One thing which shocked me recently was realising how few of my beliefs are actually my own.
Let me explain…
I was chatting with a buddy and mentioned how I felt after I quit my job.
I said I felt great.
Not just because I’d got more time back…
Or I felt healthier…
Or I was doing work I enjoyed…
But because of the “decision boost” you get when you take decisive action.
You know the feeling right?
A deep satisfaction that you’ve made a big decision. Especially if the decision has been
weighing on your mind.
I thought my buddy would agree with me and say he knew where I was coming from.
But to my surprise he didn’t.
Instead he said “my mate’s just quit his job. And he’s fallen in to a
funk. He’s pretty down at the moment”.
That hit me like a ton of bricks.
Wowser.
I felt empathy for his mate.
But I also realised how wrong I’d been.
The “decision boost” I’d described wasn’t true at all.
It may have been
true for me. And it may be true for others.
But it isn’t a universal truth.
Of course there are people who make a big decision and don’t feel a
boost. For many reasons.
But here’s
the real point and why I’m talking about this now:
The “decision boost” idea wasn’t even mine.
A couple of weeks earlier, someone else mentioned how you always get a boost from making a big decision.
How the act of
making a decision comes with a sense of empowerment, accomplishment and happiness.
This was my reality when I quit my job, so it made sense to me. And I adopted that belief.
But when I spoke to my mate a couple of weeks later, I talked about the “decision boost”
like it was a fact. When two weeks earlier I'd never considered it.
My point here is this:
So much of the thoughts, beliefs and opinions we carry round in our head aren’t even ours.
They’re someone else’s.
They might come from a friend, family member, colleague or the media.
And through exposure and repetition we take them on as our own without realising this is happening.
Similar examples are everywhere.
For
instance, I always had a belief that I had too much to lose to quit my job.
And it took years to realise this wasn’t my
belief.
Someone must’ve said it to me one day. Or, more likely, a few people said similar things to me over weeks and months and years.
Net result? I started to believe it.
And I’m sure this is true for a lot of people.
But eventually I saw I had too much to gain by NOT quitting. This belief was truer for me.
So maybe it’s worth asking yourself…
Next time a thought, opinion or
belief pops into your head…
Is it yours? Or is it someone else’s?
With that being said I’m going to wrap this up.
And go for a run.
Have a great weekend.
- Tom
p.s. Whenever you're ready, here are the ways I can support you