You Are Not Who You Think You Are

a person standing on a beach with a surfboard.

One of my clients recently shared with me that he had a dream in which every mirror he looked into reflected back to him a terrifying, gruesome face that didn’t resemble his own. No matter how many mirrors he tried or how many attempts he made to find himself reflected clearly, all he could see was that hideous visage. Although my client was undoubtedly disturbed by his dream, we discovered together that it served as an important metaphor for something he was addressing in his work with me. Like the mirrors in his dreams that would only reflect back a warped, ugly image, my client’s sense of himself in real life was distorted in an equally disturbing way. And because he saw himself so poorly, he suffered greatly in every domain of his life. He believed he was ugly, so he avoided dating. He believed he was stupid (in spite of having an above average IQ), so he chose an unfulfilling career that wouldn’t present any intellectual challenges. He believed he wasn’t worthy of connection, so he limited his contact with others and felt deep pain because of it. This particular client’s situation might seem extreme, but on some level, most people can relate to it.

Human beings are meaning-making machines. Our brains take in information and create interpretations about it. These interpretations eventually become beliefs, and out of those beliefs sprout the thoughts that flow automatically through our minds as we navigate the world. Most of us identify so much with those thoughts that we have difficulty thinking something without becoming attached to it, accepting it as a statement of fact, and inferring from it things about ourselves. Over time it becomes so that our sense of self is, in large part, shaped by what we think. Our thoughts influence our emotions, our emotions drive our actions, our actions become our habits, our habits become our lifestyles, and our lifestyles dictate our destiny. If we aren’t careful, we become slaves to the content of our own minds. We create a false sense of self that negatively shapes our lives and limits our potential.

If you want to see yourself more clearly, like my client did, you have to start by examining and challenging the stuff inside your mind. It is fundamentally true that you are not your thoughts. Nor are you your beliefs, emotions, or events from your past. This might make sense to you, but give it a little more thought. Can you think of something you believe about yourself that influences how you feel and behave? Maybe you believe that you won’t enjoy life until retirement. Or perhaps you believe you won’t be happy until you lose 10 pounds. Somewhere inside of your mind are beliefs you picked up a long time ago, which heavily influence how you live your life. When you base your sense of self on what you believe, you limit what you can experience.

Challenging your beliefs is the first step to seeing yourself more clearly and freeing yourself of unnecessary, self-imposed limitations. Once you start abolishing the beliefs that no longer serve you, it’s time to give your thoughts a similar treatment. Like I tell my clients all the time, one of the best things you can do for yourself in life is recognize that most of your thoughts are bullshit. What I mean is that your thoughts are just thoughts. In the most literal sense, they’re electrical impulses in your brain that carry data in the form of language. That’s it. They aren’t facts, truths, or reflections of who you are. But if you aren’t paying attention, you’ll start believing them and making assumptions about who you are based on them. This is what makes most people suffer.

Practices like meditation, mindfulness, and journaling can help you begin observing your thoughts and beliefs, and therapy is a great way to take that practice to the next level. Getting into the habit of examining your beliefs, watching your thoughts, and soliciting the feedback of an unbiased outsider can put you on the path toward freeing yourself and gaining a clearer sense of who you are. The truth is, you have the opportunity to be different each and every moment of your life. Whether that difference comes through something like taking a breath instead of taking action or making a bold decision instead of playing small, you have the ability to create new experiences by varying the way you go through life. And it all starts with watching how you think and being wary of the lies you tell yourself.

Now, I’m not saying that you should do away with all ideas about who you are. I’m also not suggesting that you can ever have a totally clear sense of self. However, as recent neuroscience research suggests, the more flexible we are about our sense of self, the healthier we’ll be. So if you’ve been looking in the proverbial mirror and not liking what you see, start by considering what you’ve been telling yourself about yourself. And then get busy telling yourself a new story. Because you really aren’t who you think you are—you’re much, much greater.

 

Calling Bull***t On Your Beliefs

The woman rummaging through clothes next to me at the department store is a judgmental snob. The family that lives next door to me, whose conversations I can sometimes overhear, is totally dysfunctional.  Some of my friends have completely childish and immature ways of dealing with life. My boss is too demanding; she doesn’t appreciate anything I do.

People are out to get to me.

The future is uncertain.

The world is a terrifying place.

Aside from the particularities, does any of what you just read sound familiar? I would bet that, to some degree, it does. And the reason I’m willing to bet so is because if you’re reading this, you have a human brain, and the human brain is—among many things—a judging instrument. It takes in information from the outside world and makes assessments. It generates assumptions and creates distinctions, which is what helps determine what each of us thinks, feels, and does in response to the world around us. This is generally a good thing. If not for our brain’s capacity to process information, we’d have no way of making sense of anything or making our way through the world.

But here’s the tricky part: Our brains don’t process things in a neutral way. What we perceive and interpret depends on the beliefs we have in place. You know the expression “Seeing is believing”? Well, it’s really a lot more like “Believing is seeing.” Whatever we believe about ourselves, other people, the world, and life in general shapes what we see. And it gets trickier. According to the psychological principle of confirmation bias, we are skewed to notice things that confirm our beliefs and ignore things that contradict them.

Have I lost you? Maybe an example would help. If I believe that all people are rude and unkind, my brain is primed to find examples of this in the world around me. So when I go to the grocery store, I’m going to notice people behaving in rude and unkind ways. If there’s someone acting in a way that contradicts this belief—demonstrating generosity or friendliness, for example—I’m not likely to notice it. Our beliefs have a powerful filtering effect. They assign meaning to everything we encounter and, thus, play a big role in determining how we experience life.

It’s easy for us to fall into the delusion that everything we think is real and true, because our thoughts are always entering our minds and distracting us. In essence, they make up the soundtrack of our lives. There’s a ceaseless stream of chitter chatter carrying on throughout our waking moments, and if we aren’t careful, we can get swept under by it. Once that’s happened, we have difficulty seeing things clearly. We lose perspective.

There’s a powerful quote attributed to the late, great writer Anais Nin that goes like this: “We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.” With those words she perfectly summed up the way beliefs work: They influence us to see the world in particular ways. We become convinced that the way we see it is the only way to see it, and because of that, we set ourselves up for unnecessary suffering.

Since our beliefs play such an important role in shaping our reality, it helps for us to be mindful of what we’re going around believing. And, more importantly, it’s a good idea to hold those beliefs up to the light, so to speak, and question how much they’re serving us. One way that I’ve seen this manifest particularly powerfully is with a common belief of unworthiness that has plagued many of my clients throughout their lives. Each of their beliefs about this looks a little different, but the basic idea is, “I am only worthy if I’m ­_______ enough.” That blank can be filled in with anything from thin to powerful to wealthy to approved of by others, and the list goes on. Until that core belief is addressed, it negatively impacts my clients’ lives, limiting their potential and hampering their ability to live as they desire. As I mentioned before, our beliefs are the birthplace of our thoughts, feelings, and actions; whatever we believe will influence what we perceive, which will ultimately determine how we experience and respond to the situations that arise in our lives. If we want to change our experience in the world—if we want to change the world, period—we must begin by exploring and challenging our own beliefs.

The reason I titled this post “Calling Bull***t On Your Beliefs” is because one of the cornerstones of personal growth and transformation is a willingness to question and replace irrational, unhelpful beliefs. Most of the beliefs we carry around have been in place for most of our lives; we formed them in early childhood based on the things we were taught and picked up on from scanning our environment and observing our most significant attachment figures. We came about our beliefs honestly, and at one time, we relied on them to give our lives a sense of order and predictability. But our beliefs can become a source of suffering if we don’t keep them in check.

Please understand that I’m not saying all beliefs are unhelpful and invalid. Believing that touching a hot stove will burn you is a perfectly rational and adaptive belief. There’s evidence to support it, and holding on to it will help keep you safe. But other beliefs—like “I’m unlovable” or “People can’t be trusted”—serve a far less adaptive purpose. It’s those beliefs—the ones that trigger unhelpful thoughts, unpleasant emotions, and undesirable actions—that require some challenging. If you can call bull***t on beliefs like those, you’ll significantly improve the way you feel about yourself, other people, the future, and the world at large.

The best way to start questioning and discarding unhelpful beliefs is to recognize when you’ve gotten caught up in a stream of negative thoughts. If you’re paying close enough attention, you’ll be able to identify the thoughts that are stemming directly from irrational beliefs. Once you’ve recognized the belief-based thought (e.g., “Everyone rejects me;” “I’m stupid;” “Things are never going to get better;” “The world is a scary place”), ask yourself the following questions:

  1. What is the evidence to support that this is true?
  2. Have I ever experienced anything at all that would suggest it isn’t true?
  3. How does it help me to continue believing this?
  4. How does it harm me to continue believing this?
  5. Who would I be if I no longer held on to this belief?
  6. If I were to let go of this belief, if only for right now, what might become possible?

Do you want to live a freer, more content life? Do you want to experience more self-esteem and a greater sense of connection to the people around you? Why not start now? Stop believing the bull***t. Question everything. Release your certainties. Shake off the shackles of your self-limiting beliefs, and watch yourself, your world, your life transform before your very eyes.