The afternoon always understands what the morning never even suspected.
NOTE- Article adapted* from https://www.marcandangel.com/2022/02/09/20-beliefs-you-will-gradually-let-go-of-over-the-next-20-years/#more-4167 by Angel Chernoff
Everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head.
Every day. All the time.
I am telling myself a story right now.
And this story is simply a collection of beliefs that ultimately makes me who I am – it lays the foundation for every action I take or don’t take in life. In essence, I build myself out of this story, one day at a time.
For a while, everything aligns just fine, or so it seems, and life is good.
But then at some point, perhaps as early as my childhood but probably not later: My thirties, forties, or fifties or even later, I get slapped with a harsh reality that doesn’t even slightly align with the story I’ve been telling myself. And it hurts! As I struggle to cope with the realizations and pain I’m feeling, it may feel like being slapped again and again with similar realities. It goes on like this until I realize that the story I’ve been telling myself (or believed from what others have told me) and have held on to all these years, is the primary source of my pain, because the beliefs that support the story are utterly false.
It isn’t easy, but it is in my best interest to accept it. It is in my best interest to seriously sit down with myself and come to grips with the reality that I was wrong, brainwashed, about it all along. What I believed to be true about so many things was just an illusion built on false beliefs – a story – that never really was what I thought it was.
This is my awakening!
Although it hurts in the beginning, it’s a beautiful thing in the long run.
As time passes, awareness gradually becomes the new foundation of my journey.
My story gets rewritten with powerful truths.
And I learn to let go of countless false beliefs, like these…
- The belief that waiting until tomorrow makes sense – We know deep down that life is short, and that death will come to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it comes to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. I expected there to be one more stair than there is, so I find myself off balance, before my mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is. Truth be told, someday there REALLY won’t be a tomorrow! “Why didn’t I learn to accept and appreciate it all, and treat every day like it was the last time? Sometimes, my biggest regret is how often I believed in tomorrow.”
- The belief that I must find my motivation somewhere outside myself – The most common problem with motivation, often not understood until later in life, is that when we say we’re looking for motivation. It implies that our motivation is somehow hiding behind a tree or under a rock somewhere. But that’s far from the truth. The truth is, our motivation comes from doing the right things. When our efforts have meaning behind them it motivates us to take the next step. Underneath all the things I say I have to do, at the end of each day, what is the significance and value I hope to create?
- The belief that everyone else knows what’s best for me – I will give myself the space to listen to my own voice—my own soul. Too many people listen to the noise of the world and get lost in the crowd. But I CAN choose differently! I can avoid watching too much TV. I don’t need to consume too much mass media news. I can find the strength to fill my time with meaningful experiences. The space and time I am occupying at this very moment is LIFE. If I am worrying about the Kardashians or Lebron James or some other famous face, then I am disempowered; I’m giving my life away to marketing and media hocus-pocus, which is created by big companies to ultimately motivate me to want to look a certain way and be a certain way. It’s all just a distraction from what is real and good. What is real and good is me and my friends and my family, my loves, my highs, my hopes, and my dreams. I know this already! It really is in my best interest to listen to what my heart is telling me! Eventually, one way or another, I WILL. Because there will inevitably come a day when I’ll finally be wise enough and strong enough to do so.
- The belief that all the instant notifications and distractions are worth it – Distractions are in the palms of our hands these days, but it’s in our best interest to remember to look up more often. I can learn to be more human again. I can stop avoiding eye contact. I can stop hiding behind gadgets. I can smile often and ask about people’s stories. I can listen. I can only connect with others, or even myself, when I am present and not distracted. That means not Facebooking, Instagramming, or Snapchatting life away on my smartphone. If I am constantly attached to my smartphone and only listening with my ears as my eyes check for the next social update, I am ripping myself off of actually experiencing real relationships and real life. The same is true for texting.
- The belief that being busy is beneficial – “Am I making meaningful use of this scarce and precious day?” It’s a simple question. And it’s a question that seems to gain relevance as we gain life experience. Time gradually shows us how fleeting our lives really are. Filling every day with busyness makes no sense, and yet it’s tempting to do just that. My ultimate goal is living a life uncluttered by most of the distractions people fill their lives with, leaving me with space for what truly matters. A life that isn’t constant busyness, rushing, and resistance but instead: mindful contemplation, creation, and connection with people and projects I truly love.
- The belief that knowledge alone is enough – Learning by itself is great in the near term, but it alone doesn’t cut it in the long run if I plan on making positive changes in my life. It’s one thing to know all twelve steps necessary to recover, for example, but it’s another thing entirely to dedicate myself to actually carrying out each one of those steps. The acquisition of knowledge doesn’t mean I’m growing – growing happens when what I know changes how I live. At some point, we all learn this lesson, often the hard way, by realizing that we haven’t made any real progress. But then we take action because that’s how real progress happens… and everything changes, for the better.
- The belief that faster is better – In our youth it seems like faster is better, but in time we gradually witness the power of ‘slow and steady’ at work. We come to learn that no act of love, kindness, or diligence, no matter how small, is ever wasted. The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a tree, that I can share a bit of my knowledge and it becomes another’s wisdom, That I can smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are all indicators that I can make a difference in life and business, even if it can’t be done all at once. So, I don’t need to break my back today. I can remind myself that I can’t lift 1,000 pounds all at once. Yet I can easily lift one pound 1,000 times, especially when I spread the lifting over a series of days. Tiny, repeated, daily efforts are what get me there.
- The belief that comfort is the end goal – A very popular and harmful addiction in this world is the draw of comfort. I don’t want to be someone who never asks, “how?” or never pulls back further to ask, “why?” Too many people don’t ask these questions because they know the answers would require substantial disruption to their comfort zone, and they don’t want to endure it. But that’s how the human mind grows, and eventually, we all learn this, one way or another. When our minds are stretched with new questions and resulting experiences, they never shrink back to their previous dimensions – we are forever more competent and capable. Truth be told, emotional discomfort in life, when accepted, rises, crests, and crashes in a series of waves. Each wave washes an old layer of us away and deposits treasures we never expected to find. Out goes inexperience, in comes awareness; out goes frustration, in comes resilience; out goes hatred, in comes kindness. And so on and so forth…
- The belief that I am at the center of the universe – When we’re young, we all have the tendency to place ourselves at the center of everything, and see every outcome from the viewpoint of how it affects us personally. But as we grow up and broaden our horizons, we begin to see that our self-centered thinking has lots of baggage that comes along with it – from feeling sorry for ourselves when things aren’t going exactly as expected, to doubting ourselves when we fail to be perfect. And we realize that shifting our focus onto others for a while can help. It’s one of life’s great paradoxes: when we serve others, we end up benefiting as much if not more than those we serve. So, whenever I feel stuck, I can try to shift my focus from my circumstances to the circumstances of those around me. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” I can ask, “How can I help you?”
- The belief that everyone is capable of being kind and loving – Not everyone will appreciate what I do for them, and not everyone will do for me as I do for them, because not everyone has the same heart as me. That’s reality. And I’ll eventually realize that I’ll be endlessly disappointed if I expect things to be different. I can be kind and loving to people simply because I want to be, and not let my expectations get the best of me. With that said, however, I do ultimately have to figure out who’s worth my long-term attention and who’s just taking advantage of me. If my time and energy are misspent on the wrong people for the wrong reasons, I can end up in a tedious cycle of fleeting friendships, superficial romances, that while seemingly thrilling, always end up meaningless, and only leave me wondering why I always seem to be running in place chasing validation and affection.
- The belief that I can save certain (overly dramatic) people from themselves – I will gradually learn that I simply can’t save some people from themselves, so I don’t get sucked too deep into their drama today. Those who make perpetual chaos of their lives won’t appreciate me interfering with the commotion they’ve created, anyway. They may want my “poor baby” sympathy, but they don’t want to change. They don’t want their lives fixed. They don’t want their problems solved, their emotional addictions and distractions taken away, their stories resolved. Because what would they have left? They don’t know and they aren’t ready to know yet. And it’s not my job to tell them nor my job to clean up their messes.
- The belief that forgiveness isn’t needed – In time, we learn about the power and importance of forgiveness, and we learn about its limitations. We learn that a broken relationship that’s mended through forgiveness can be even stronger than it once was. And, of course, we learn that this isn’t always the case either. Because forgiveness doesn’t necessarily lead to healed relationships. That’s not the point. Some relationships aren’t meant to be, and should NOT be. But it is in my best interest to forgive anyway, for my own sake, and then let what’s meant to be, BE. Forgiveness allows me to focus on the future without combating the past. When I forgive someone, I am making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against my present self. It has nothing to do with freeing a criminal of his or her crime, and everything to do with freeing myself of the burden of being an eternal victim.
- The belief that outer beauty is a top priority – As I grow older, what I look like on the outside becomes less and less of an issue, and who I am on the inside becomes the primary point of interest. I gradually learn that infatuating myself with someone simply for what they look like on the outside is like choosing my favorite food based on color instead of taste. I can start paying more attention to the innate, invisible, unquantifiable characteristics that create lasting attraction. Just as some people enjoy the smell of mint, while others prefer the scent of cinnamon, there is an undeniable, magnetic draw that attracts me to the qualities of certain people. Sometimes it’s even the scars my soul shares with them that reels me in and creates the very hinges that hold us together in the long run.
- The belief that I can buy your way to long-term happiness – There are two basic kinds of happiness in life – fleeting and enduring. The fleeting type is most commonly acquired through the anticipation and acquisition of new material (or digital) possessions, while the enduring type is attained through the gradual growth of my mind – the experiences, lessons, and realizations that ultimately bring more awareness, acceptance, and peace into my consciousness. At a young age, it might be difficult to decipher the difference between fleeting and enduring happiness, but as time rolls on it becomes vividly obvious that the latter is far more satisfying. So, today I can start by challenging myself to be less impressed by the things I own and be more impressed by the life I live.
- The belief that all my fears and worries will come true – Someday when I look back over my life I’ll realize that nearly all of my anxious worries and fears never came to be – they were completely unjustified and pointless. So how about I wake up and realize this right now? What worries me masters me! And worrying will never change the outcome anyway. But a positive attitude can change everything over time. When I look back over the last few days, how many moments did I ruin with needless worry and negativity? Although there’s nothing I can do about these lost moments, there’s plenty I can do about the one I’m living through right now, and the ones that are still to come.
- The belief that failure is the end of the world – What’s the difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. Behind every great invention, creation, or work of art is a hundred failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us. The truth is, I may not succeed in the exact way I hoped I would, within the exact time frame I hoped I would, but I will learn and grow from my experiences and failures, and I will be better off in the end. I will ultimately learn that there’s no exact path in life that I have to stay on to get what I want. What I want will come with noticing the progress I’ve made, and understanding that every lesson is a step forward.
- The belief in every guarantee of safety and security – Too often, especially when we’re young and a bit naive, we buy in to the illusions and guarantees of safety and security. We purchase triple premium insurance, we lock ourselves in our homes, and we seal ourselves off from large parts of the world, all in an effort to be safe and secure. But the older we grow, the more we realize there are no sure things in this world. The nature of the world is constantly evolving. Reserving myself with numerous safety and security measures is usually no safer in the long run than exposing myself, and then simply using common sense to navigate forward. And it is far more fulfilling to dare myself to the mighty experiences life has to offer than to hide forever in a bubble of safety and security, only to leave the majority of my life sealed up and unlived.
- The belief that someday I will feel 100% complete, across the board – As I live, I’ll gradually find peace in the thought that I can’t ever have it all or know it all. I am always just a fraction of the whole. For if I wasn’t, there would be nothing more to experience. So I’ll remember to value what I know, and also value the countless things I don’t yet understand. For in what I do not understand, there is the joy of growth. Life will always be incomplete and a bit asymmetrical. I’ll remember to appreciate this and embrace it. I’ll be happy and sad at the same time, be hungry and thankful at the same time, be nervous and excited at the same time, and be OK with it.
- The belief in how things are “supposed” to be – As I get older I will find that life isn’t necessarily any easier or harder than I thought it was going to be; it’s just that the easy and the hard aren’t exactly the way I had anticipated, and don’t always occur when I expect them to. This isn’t a bad thing; it makes life interesting. With a positive attitude, I will often be pleasantly surprised. When I stop expecting things to be a certain way, I can appreciate them for what they are. Ultimately I will realize that life’s greatest gifts are rarely wrapped the way I expected.
- The belief that starting over is not an option – No one wins a game of chess by only moving forward; sometimes I have to move backward to put myself in a position to win. I will remember to think about how this relates to my life. Sometimes when it feels like I’m running into one dead end after another, it’s actually a sign that I’m not on the right path. Maybe I was meant to hang a left back when I took a right, and that’s perfectly fine. Life gradually teaches us that U-turns are allowed. So I can turn around when I must! There’s a big difference between giving up and starting over in the right direction. And there are three little words that can release me from my past mistakes and regrets, and get me back on track. These words are: “From now on…”
Choose to Let Go of my False Beliefs
My challenge to you is this:
- Live your life not as a bystander…
- Not as a prisoner to the false beliefs and stories that keep you stuck in your seat.
- Live in this world, on this day, and everyday hereafter as an active participant. Every morning, ask yourself what is real and important to you, and then find the courage, wisdom and willpower to build your day around your answer.
It’s my choice.
MY choice!
I am choosing right now.
And if I’m choosing…
- to complain…
- to blame…
- to be stuck in the past…
- to act like a victim…
- to feel insecure…
- to feel anger…
- to feel hate…
- to be naive…
- to ignore my intuition…
- to ignore good advice…
- to give up…
…then it’s time to choose differently!
I will also remind myself that I am not alone. Generations of human beings in my family tree have chosen. Human beings around the world have chosen. We all have chosen at one time or another. I will whisper reminders to myself, to:
Choose to be present.
Choose to be positive.
Choose to forgive myself.
Choose to forgive others.
Choose to see my value.
Choose to see the possibilities.
Choose to find meaning.
Choose to prove I am not a victim.
Choose to let go of my false beliefs and stories.
I Choose to find strength in the truth – MY TRUTH – so I can take a real step forward today.
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*For KC CoDA purposes, articles are edited to come from an "I/me" perspective. They also may have edited content and format.