It's Freedom Day next Friday, and I am sitting and thinking about what that really means to me.
Not politically, personally.
Freedom is a release from unwanted ties, exemption from confinement, and, for us, management of evil twins.
This, I think, makes Freedom Day an extra-special day.
A day that we consciously acknowledge that our negative self talk poisons us, and a day that we remember that we are committed to have a mind that is positive, free and unencumbered by intrusive and unwanted negative thoughts.
We know that each of us has a core foundational belief system that governs our sense of belonging, worth and identity. Literally everything we think, believe, feel and perceive – all the decisions we make and the ways we respond to and cope with our lives – are based on our core foundational beliefs.
It has been established that 90% of our core beliefs were formed and entrenched in our subconscious by the time we were eight years old.
And that we will spend our whole lives subconsciously gathering information, people and experiences to validate, substantiate, quantify ad qualify these core foundational beliefs.
This dark passenger we acknowledge.
This dark passenger we see.
But, we also need to acknowledge something else. Something far more surreptitious and malevolent : our beliefs about negative thoughts themselves.
These particular beliefs are like dark wolf steroids and I like to think of them as Poison Popeye Spinach : when your evil twin is battling to convince you how fat/stupid/lazy/ugly you are, she takes a slug of this shit, and she packs the knock-out punch.
Recognise any of these ? :
- Having all these negative thoughts is a normal human experience and part of what it means to be a human being.
- I generate, am responsible and at fault for these negative thoughts.
- It's necessary to have negative thoughts because in some cases they are useful or helpful to ward off other negative situations, so if I continuously tell myself how fat I am, I will prevent myself from getting fatter.
- It is impossible to rid one's mind of negative thoughts.
- Negative thoughts are necessary to help us appreciate what truly positive experiences feel like.
And so on.
So are you getting the picture?
Did you resonate with any of those statements?
Did any of those feel "true" for you?
This Sneaky Sadistic Spinach has very interesting side effects. It punches negative thought into your mind, body and life and makes you feel that the corresponding foundational core beliefs are truer than ever.
Don't be blind sided by them.
Just for today.
