Anchor chains and anti-aircraft guns on the battleship North Carolina; Wilmington NC
“It ain’t what you
don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just
ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
“For those who
believe, no proof is necessary. For
those who don’t, no proof is possible.”
- Stuart Chase
In and of themselves, our thoughts have no
power over us. We are not responsible
for our thoughts – it is our words and actions that we are accountable
for. But our thoughts have a way of
becoming ingrained when we do not challenge them, and we start to accept them
as fact. It is when we face the prospect
that thoughts that we have come to believe are threatened that we start feeling
threatened. Still more deeply ingrained
are the beliefs that we hold that were handed to us by those that raised us and
we have never questioned, and when these are called into question our hackles
go up quickly. We all hold beliefs that
are inaccurate – we can just look back a year ago and see how many things our
minds have changed about. This process
of maturing will continue, and there are ways to accelerate the pace, or at
least make it a bit less painful.
A woman named Byron Katie developed a four
step system for challenging beliefs that can work quite well to take our ego
out of the way of the growth process.
The first step is to question our belief. First, we ask ourselves if the belief we hold
is true. (I believe quitting smoking is
difficult.) If yes, we ask ourselves if
we absolutely know it is true. (There
are some people who have said that they quit smoking with little or no
difficulty – there is a slim possibility it might not be difficult.) Of course
we cannot absolutely know anything, but we may still be pretty convinced. Next we can look at what happens when we
believe that thought. (I keep on
smoking.) Then fourth, we ask ourselves
who we would be if we did not hold this belief.
(I would be a non-smoker.)
Ms. Katie goes on to discuss how we can
take these false beliefs and turn them around by asserting thoughts on the
other side. (Quitting smoking is not
difficult.) I have tried it on a few
things, and it takes being willing to be willing to change if change is merited
in order to begin to change thinking. But
since beliefs that we hold that are false tend to cause a lot of pain as we try
to manipulate them into truth, this is a simple exercise well worth using to
challenge why we believe what we believe.
Happy Tuesday !!
David
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