Using What’s True to Be Nicer to You
How to create lasting peace in your mind
I have an unhelpful voice in my head. It’s constantly with me, always narrating something, and it does a flawless impression of my speaking voice. I mean, the voice isn’t audible—I’m the only one who can hear it—but it imitates my speaking voice perfectly inside my head. I generally just accept what it’s saying because a voice like that must be me and I’m clearly the ultimate authority on myself, right?
Without question, this voice is the most unhelpful and unsupportive presence in my life, and by far who I spend the most time with.
The fool in my head doesn’t like silence
Ya know that phrase “silence is the best response to a fool”? Well, it doesn’t just apply to the fools outside our heads.
It took me a few years to get consistent with it, but I love meditating. Sitting down and getting quiet is like going to a padded room where the fool in my head can just bounce off the walls and punch pillows and stuff.
I recently sat down to meditate first thing in the morning and immediately noticed there was already so much tension in my body. I’d been awake for less than five minutes and my nervous system was already all tied up in knots. Clearly, this wasn’t because of anything that happened that day, my mind was just engaging in its hobby of generating a sense of dread.
I’ve developed a relationship with my nervous system where it’s a sort of Geiger counter now. There’s a very familiar electric feeling of anxiety that appears in my body, and like a Geiger counter beeps when in the proximity of radiation, this is saying that my brain’s gotten up to some sneaky mayhem in the background.
It’s kinda like when you’re in a house with kids and it suddenly gets real quiet. Big ol’ “Uh oh… what’re they doing? 🧐” situation, except with my nervous system, it’s not silence, it’s a sort of low-grade electric buzzing.
Having noticed it that morning as I started meditating, I decided to get curious and pose a question to my mind, and then quietly wait for an answer to appear. The question I asked was “What false beliefs about myself am I carrying right now?” And then I got quiet.
Declarative answers started appearing one after another.
I don’t matter.
I am unlovable.
I am invisible.
I don’t get to have what I want.
I am bad.
Well, ok. That’s all very familiar stuff for me, but the interesting thing was my next thought. “Ok, what’s the inverse of these false beliefs?”
That may sound like an odd phrasing, but I wasn’t just looking for the opposite of those words—I wanted to identify the missing truth whose absence made space for these falsehoods to set up shop.
I’ve never found it particularly helpful to argue with my internal negativity. Just saying “Nu-uh! I am good!” in response to thinking “I am bad” never does much to resolve that error and just produces a sort of “ok, cool story, bro” feeling inside. But now I wanted to see what nugget of perception might fill up the space where “I am bad” was standing so there wouldn’t be room for it.
What occurred to me was “I am growing every day.”
Whoa. Now that had power in it. That was something I could easily hold because it had a shape and texture to it.
There was an accuracy and truth there that I couldn’t reasonably argue with, and looking behind me, I could see a long string of ”growing every day” instances that link together in a consistent chain of growth.
As I continued sitting, I left my mind open so other nuggets of info that were the inverse of my other false-belief habits could enter.
The info-nugget that left no space for “I don’t matter“ was “I contribute beautiful things to the world.”
“I am unlovable” was unapologetically crowded out by “I love myself.”
“I am invisible“ was shown the door by “I am loved and valued by many people.”
“I don’t get to have what I want” showed itself out when “The Universe wants me to be happy and fulfilled” arrived.
Even though you’re reading my words about my experience, I bet you can still feel the energy in your body shift when you take in a negative statement like “I am unlovable” and then invite in the more expansive truth-based alternative of “I love myself.”
That’s pretty amazing, and it’s always available to us. We just have to remember it’s an option and choose to use it.
Truth is self-evident
Ya know what you’ll never see? Globs of oil arguing with a drop of dish soap about whether or not they have to be repelled by its presence.
In exactly the same way, falsehoods have no choice but to scoot right off when even a drop of truth appears. It’s just the natural outcome of exposing these energies to each other.
At their core, falsehoods have no reality. They might feel real while we’re experiencing the effects of believing in them, but they’re just illusions. Any notion that you are not worthy of all the good that life has to offer, is false. Any notion that you don’t matter and are unimportant, is false. Any notion that you aren’t worthy of what you want, is false. Any notion that you can’t create what you consistently set your heart and mind to creating, is false.
And the only way to reveal how insubstantial these falsehoods are is to apply truth to them.
So, what nuggets of truth could fill up the spaces where your false beliefs are currently residing? You can work on this yourself, or if you’d like a li’l brainstorming session, just leave me a comment below. 🙂