It is interesting to see the social networking posts criticizing people who do not know how to think, or do not seem to have common sense, or who say the dumbest things, or carry out really stupid acts, and so forth. It is also intriguing to me to review the many complaints about criminality, mental health issues, politicians and the like. What do all of these things have in common?
One might argue that there is some mental or moral deficiency or both. Perhaps that’s true, but does that mean these people have broken minds and/or are themselves broken?
For me a broken person is one who fails to believe in themselves. Think about that for a moment.
Self-Belief
For years we have had a motto at InnerTalk that states, “Believing in yourself always matters!” The fact is, when we lack this belief, we will invariably hold ourselves back, if not sabotage our own efforts directed at realizing our highest best. Things like IQ, vocational interests, opinions about politics, and so forth do not say we are broken even if they do not rise to levels we’d prefer. No—nothing says broken more than failing to believe in yourself.
I fleshed out in my book, I Believe, the power of belief to choke us unconscious with respect to our true potential. So unconscious that we refuse to accept anything other than the status quo. Indeed, denial of our potential is not only self-destructive, but it literally delimits our possibilities.
Training
Just today, while at lunch, I enjoyed a conversation that addressed just one example of this issue. We are all taught very early in life the power of pharmaceuticals. We have a pain; we take a pill. We feel poorly, we take a pill. We fear the flu, we get a shot. The emphasis is on the body—never on the mind.
We learn early to condition our bodies for health. We encourage our children to undertake exercise programs ranging from athletics to calisthenics, from swimming to walking, etc. Our school systems are set up to promote physical fitness and health. What we do not find anywhere in all of this is the role the mind plays in wellness.
The data today robustly demonstrates the important role the mind plays in wellness, but if we fail to recognize that, we fail to train our minds to serve us. Instead, we allow the input from society to dictate, and thereby delimit, the healing power available to us that originates in the mind.
Broken People
Again, this is but one example of what I find to be a broken person. False ideas, expectations, and life beliefs can ruin any chance we have to find happiness, success, or health and wellbeing. Bottom line: we are all programmed, the question is only who or what did the programming. Was the programming of our own choosing or dependent upon the agendas of others?
Broken people are often merely the product of not knowing any better. They have accepted constructs that are self-limiting and ill-informed. Bottom line, they have become less than they could be in the process of becoming normal. The brilliant psychiatrist, R.D. Laing, put it this way, “It [society] educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.”
Responsiblity
There comes a time in our lives when we become informed enough to wake up to the limitations we have come to accept and the information we have been ignorant of. When that happens, it becomes incumbent upon us to accept responsibility for our lives and begin the journey involved in self-actualization. That means training our mind, particularly our subconscious mind, for that is where those self-destructive, self-limiting beliefs persist. In fact, should these self-defeating beliefs exist only in the conscious mind, we could wipe them fairly easily.
Training the subconscious is the challenge for most of us today. Shedding all of those old negative sabotaging beliefs while obtaining the stream of consciousness (self-talk) that is fully supportive of our goals, is the most important objective any of us can achieve if we are to truly enjoy our highest potential.
Those are my thoughts—what are yours?
Eldon Taylor
Provocative Enlightenment
NY Time Bestselling Author of Choices and Illusion
www.eldontaylor.com