.

 

F.B.  8.  Don’t set your hopes too high.

T.A.  8.  There is as much hope in the world proportionate to the responsibility you are willing to assume.

These are merely example of the faulty beliefs that continue to control our lives.  I invite you to make your own list of your commonly reoccurring false beliefs.  I further encourage you to dig deep enough to exhume the truth that whispers so quietly close to your own ear.

May you have the courage to risk for more truthful alternatives.