Are you assuming?

There are things that I know. I know that the sky is blue (sometimes), that it hurts when I fall over and that if I feel loved I am happy. I know that some types of behaviour are wrong and that there are plenty of things I can’t do or am not very good at. In fact I could make you rather a long list of the things I can’t do very well.

So how do I know these things? Well, many of them I learned from my parents and other adults who were around me when I was very small. As a child I knew nothing, had to trust that what adults and even what other children told me was right, and turned these messages into beliefs. Much of what I learned was really helpful. I needed to know how the world worked, how to communicate and what was dangerous and what was safe. I needed to absorb a lot of knowledge at school but I also needed to learn to think and judge for myself.

Some of these messages, however, were less than helpful. For example, amidst all the good school reports, the one that is clearest in my memory goes like this:

“Harriet has a normal sense of rhythm but appears to have a problem with pitch.”

Up to this point, I enjoyed singing and I didn’t spend a moment wondering whether or not I was good at it. It was fun. But those words changed all that. Since then, I have rarely sung in public and usually mime if I find myself in a group singing situation. I don’t even sing to myself, unless I’m in the shower or have the radio turned up really loud in the car. It’s just an example, and it hasn’t ruined my life, but it shows how a few words from a respected adult, whom I assumed knew what he was talking about, can turn into a belief in the mind of a child. The belief that I can’t sing is still there. Happily, although I still don’t really sing, I seem to have produced a young man who sings and plays several instruments with rather a lot of talent, and goes around the pubs and clubs entertaining people doing just that, so I figure that I was just keeping the musical talent under wraps to pass on to him…

You get the picture though. Messages about what is ‘true’ come from various angles and sources, and have the power to change the nature and direction of our lives, if we absorb them and assume they are facts.

As we grow up, we do develop some judgment and discrimination of our own. The older we get, the more able we are to question the messages we receive and scrutinise them before turning them into beliefs. For example, if I am interested in reading a book and I see a review that says it’s ‘rubbish,’ I’ll read some more reviews to get a more rounded picture and then perhaps procure the book for myself to make up my own mind. If someone tells me that they don’t like another person for whatever reason, I may listen to their opinion but I will reserve judgment until I have got to know the person in question. I’m not fond of having negative attitudes towards people anyway.

There are plenty of sources of messages that we, as adults, find more troublesome, however. For example, advertising tells us that we need to look a certain way and that women, in particular, need to be a certain size, well groomed with shiny hair. And that we need to make enormous efforts to look younger than we are. Films and music videos give a clear message to young women that they ought to be slim and dress in a provocative way in order to be acceptable and successful.

Society may also give us the impression that success is measured purely in financial terms and by the acquisition of material possessions, that being single is worse than being in a relationship and that losing a job or a business is a bad thing. I have learned during my adult life that all of these assumptions, which we see perpetuated around us all the time, have only limited validity.

When we start to question the beliefs we have grown up and lived with, interesting things can happen. We might realise that some of them are keeping us in jobs or situations that are not ideal for us, or that we are unconsciously preventing ourselves from reaching further, doing more, aiming higher, because of beliefs we have about ourselves or the world around us. If you find yourself saying I’m this or that or I’m not something else, or I can’t do x, y or z, then it’s quite likely you are acting on a belief that may not be valid. Time to ask where it comes from and whether you want to continue having it.

What happens when you question your assumptions? Have you ditched beliefs that weren’t serving you, and if you have, what happened next? It’s not always easy to take a different direction, but later on in the month we’ll look at strategies we can use to free up our thinking. Our beliefs make our reality, and if that reality isn’t great, maybe we need to change something inside rather than something outside.

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