Airing the Thought Laundry
I have been reviewing beliefs about myself. There seems to be many. It is a good way to pass the time, throwing out the ones you no longer need or perhaps never needed.
The visual for me is a giant laundry basket of dirty linens/clothes/thoughts raining down upon my head and covering my eyes and ears. This does not allow for much introspection because I am not seeing or hearing. Everything is muffled and a bit far away.
We all have injected values from living our lives. They come from our family, society, television, movies, advertising, and social media. Think this -not that! Who are you to behave that way? Why do you believe that? Who told you that was acceptable? We are too tall or too short. We are too fat or too thin. Our hair is too long or too short. We should go to college, or we are not smart enough to learn.
Most of us are whiteboards upon which to write. We have an experience and then we assign it emotions, memories, interpretations and meaning. We add it to our “How to Live Life” list and keep it for an indeterminate length of time. It could be moments, days, weeks, years or a lifetime. Because we have so many experiences, we rarely take out the old ones to see if they still have relevance or are valid for our current situation. We do not question our beliefs very often. At some point our storage facilities for all these conclusions, commandments and “must do’s” becomes overrun and this library is offloaded deep into our subconscious.
I was once told that our subconscious is a dangerous neighborhood, and we should not go in alone. My caveat is that you can go in alone, but it is easier to have a friend along to ask the questions.
What are the questions? First you can categorize by what you believe. Then you travel to why do you believe those particular things. Next you can ask if any of those beliefs are keeping you from your goals or happiness or relationships or whatever might be an issue for you. This can lead to whose beliefs are they really? Are they yours? If you really sit with them and have a conversation, do you honestly believe them or were you taught to believe or told to believe or once believed but life has shown you something different?
How many of them are mindless? By that I mean without truly thinking about them.
We seem to be focused on decluttering our homes or workspaces but spend little to no time decluttering our thoughts. It’s a great project and you will be surprised at the dirty laundry you no longer have to fold, but you will also notice how attached you are to some of the discolored, misshapen and worn out pieces. Just rinse and repeat.
