He gave me a book to read, Mathematician’s Delight, and took me on. He tutored me, and in one year with his support, I caught up with my peers and fell in love with mathematics. That I am hopeless at mathematics was a lie.
How many stories about yourself have you bought into, that are just not true? Who told you that you are not a singer, that you’ll never be an athlete, that you are a klutz, will never amount to anything, are no good at fixing things.., and the rest of the litany that you absorbed early on, and seldom, if ever question?
We make up stuff about ourselves (lies). For most of us it is self-limiting stuff that seriously constrains our self-expression, our joy, our relationships, our ability to relate, even our health.
This is a category of lying that keeps us from knowing ourselves, that keeps us from being moved and inspired by ourselves, that keeps us from making our full contribution in the world.
This is a category of lying that is really worth tracking down and stopping.
So do an exercise I am borrowing from Sir Winston Churchill, not directly of course – he called it a Split Page Process. Take a piece of paper, or an electronic document, and divide it into two columns. In one column list all the things you believe to be true about yourself. For those that empower you and give you freedom, joy, self-expression and bounty of all flavors, put a check mark in the opposite column with the note, “Keep believing“.
For those that make you feel less than, or that disempower and constrain you, take the view that there is a lie in there somewhere and dig to find what it is. So you may not be able to sing on a concert stage, but family sing-alongs?
Paraphrasing “There’s a pony in there somewhere” (if you don’t know this joke, find someone who does to tell it to you), if something on your list disempowers you and drains the joy and satisfaction and self-expression out of you – there’s a lie in there somewhere. You’ve just got to keep digging till you find it, and then in the opposite column write what the truth is. And then, live that truth out loud.
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