Is It True? Or Do You Just Believe It?
“Is it true? Or do you just believe it?”
Recently, I was rewatching the show “The OA”, and the main character delivered those lines. And boy, did they strike a chord with me. A lot of the healing work I do with my clients (and a lot of the healing work I’m personally doing myself) revolves around uncovering, healing, and releasing old, limiting beliefs. When we start really looking at our beliefs, we begin to discover that not all of them are actually true, even though we believe them.
Our childhood shapes a lot of who we are, including our beliefs (both conscious and subconscious). When we start doing healing work, we can begin to uncover the beliefs that are just not serving us. Those old, limiting beliefs are holding us back from living the life we really want. And sometimes, we can even pinpoint specific conversations or phrases that we experienced in childhood that had a hand in creating those limiting beliefs for us.
I’d like to share a personal story to demonstrate what I’m talking about. When I was young, my grandfather loved reviewing my report card, and he would give me money for every “A” that I received. But only for the “A”s, because he said that anything less than that wasn’t quite good enough. Going through this experience helped embed 4 different beliefs into me at a pretty young age, which were then reinforced with every report card:
1 – Only perfection gets rewarded.
2 – I won’t receive money unless I’m perfect and what I do is perfect.
3 – I’m not worthy of receiving unless I’m perfect and perform perfectly.
4 – Just doing the best I could wasn’t good enough; I had to be perfect at everything.
Yikes.
Before I go on, let me be very clear about one thing: I am NOT blaming or shaming my grandfather for this. He was just a human being, doing the best he could with what he knew and the beliefs he had.
While these 4 beliefs seem somewhat similar, each of them carries its own feelings and limitations with it. Obviously, at the time, I didn’t recognize that these beliefs were being written into my subconscious. As a kid, I just felt like I needed to work harder to get more “A”s so I could score more cash and have him be prouder of me.
Those beliefs cast a giant shadow over nearly all the parts of my life for a very, very long time, even though I didn’t always understand that they existed. They manifested themselves in my perfectionism, my anxiety, my never-ending hustle, my need to always be productive, and my refusal to partake in anything that seemed like rest.
Thankfully, I eventually realized that those beliefs were driving a lot of my behaviors. And I was able to recognize where those beliefs came from. The reality is that it wasn’t just that one situation I mentioned above, but that one sticks out in my memory. There were a lot of conversations and situations through the years that perpetuated those beliefs, really encoding them into me. But once I was able to identify them, I could begin to heal them, release them, and replace them with new beliefs that are far more accurate, and that are actually true.
This is still a work in progress for me, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. I am a human being working through my shit, just like everybody else. So when I say that I understand your challenges with your limiting beliefs, I really do mean it, as I’m doing the work too, right alongside you.
If you’re feeling like it’s time to let go of what’s no longer serving you, I’d be honored to support you on the next part of your healing journey. You don’t have to figure it all out on your own; we can take it step by step, together.