The voices in your head

Recently I was at a hoity-toity author tea where all the authors were encouraged to wear hats, just for fun. An author friend of mine, who came to the event hatless, complimented my rather extravagant, feathered hat and then said, "I wanted to wear a hat, but I don't look good in hats. Once when I was wearing a hat, my mother said I looked like a rabbit under a cabbage leaf."

I laughed politely and then studied her. She's an attractive woman with delicate, classic features and beautiful shoulder-length blond hair. I pictured her with a hat and I said, with total confidence, "You would look beautiful in a hat." But she shook her head adamantly. Her mother had made one careless, not very sensitive, and totally inaccurate comment when she was young, and that voice is forever with her. That has become her truth. I don't look good in hats.

What do the voices in your head say? What harmful "truths" about yourself are you carrying around? Maybe they're not true at all.

When you catch yourself thinking a negative thought about yourself, stop and ask yourself where you got that idea. Whose voice is in your head, saying it? Your mother or father? A teacher? An ex-spouse? A member of the clergy? Ask yourself when you started to believe this about yourself. Was there a specific incident that led you to believe this "truth"?

Chances are, it's not true at all. Or even if it's a little bit true--even if you did once trip over your own two feet--it doesn't mean you're forever, irrevocably clumsy. Even if you made a bad grade in one math class, it doesn't mean you're bad at math.

Don't let those voices in your head--some of them decades old--rule your life today.

Truthfully,
Kara