Jamie Ridler is doing the Joy Diet by Martha Beck as a book club and I am joining in the reading. I really enjoyed reading about other’s experience with nothing. I’ve been continuing with my nothing from between 5 and 20 minutes.
This section is on Truth. These are things we have buried because we don’t want to face them. She says, "Ironically, the things we refuse to know are by definition things we know already – that’s how we know we don’t want to know them – y’know?"
I’ve written about truth before and how until you tell yourself the truth, you will not live a simpler, more fulfilling life.
Questions to Help You Simplify Your Life
So why don’t we tell ourselves the truth?
"The truth threatens everything about us that is not authentic: every habit, every relationship, every financial arrangement, every belief." – Martha Beck
It can be hard to tell ourselves the truth because then we might decide to make changes to our lives. But, wouldn’t you rather move towards a more authentic life then stay stuck in your own lies?
Beck supplies questions to help us get to our truth. Questions about our feelings, hurts and the stories we tell ourselves.
This week I discovered stories like, "Unless I am being productive, I am not worth much." And the truth I found is that I am worth taking care of even if I am not being productive at the moment.
Another story after all my plans for the day got messed up, "If things don’t go how I’ve planned, I’ve failed and things will all go downhill." Replaced by the idea that this change in plans just gives me a chance to spend extra time with my son.
Or this self pitying one – "No one appreciates me at home." Yuck! Which when I turned it around was, "I am not appreciating anyone at home." After spending the day appreciating and thanking I felt much better.
The big one I uncovered is that I was willing to work with unreasonable time tables because I didn’t want anyone mad at me. I thought because I fixed the thought pattern that if the general public doesn’t like my slower paced life that was fine. But, I discovered it is different for the people close to me. I care very much if one of them is mad at me. So this is one insight I will be playing with in the future.
What stories have you been telling yourself? What truth is there?
Oh! I can definitely relate to your truth about being productive! I struggle with that one too. And it was not one that I thought of this week! There were certainly others that are related like: I am not worth much because I don’t earn a lot of money from what I can do. Oh boy! I need to work on that a lot more! Thanks for sharing your experiences in our journey to Joy.
It’s awesome to see you turn around your thoughts and retell your stories… All that negative self-talk can kiss my a$$… 🙂
Thank you for sharing your experience with truth. It really is amazing how powerful changing the story can be.
Thanks for sharing your week of truth, I sounds like you uncovered some interesting stuff….
excellent! you did great at turning the story’s around.