redips

Is anybody in your family a packrat? You know the type. They collect stuff -- useless stuff -- and refuse to throw any of it away.

My dad was like that. He had stacks of junk mail from ten years ago. Old hamburger wrappers carefully folded and tucked away between the stove and refrigerator, and every other little cranny. Want to look something up in the local newspaper? He had at least 15 years' worth in stacks. It was all there. Somewhere.

Most of us snicker at people who live like that, but we shouldn't be too quick to point a finger.

Ask anybody if they're willing to examine their beliefs and discard any that interfere with joyous living. Around 99 percent will agree that, yes, they'd happily toss out any useless or harmful beliefs.

But then... if you start suggesting possible beliefs to discard, you'll meet serious resistance. In fact, you'll find most people can't tell the difference between a belief that serves them well and one that has them nearly enslaved.

Many of our beliefs are not even recognized as such.

When Tammy was growing up, she constantly heard that rich people were greedy and shameless and didn't care who they stepped on. The family culture she grew up in had a serious prejudice against people with money.

Once Tammy got out into the workplace, she naturally wanted to get ahead, to get promotions and raises. However, she was constantly shooting herself in the foot.

She slept late the morning of a scheduled promotion interview and missed it entirely.

As soon as she accumulated a bit of savings, she'd go on spending binges and blow it all, even running up near-crippling credit card balances.

When we talked, I asked Tammy why she did those things. She had no idea what her reasons were, but she could clearly see she was sabotaging herself.

When we talked about her attitudes toward people with plenty of money, her mistrust quickly became obvious to me. But she couldn't see it.

Tammy had beliefs about rich people -- but she didn't recognize them as beliefs. As far as she was concerned, they were hard facts... bedrock truths of the universe. Rich people really were selfish and greedy, she said. She had seen plenty of evidence proving it, so of course it wasn't just a belief.

Naturally, wanting to be a nice person, she couldn't allow herself to become "like them."

And until she was able to recognize that her "facts" were really nothing more than personal bias -- just beliefs -- she was unable to break through the cage of her beliefs.

This is true for all of us. We are slaves to our beliefs... the ones we still think are "truths" until we can recognize them for what they really are: just opinions.

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# posted by rekaolc15565 : 9:30 PM