It’s all about perspective, right? As my wise pre-teen philosopher pointed out to me the other day, the British don’t have us down as the heroes of the Revolutionary War in THEIR history books. That’s just our side of the story.
And speaking of sides, we sure do love to pick one. We seem to find comfort in black/white, this side/that side, right/wrong thinking. So we pick a side to stand on and start collecting evidence.
We filter everything through our “loyal” lens.
- If it reinforces our choice, we keep it and repeat it to ourselves and everyone else.
- If it looks more favorable for the opposing side, we question its validity and dismiss it.
Here’s how this plays out in our internal politics.
- We decide we are good or bad, essentially picking our side.
- We collect evidence to support that choice and repeat it to ourselves, all the while dismissing any hint that we may be wrong.
This can particularly be a problem when we’ve decided we are bad in some way. Once we’ve settled on that belief (I’m a bad friend. I’m a bad spouse. I’m a bad parent.), we seek all of the incidents that validate that belief. But in the process of collecting evidence of our unworthiness, we become blind to the possibility that our evaluation may be wrong. We just might be good.
Candidate-wise, I’ll leave the hashing out of who is bad or good, right or wrong, and what the “truth” is to those who enjoy that kind of election fun.
Human-wise, I know the Truth. The Truth is that we are all good. It just becomes a matter of collecting evidence for that side of the story. And once you open yourself to it, you WILL find it.
I’m not going to claim it is easy to change your mind. In fact, opening yourself to a new perspective that is different from the one you’ve been clinging to can be extremely challenging. It’s unfamiliar, maybe even hard to believe.
But that is just the beginning. All you are doing is picking a new side. It’s very important here to get the order right! You are not looking for evidence to convince yourself you are good. There may never be enough to satisfy you. Instead, you are just taking a deep breath and stepping over that line to join the other team.
Now comes the evidence collection. You’ll be surprised at how much evidence you find that proves that you ARE good. You ARE worthy. And once you collect enough evidence of that Truth, it becomes easier and easier to believe.
So, I challenge you to dig in a little today.
- Find a belief about yourself that has you down in your history books as the bad guy.
- Don’t think about it or try to talk yourself into it, just jump ship and decide that you are actually the good guy, the hero.
- Start collecting evidence to support your NEW story.
They say there is another side to every story. Have fun writing yours!