Last week I wrote about how clutter and holding onto all the stuff we have accumulated over the years can weigh us down. We end up spending our time taking care of our physical stuff instead of spending our time doing the things we love doing. Someone reminded me that it isn’t just our belongings that weigh us down or hold us back. Sometimes, however, it is our outdated thinking or holding onto ideas that we believe are true that hold us back. And we hold onto them, because people we loved and respected taught us those ideas that are unfortunately false.
And so, just like out homes, our minds can be cluttered with “stuff” that we need to purge. But moving away from ideas and long-held beliefs can be hard. Even when we are faced with evidence clearly showing those beliefs are false, we hold onto those outdated and even harmful ideologies. They are difficult at best to let go. They are harmful to us or to the various people groups in our communities. Learning and embracing the truths that have been staring us right in the face takes time and only work when we let go of what isn’t accurate. And that means we also need to keep an open mind.
When we read history, and I think we should all always be reading history, so we understand how we got to where we are today…but that is a post for another time. When we read history, we can learn many times when long held beliefs were discovered to just be wrong. For example: when tomatoes were first introduced to Europe, they were thought to be deadly poisonous. This misconception came about because the tomato plant belongs to the nightshade family which happens to include some very deadly poisonous plants. But tomatoes are not one of them. They even earned the nickname: Poison apple. This belief persisted for 200 years. 200 years of not getting to eat pizza and spaghetti! YIKES!
All fun aside, some of the more toxic beliefs we can carry with us are our prejudices and our core beliefs. I don’t think I need to define what a prejudice is but our core beliefs are those ideas that can undermine who we are. We tell ourselves we are worthless, or inadequate. We may have body dysmorphia, and we believe we are fat when we may be quite thin. Or maybe we allow perfectionism to keep us from doing anything or if we get started on a project, we never finish it because it is never perfect. Maybe our life experiences have been difficult, and we have serious trust issues, for good reasons, but we begin to believe we can never trust anybody. These thoughts and ideas we have about ourselves along with so many others are ways we clutter our minds with false beliefs. We need to purge them because the truth of the matter is anytime, we have negative thoughts about ourselves, they are never from God. NEVER.
The amazing fact we can live into, is no matter who we are, no matter how many mistakes we have made in life, (I have made more than my fair share…just sayin’) we are loved by God. We are created by God to be who we are. The world around us tells us messages that just aren’t true and yet we choose to believe them. We choose to make those the messages we embrace. And they are nothing more than lies. We are not worthless. We are not inadequate or anything else. The unfortunate thing about these negative attributes is when we believe them long enough, they become self-fulfilling prophecies.
When you catch yourself saying something negative about yourself or anyone else for that matter, STOP and say something positive. Or as my parents always taught my brother and me: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
And always remember you are loved by God…no matter what.
Peace,
Beth
Beth's Blog 