The Comfort in Lies

 

I hope you listened to the podcast this week, as Amber, Christen, and I discussed the book “Girl Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be” by Rachel Hollis. I haven’t read the book (yet), but from our discussion, I feel like I should. I’m particularly drawn to the concept of the “lies” (or stories) we tell ourselves, something that has been mentioned by Brené Brown and has featured prominently in several prompts and lessons by Ali Edwards in her “One Little Word” class.  Having participated in that class for several years now, I’ve been faced with this prompt multiple times, and each time, I come to the realization that I’m still telling myself some of those same lies and stories, even though I’ve clearly identified them and promised myself to stop. Why is that?

In short, because it’s easy. It’s a cop-out. Change is hard. Learning new habits is hard. Rewriting the script that you tell yourself daily is hard. 

Think about your name. You’ve lived with your name your whole life. It’s part of who you are. If you hear your name, you respond. You don’t even have to think about it, right? Now imagine that you had to change your name…that no one used the name you’ve grown up with, and suddenly everyone insists on calling you a new name - one you’ve never used before. How long do you think it will take you to instinctively respond to that new name? And how long before you stop thinking of yourself as your old name? I can tell you that if I hear “Mom” in a grocery store, I turn my head to look, even if none of my kids are with me. I react the same when I hear “Cindy”, no matter who says it. I’m pretty sure I always will. They have both become ingrained in my psyche. But it wasn’t always so.

A new mother doesn’t respond to the name “Mom” right away. It takes time. It takes hearing her children say it over and over again. She has to learn to feel like a mom. She has to become Mom. She has to let go of the name that everyone else calls her by, even if it’s just a little. Eventually, she becomes comfortable with that new name…Mom.

So how does that relate to these lies and stories we tell ourselves? Well, they’re like our name. They’re a label we’ve tagged ourselves with, and, whether we realize it or not, we repeat it day after day. It’s stuck there. It’s what we identify with. In order to stop identifying with those labels, lies, and stories, we actually have to do something about it. We have to rewrite the script. We have to call ourselves something different – tell ourselves a new story…tell ourselves a truth that we repeat over and over until we believe it. Until we know it in our hearts. Until that new story replaces the old story…the lie we’ve told ourselves for so long.

Often we are comfortable with the lies we tell ourselves. “I’m not good enough” or “I’ll start tomorrow” make great excuses for our failures. It gives us something to blame when things go wrong. So we try to succeed, and then when things get hard, we can fall back on these lies and stories because it’s easier to give in than to keep pushing forward. It’s like that old pair of shoes that you just can’t throw out because they are so comfortable, even though they’re scuffed and worn. A new pair of shoes would hurt and need to be broken in. A new pair of shoes might leave a blister. The excuses go on and on.

As I’m looking back through my One Little Word, I see all the lies I’ve told myself. Many of them are the same lies that Rachel Hollis names in her book. I’ve battled with many of these lies for years. We’ve even talked about some of them right here on the blog and on the podcast. For instance, her Lie #1 “Something else will make me happy” was the topic of a blog post I made back in September titled, “Happiness from the Inside,” in which I detailed my lifelong search for happiness. Likewise, many of our Eckhardt Tolle podcasts and my blog “Resistance is Futile” talk about acceptance and gratitude as a source of happiness. 

Sometimes the lies we tell ourselves are just repeats of the lies other people have told us. One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves, and one that I talk about a lot, is Lie # 12 - “I need to make myself smaller”. How many of us have been told “you cry too much”, “you’re too needy”, “you’re too emotional,” or even “you’re too loud?” We believe it because others tell us so. People we trust. People we love. 

One of the things I’ve come to realize is that you have to ask yourself, “Who told you that?”  Do they have some ulterior motive? What do they have to gain when you make yourself smaller? When you hide who you really are? Have you heard of “toxic positivity?” As if being positive is somehow wrong or too much? Is it real? Are you being authentic? When someone asks you to turn it down, is it because they are not authentic themselves? Are they threatened in some way by your strength? Don’t let other people dictate how you feel, how you act, or what you need.

If you are sad, be sad. If you are happy, be happy. If you need something, say so. You do not have to disappear into the woodwork to fit in. You should never dim your light to fit in with what other people expect of you. Be yourself. Be authentic. Shine your light big and bold and bright for the whole world to see. 

It took me a long time to learn this. I spent many years trying to fit in with the “popular” girls and the PTA moms. And I was lonely. Because it wasn’t me. When I finally let my light shine…when I finally allowed myself to be who I really am, then my tribe found me. The people who get me. The people who are the same kind of weird as me. It was hard at first. In fact, if you listen to early episodes of this podcast and read some of those early blogs, you might notice a difference in how all three of us have opened up and become more of ourselves. It was hard, but we are better for it, and I feel like that’s one lie that I’ve definitely put aside. Now I just need to keep working on the rest of them.