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It’s really hard to see yourself when you are the one running around in your own head. Dr. Nicole LePera writes in her How To Do Her Work book:
There is tremendous freedom in not believing every thought we have and understanding that we are the thinker of our thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.
But the whole meta-cognition thing is really hard because it feels like we are our thoughts. If we think “oh, I am not going to bother that person because I don’t deserve their help”, we start to slowly shrink and occupy less space. Eventually we get so used to believing these thoughts that we become them - we even stop recognizing the help when it’s on offer.
I suppose this is why affirmations are so important. We are what we eat but even more so, we are what we largely train ourselves to think of ourselves. Yes, we may have quite a few passing thoughts that we should let go of, but many other thoughts are valid. These valid thoughts help to shape who we are and who we want to become.
So how do we know when we should let a certain thought go?
My theory is that we should actually follow our gut. Our gut knows when we’re having a thought that isn’t serving us - even if it’s very attractive to just keep thinking that thought. As Dr. LePera reminds us - we should not believe every thought. We should take a moment and do a gut check. Often we’ll intuitively know when we should let go of that thought.
Now for the difficult part of putting it all into practice…