Have you ever had someone say something really mean to you? Most of us have. Sometimes the hurtful words come from those close to us, and these can linger a lifetime.
When you believe what someone else says about you, it can change the life you end up living. It can turn you into a person you never wanted to be.
If as a child you were singing and your mother happened to have a headache, she may have voiced her pain out loud and told you to be quiet, that your voice was hurting her. Even if you were a beautifully talented singer, these words could have been enough to keep you from ever singing again.
You took it personally.
You accepted something that wasn’t true as a reality for yourself. You took a lie and formed an identity around it.
Someone might call you stupid, or useless, or annoying. As children we can be all of those things in any moment, but that isn’t who we actually are – unless we believe what was said. Then we can spend an entire life living with the brands that scarred us permanently.
It’s time to take back control of who you are. It doesn’t matter what anyone told you, or who you have acted as up to this point. You can be whoever you choose to be right now.
There is no reason to limit your potential because of the opinions of others, including the people closest to you. Opinions are just that – they are perhaps true for the person who has them, but they aren’t representative of any worldly truths.
Opinions are coloured by our own ideas about the world and what we see and experience. That is all they are. They are perceptions that have been formed into beliefs that are then shared with others.
It doesn’t have to be your truth if you don’t want it to be.
The only shame in all of this is if you believe what someone else thinks about you. The only way that happens is if, deep down, you believe it yourself.
If someone calls me stupid, I understand that they must be having a bad day. At no point do I begin to question the level of my intelligence, because I know that I am not stupid. Opinions that don’t resonate with me will never affect me.
But if I have moments when I am feeling less confident, when perhaps I have made some bad decisions, I may be more vulnerable to an outside verbal attack. Something someone says may penetrate my shell and become a reality for me.
Once you believe something about yourself, then your behaviours will support you in that assessment. If you think you are stupid, you will begin making stupid decisions. You will sabotage yourself at every turn, because the subconscious mind is more powerful than you know.
If you believe that you are useless, you will have a victim mentality. You will act in weak ways and attract attacks from others who sense this about you. Everything that happens will reinforce the original erroneous thought that became a belief.
It takes some probing, and it can be a little uncomfortable, but it is useful to identify where you were and what you were doing when a negative belief was allowed to take root in your mind, becoming the way you thought about yourself.
Know this – what someone said about you was an opinion and nothing more. It is a reflection of who they were and what they believed, and sometimes it was limited to one specific moment. It has truth only if you choose to believe it.
We are all special, we are all here to live and to create and to experience life and all that it brings. We never have to feel that our value is less than someone else’s because that is an untruth.
Believe that you are unique, talented and special. Because you are.
Get rid of the trash that others threw at you. It never belonged to you anyways.