There are so many defining factors of you. Things that make you who you are, dictate how you act, and contribute to where you’re going to end up in life. And of course that’s the case. People are complex beings. You are a complex being. But I would argue that there’s one thing that pushes you the hardest down one path or another.
Identity
We get our sense of identity from all over the place. Our past, cities of residence, friends, family and places we frequent like work, school, and buildings of entertainment like malls and sports stadiums. We take little fragments of memories and feelings that linger from each aspect of ourselves and cobble them together into one, seemingly cohesive perspective that we refer to as our identity.
And often, our identities explain a lot about who we are. It’s really common for people to retain the religion of their parents or stay living in the same city or state their whole adult life. We keep traditions alive every year during the holidays, and eat at the same restaurants with our current friends as we did the old ones. Even deeper, you’ll find that poor couples usually raise kids who grow up to be broke just like their parents. And if that was the norm in your neighborhood growing up, all the more.
But every once in a while, you’ll see something absolutely astonishing. The kid who skipped college makes it big. Or someone you haven’t seen for a while returns a completely different person! It’s these sorts of stories that get us scratching our heads and wondering why they got so lucky. Maybe even wondering why we’re not the anomaly. You can be though. And it won’t take finding a new identity in order to transform, either.
Mind power
The lucky souls who make it out of familial drama patterns and community strife are the ones who, first and foremost, believe it’s possible. They need to do extensive work on themselves. Not their appearances or their bodies. Not even in order to become “better people”. The work that is needed is work on the mind.
I’m not going to lie, mental work isn’t always simple or easy. But it’s a heck of a lot easier than living a life that you just can’t stand forever. You need to take the long view with things like this. If you want to escape this confining, depressing situation, then you need to find a way to escape the depressing confines of your own mind.
Is your mind working against you?
Anyone who has personal experience with mental illness will be no stranger to the idea of their mind working against them. But for those who haven’t, this idea might be foreign, so I’ll give a basic overview.
Your brain is programmable. It has always been, and always will be. There are some really interesting studies coming out these days in neuroscience about the plasticity of the brain. As we go through different situations in life, we draw conscious and subconscious conclusions from them that dictate our responses to future situations. And if you’re not consciously programming your brain, it is being programmed for you. By people, circumstances, and the dreaded media.
Now, it is true that as you get older, you become more “set in your ways”. A lot of people use that as a synonym for being stubborn but if we think about the phrase in its most literal interpretation, we get a better idea of what’s happening. When you were a child, you were extremely gullible because you hadn’t learned very much. But even more than that, biologically, your brain was perpetually in a sort of hypnotic state. You internalized vast amounts of information about the world, yourself, and the people around you.
This is how kids develop, to help them learn as much about the world around them as possible, and by extension, survival in it. Which is great, I mean, if you’re reading this, you successfully learned how to survive. Good for you!
The problem is, not everything you learned as a child was correct or helpful to your life as you know it right now. And even more problematic, it hangs out in the subconscious part of your brain. So you likely don’t even realize what you’re doing, not to mention why you’re doing it or when it started.
Our untrue beliefs
When this happens, when we learn things and make untrue conclusions about the world around us, it can set us up for some real problems. Maybe you were abused or neglected as a child. Or maybe your parents never had enough money to know where the next meal was coming from. Maybe you never met a person who went to college. Any of these things would be enough to give you many skewed viewpoints of the world.
So what’s the big deal? We learn “bad” things as kids, so what? Once we’re adults, we’ll unlearn them anyway, won’t we? Well, not necessarily. In a lot of cases, even if you do see an example of your paradigm being false in adulthood, you won’t register it. You’ll either block it out or you’ll reinterpret it to fit your narrative. Often times, it’ll sound like, “Well, that person just…” in your head, trying to rationalize and discredit this new experience.
And it isn’t like you’re out of the woods once you’re an adult either. Anyone can make false conclusions about life that can add up to some pretty severe handicaps later on (or even in the moment). So what are we supposed to do? How do we get out of this depressing whirlwind?
What do you believe?
It is a good practice to be at least aware of your beliefs, to start out with. Since these things have a way of changing over time, it is best seen as a continual practice, like gratitude or eating healthy.
We figure out our beliefs by doing a little backpedaling. Like if you have an intense adverse reaction to something, or you completely discredit an idea without even considering it first, you have a belief there.
It may take a little sniffing out to know what belief you’re harboring, but you can do it. Here’s an example of what the process might sound like.
“That really upset me when that girl called me fat. Why am I so upset? What am I believing? Maybe I believe she’s going to take away all my friends? No… maybe it’s that I think she’s right? No, that’s not it either. Maybe I believe that if I’m fat that means I’m worthless? Oh… wow. I think that’s it.”
Another way to go about it is asking yourself, “what am I making this mean?” You want to look at the situation without any subtext, then look at your feelings separately. And once you can objectively do that, you’ll be able to have some insight into what you’re deciding it must mean.
The key here is that if you’re acting irrationally, your belief probably isn’t rational. I mean, you might be correct, you might not. The point of this exercise isn’t to establish truth. It’s to uncover the things that you’re subconsciously believing.
Examining our beliefs
Now once you get into figuring out your beliefs, you might find that one specific one pops up a lot. And if a belief of yours is causing you trouble in the form of strife or logistical disadvantage , then it’s up to you to do the necessary work of correcting them. Not just in your rational brain, but in your emotional brain as well. And things tend to get stuck in there.
This is where we want to start figuring out what the truth is. Now, sometimes this will be easier than others. The first thing to try is laying your belief out in front of you. “I believe (this)” And you want to follow that up with, “is this true?”
Sometimes that’s all it takes to get your rational mind in check. If you recognize your limiting beliefs as untrue, it can open up a big world of relief and opportunities for you. Sometimes getting your rational mind to acknowledge it is all that is needed to getting your emotional mind on board as well. And it’s these sorts of moments that we call “epiphanies”.
When it gets complicated
Now, there are times when all the pieces don’t just click together so simply, and we’re left to do a little more work than that. (But I promise, it’s still worth it.)
So if our logical mind is not so easily swayed, we’ll need to do a little research. We need to find facts and statistics, understand the system and large, and listen to other people’s experiences that don’t match ours. Luckily, we live in the Information Age where research is as easy as it’s ever been. So commit your mind to learning the ropes and figuring out how to work within the existing system that interests you—be that the government, cooking basics, psychology, physiology, whatever you want to excel at.
And then there’s your emotional side. Often enough, knowing the truth won’t get you feeling it. And that’s the goal, to know it and feel it. The emotional mind isn’t so easily swayed. It has a tendency to hold onto old dysfunction even if it knows it’s wrong, for the sake of familiarity.
In these sorts of cases, you’ll want to first make sure that your logical mind is completely on board, because that’s where you need to build a base from. And if it is, then you can start moving on. First, you’ll need to do some repetition. The emotional mind takes some conditioning and this is one of the most sure fire ways to do it. Second, you need to be listening to this new paradigm with your heart.
Basically how this works is to find someone or a group of people who have the belief you’d like to have in order to combat your dysfunction, and insert yourself into it. And while you’re watching from afar or participating or whatever variance in between you’re comfortable with, keep in mind how much it would help you to think the same way.
You want to channel your passion for the problem into interest about the solution. That’s where you’ll get your motivation to change, as well as your sort of mental reward for doing so. Now, be careful how you use this technique. It is a form of mental conditioning and self-indoctrination. It should only be used on things that you need to take on in order to stop yourself and others from suffering, or for things you’re entirely sure are positive.
Our changed perspectives
All these questions and approaches taken together will bring you new paradigms in time, and with improved paradigms you become more resistant to challenges and adversity. You will also find that you are more motivated to build a better life for yourself that people around you may not understand or even believe is possible. And while that can be immensely satisfying and exciting, it can also be rather lonely. So be sure to tune back in to The Thoughts that Bind, because we will be addressing that very rift between people of different beliefs very soon.
For now, build your life and your brain just the way you want and need it in order to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled. It may not be an incredibly fast process, but the benefits you’ll reap from it will be so worth it. You’ll see old bad habits starting to fall away, and maybe for the first time in your life, they won’t call to you the way they used to.
Let yourself be made new. And without all of the vestiges of your traumatic past, see all the empty emotional space you have to fill with new and valuable things. When you start seeing that, and feeling the urge to fill it up with new things, follow that urge. Then, before long, you life will be new.
