It always takes some level of self-deception for us to deceive another person. What we believe is paramount to being able to lie. It is the ground condition that makes the rest of the story possible. A belief. A story. We ground ourselves in these stories and beliefs. We let it inform our own self-concept. I am the victim. I am in control. I am the one responsible. I am dutiful and therefore virtuous. What sits at the base of it all is our beliefs and our stories. The person who believes you is you!
It is rare that we really examine from where those beliefs and stories originated. For every 100 people who believe one version of reality, there are 100 people who don’t believe that. Yet, all 200 people are living a human life within their means and circumstances and making their various contributions to human life. We literally have the freedom to believe absolutely anything we want.
I grew up in what I would characterize as a pretty traditional-minded South Indian household. It wasn’t a typical nuclear family set-up. It was comprised of two parents and two kids, but my father kind of came and went as he pleased. He followed his own drummer. The rest of my family was very traditional and quite religious as well. The rules were very clear about what the expectations were for my life. How I was meant to live and what I was meant to achieve. Everyone’s struggles were all about giving me the opportunity to build this cookie-cutter version of a “good” life. My role as a daughter was clear. My role as a woman was even clearer. My role as a caregiver was clear. In middle age, I would say that I achieved all the things. I ended up very well-educated, built a successful and stable career, married a man, bought a house, a car, took care of my ailing parents until their death, and helped friends and family in any way that I could.
It took believing a lot of things about myself to accomplish those things. It took believing that I had certain duties to the people around me; it took believing many things about what a “good” person is and would do; it took believing that there weren’t other options for my life; it took believing that living any other way would cost me relationships that meant something to me.
The truth is: I didn’t actually know that I would lose anything by living any other way. We don’t know the path we didn’t travel. We don’t know what we don’t live or experience. No amount of reading about other people’s experiences can give us that. What we live is what is ours.
To be clear, I don’t regret my choices or the life that I have led. I am simply reflecting on the fact that there was mental scaffolding upholding that life. It was filled with beliefs and stories about myself and what a “good” life looked like. Some of it was limited beliefs and self-deception based on assumptions I didn’t actually know to be true. I lied to myself and others. I believed, and so I created.
We experience the life that we believe is possible for us, the life that we believe we deserve. This is what makes belief so powerful. In therapy, coaching and many other healing modalities, there is a focus on reframing our experiences in order to heal. Once we actually start looking at things differently, we are able to release the emotions and old stories and beliefs that were attached to them. That healing is so profound it has the power to actually move our lives in new directions.
Something I often say to my clients is that we have the freedom to believe absolutely anything we want in the whole world; let the beliefs you pick be useful to you. Let them bring you to where you want to go, and let the stories you tell yourself make you powerful enough to reach your destination.
In order to build the lives we want, we need that mental scaffolding. The beliefs and the stories that give us a foundation: a reason, a basis from which we become motivated to take action. It can be hard to even figure out what to build or how to build a life that is truly aligned and authentic. Luckily, every step forward starts with a decision. What if that decision was to become the highest version of ourselves, to actualize ourselves in all areas of our lives, to receive all of the blessings that the Universe is sending our way? If we have to start somewhere, why not start by being clear about what the highest intentions we have are? Once we have a destination, the path always comes, brick by brick…
