Tweezing Out the Truth

Patti here. Sometimes it’s important to ask for help. And sometimes that’s a hard lesson to learn. It can be easier to trundle through life without changing, assuming you know what is true about situations without considering that you might be wrong. Sometimes, we need help to see another way.

 

I have rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which is a painful connective tissue disease. I am very pain tolerant so I tend to cope with it pretty well. The thing is sometimes I cope too well. 

 

Like this morning, I realized something I thought was a painful RA joint in my foot was actually a splinter. I finally had Steve look at my ‘sore joint’ and within 3 minutes later with the help of a good set of tweezers something that had been hurting me for a year was better. Like really better. 

 

Because I assumed I knew what it was, without investigating the situation deeper, I walked with an extra pain in my foot for a year. A year!!!! How crazy is that? Well honestly, not very crazy at all. That’s how we humans work.

 

And that’s how our errant beliefs work. We assume something we think we know is true because it was true in the past. But, when we take the time to investigate a little more fully another truth reveals itself. 

 

Lots of things that were true in the past (like my foot hurts because a joint is inflammed) aren’t necessarily true in the present (there was a splinter hidden deep in the ball of my foot and the pain isn’t RA pain at all). Our commitment to what we decided to believe because of past experiences makes us unable to see the truth in the present. 

 

This kind of mistake is human nature. This ability to make judgments about the present based on the experiences of the past is built into the very way our brain works. If we didn’t have this skill we could never drive, or cook, or do any complex task. We need to be able to sort information to simplify all the sensory input our brain receives or we would be constantly immobilized by too much information. The thing is that sometimes, we also need to check in with our thinking to make sure it is true.

 

And this is where the help comes in. If Steve hadn’t looked at my foot, I would have never known that my pain wasn’t caused by the RA. It took new eyes to see what I was blind to. So how do we find new eyes to help us see things more correctly? For one thing, listen to your life. Is it trying to tell you to change? Are friends and family nudging you to see something a different way? If they are, take a moment and look at what they are saying. Is it true? Are you missing something? Check in with your own inner wisdom? Is it nudging you to consider old limiting beliefs and find new ways of being in the world? 

 

You shouldn’t change something because somebody else is telling you to but you might want to consider the feedback you are receiving. Is it true? Is it helpful? Does it relate to your life or is it really about them. Once you have answered those questions, question yourself and any beliefs you may hold that relates to their feedback. You might learn something enlightening. 

 

If you want help learning how to change identify and change limiting beliefs, Check out our classes. This skill is exactly what these classes are designed to teach (and more). Our next class starts the week of September 14th. Here’s the link to read more about it.