Jumpstart Yourself With Truth

Have you tried to start that new project, that new artwork, that new career, and found yourself procrastinating, forgetting details and deadlines, and feeling overwhelmed by not knowing where to start?
Maybe it’s the lies you’re secretly telling yourself or the lies you’ve heard secondhand.

Lies we’ve held onto over the years are often hard for us to see. You may say that you really want to move up from secretary to manager, or get your first painting into a show, and believe it. Deeper down you may be stopping yourself with the wrong messages - judgments you have collected from other people in your life before looking to see if they were true.

Negativity (thoughts that start with words like don’t, can’t, never, not) is never the truth. We sometimes let it affect us as if it were. Negativity is also any thought that does not make us feel smart, strong, brave, worthy, happy, grateful and energetic. We trip ourselves up by believing we are what people have sometimes told us we are.

If you were told as a child that you weren’t very smart or organized, or if the first two art dealers you showed your work to told you that you lacked talent (as the great painter Vincent Van Gogh was once told) you may have kept those messages in the back of your mind without really looking at them to see if they were true. With those old messages lying around your brain, you are bound to feel like you can’t possibly manage a business or create a memorable painting.

So those messages take over, and we procrastinate, get overwhelmed and stop ourselves from proving we can do it, because one part of our minds still believes we are not good enough to actually make it happen and we are wasting our time. Besides, if they’ve criticized us before, they will criticize us again, right?

Only this time we’ll know it’s not the truth.

You can recognize negative messages by your mood. If you are feeling nervous and overwhelmed, or just can’t seem to make the first move, stop and ask yourself who you have known that has told you it’s impossible or you weren’t good enough. This will lead you to the things they actually said, and you can debunk them instantly to let yourself succeed.

For example, your last teaching job has ended and you really want to open your own tutoring business, but get butterflies in your stomach just thinking about filing for your business license. The feeling or mood is nervousness. Why would you have anything to be nervous about? What could go wrong?

Maybe you think you will fail because you don’t have the discipline. Where did you first hear someone else say that to you? You may remember your 10th grade career counselor saying that you didn’t have enough discipline to be self-employed. You may still believe that today, so let’s look at the statement again. Who decides how much discipline is enough? And does everyone really define discipline the same way? Probably not.

Now it’s your turn to find the real truth. It may be I didn’t get to classes on time. Or maybe the truth was I didn’t work very hard on my assignments in high school or turn them in on time. These kind of factual statements tell the truth without someone else’s judgments attached.

You can recognize judgments because they use adjectives - words that describe things. Truth uses verbs - action words. Arriving late and turning in poor work are factual actions. Undisciplined is an adjective a word that only tells how the other person feels about the action. Their feelings often have little to do with you or who you really are.

Always tell yourself the truth, and debunk the rest. It’s the rest, the negative judgments that you hold on to from others, making you nervous and keeping you from jumping into success with both feet.

So the next time you feel too tied up; can’t quite get started on those goals, take these steps to help the truth set you free:

This article won first place in the 2009 Positive Way Relationship and Self Development Contest. Written by Amelia R.

The list of winners is available at: