Did You Ask Yourself "What do I believe?"

So! What questions have you been asking yourself about your beliefs?

What beliefs did you examine?

What did you discover about why you came to believe things?

I promised you some of my answers so we can play this game together.

I believed I knew where I was going with this when I started the first piece oh so many weeks ago.


I've worked on and worked on and worked on; written, re-written and re-written this follow up post for weeks, into the point of months, to find myself going eleventy-million ways and lost in a morass of things I want to say, without being able to clearly say any of them.

One of the patterns I know about myself is when this happens as I am trying to "get something done" -- I have pieces of myself (core beliefs) that are contradicting each other.

I call this the push-me pull-you effect, a term I picked up when I was very young and introduced to Dr. Doolittle.

It's as if various parts of me are pushing and pulling to be recognized (heard, so to speak) and each part is not congruent with other parts -- not headed in the same way.

In one sense these various parts of me disagree, believe different things, and feel they are being ignored. They put their feet down to defend their direction. So I wind up feeling stuck.

I'd write down a belief to find myself saying, "Well, wait a minute, you're changing that belief, therefore it's only true some of the time now instead of all of the time." Or, "Rats, I want to believe that and sometimes I do, however, a lot of the time I seem to believe just the opposite."

So after all these weeks of thought, worry about missing my self-imposed deadline, I still found myself staring into the visage of writer's block.

Bleah!

I wound up thinking, "What do I have the right to?" and "What's okay for me?"

In my mind, if I have the right to something, or if something is okay, I believe in it.

That gave me the opportunity to use the tools I have chosen to believe in for clarity.

It has been tumultuous.

It was an uncomfortable opportunity at the beginning.

Now, it feels good, safe, and secure.

What do I believe?

1) It's okay for me to take care of my whole being, my body, my mind, my emotions, my feelings, my spirit -- and to expect others to respect and nurture my whole being as well.

2) It's okay for me to recognize that I am not "broken", I do not need "to be fixed", and I am not to be "pitied or scorned" simply because I don't think, talk, act, look, or feel like someone else does.

3) It's okay for me to ask questions. If someone can't answer them, won't answer them, or feels uncomfortable answering them, that doesn't make my expression of curiosity right or wrong.

There are more beliefs. I find many of my beliefs are strongly in line with what others call assertiveness.

Why do I believe?

Because I choose to.

I was trained to believe other things throughout my lifetime, particularly during the period when we learn our core beliefs -- that time when we are growing as an infant to recognition of ourselves as "me".

Another belief of mine:

4) It's okay for me to change my mind, my thoughts, my feelings, my beliefs.

I'm listing a number of articles on the web that have to do with assertiveness.

Some of the articles give me phrases to express what I wanted to in the past and couldn't.

Here's to you, your questions, and your beliefs, as you hold them up to yourself to see if they fit, and if you want to change them.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. Care to share? Use the "Post a Comment" box. It won't post immediately, I have chosen to manually post comments due to internet spam.



Some thoughts about assertiveness on the web:

As an assertive person you can ...



Help For Men's Assertive Bill of Rights (I don't let the term "men", keep me from assimilating what works for women too! ::grin::)



drbj's page on Assertive Behavior



KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs Bill of Asssertive Rights