The Believing Body
I have a little sign sitting on my desk that says, “Don’t believe everything you think.”
You might reasonably ask why, if I believe this strongly enough to write a column about it, I still need it sitting six inches from my face.
Apparently, I need reminding.
We have thousands of thoughts wandering through our heads, but have you ever wondered where they all came from?
We accumulate them over a lifetime. Parents, teachers, relationships, religion, doctors, books, television, the culture we grew up in – and now, of course, social media, where everyone appears to know absolutely everything.
Then there are our experiences. Something happens, we make a meaning out of it, and before long that meaning can become something we believe about ourselves, other people, or life itself.
Some of these thoughts have been living in our heads for decades without paying rent, and we haven’t even checked their references.
And somewhere in this enormous collection, we call it me. But how much of it actually is?
Many years ago, as I was moving further into my career, I studied with all sorts of teachers. I gathered bits and pieces from different philosophies and different ways of working. Some of it made perfect sense to me, and because I respected the people teaching me, I learned it and simply believed it.
Until I didn’t.
I even became quite adamant, at times, about what my clients needed to do if they wanted to get better.
Silly me.
Having been around the block a few times – and with several decades now between that Bobbie and this one – I feel rather humbled when I look back at how certain I could be.
The best teachers, I eventually realised, weren’t necessarily the ones who gave me the most answers. They were the ones who said, “Check it out, Bobbie. See if it’s true for you.” What a gift that turned out to be.
I’ve spent a lifetime learning. These days, I seem to be equally interested in what I can unlearn.
There are small, profound pieces from all those years of learning that I can say feel true for me. The rest? I question.
I’ve also sat in front of doctors who have said, “Well, this is what’s happening, so we need to…” blah, blah, blah – only to discover later that what seemed so certain wasn’t necessarily true for me.
I’m not suggesting we stop listening to doctors. Good grief. I’m suggesting that we don’t leave ourselves in the waiting room.
Knowledge and expertise matter. So does discernment. What someone knows may be enormously useful to me without automatically becoming the truth about me.
Perhaps the interesting question isn’t whether our thoughts are good or bad, positive or negative. Perhaps it’s simply becoming curious about them.
Whose idea was this in the first place? When did I start believing that? Did I discover this for myself, or was I taught it? Does this still belong to me?
And my personal favorite: What if I don’t know?
I find myself saying those three words more often these days. There was a time when “I don’t know” might have felt like admitting I hadn’t learned enough. Now I think it may be one of the wisest things I can say.
Because “I don’t know” leaves a little room. Room to listen. Room to discover. Room to change my mind. And perhaps, room to meet the person underneath all those accumulated ideas of who I thought I was supposed to be.
So maybe that little sign on my desk isn’t telling me not to trust myself at all. Maybe it’s reminding me to stay curious. To be a detective of my thinking.
Because after all these years, I’m discovering there’s an enormous difference between what I think, what I’ve been told, and what I know to be true for me.
And as for everything else? I don’t know. I rather like it that way.
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