Episode 77: 3 Common Beliefs Worth Questioning

In this episode, I’m inviting you to open the drawers of your mind and try on a few beliefs you may have been wearing for years. What if the goal isn’t to be happy all the time? What if you actually do have enough time? And what if loving people is never unsafe? I’ll walk you through three common beliefs most of us accept as facts—and show you how questioning them can create more peace, intention, and freedom in your relationships and your life. If you’re ready to clear out some mental clutter, this one’s for you.

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 77. Three common beliefs worth questioning. I'm Emily Rix, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships.

In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here. Hello.

I'm so happy to be talking with you today. How are you? I want to start by sharing a podcast review that came in the other day. This one is from TJ Moe.

She titled it Short and Powerful. She says, I love that each episode is short and manageable, yet always has great takeaways and gets me thinking and evaluating how I approach aspects of my life. I also love that they are usually easily shared with my teens.

It feels relatable for them and also for me. Definitely recommend. I'm so glad.

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave that review. And I love hearing that you're sharing it with your teenagers too. So awesome.

And hopefully your review will help somebody else find out about these simple, but life- changing tools. Okay. So I've been cleaning out my dresser drawers and my closet this month.

I have a goal to declutter a thousand items by May 1st. And I have a little chart where I color in a box every time I put an item into the donation bin and up to 170 items as of this recording, which is exciting. Um, things like socks, pajamas, sweatshirts, pants, screen protectors, or charging cords to old devices.

That's the kind of stuff that I've been cleaning out. And it's interesting because I've noticed that a lot of the things I've been giving away were useful to me at one time, but they're not anymore. They're no longer relevant to my life.

I don't use them now. I don't need them now. So it feels really good to clear out space and let go.

And I've also come across items that were given to me by other people like cute socks or smelly lotions or things that I didn't actually choose to buy, but that someone gave to me. And those have been a little harder to let go because I kind of feel guilty like, Oh, I should like that. I should wear those because someone gave them to me, but I've decided that I can appreciate the gesture of a gift and still choose to donate a t-shirt that doesn't really fit me or that isn't really comfortable to me.

So those are some of the things I'm learning as I declutter my closet and my dresser. And I'm realizing that thought work is really similar to decluttering a closet, just like dumping a drawer of pajamas onto the bed and trying them all on to see which ones you actually still want to wear and which ones you really like anymore. Thought work is the process of becoming aware of your beliefs, dumping them out onto the bed, examining them, and then seeing how you feel when you try them on.

And then ultimately making conscious choices of which thoughts you want to keep and which ones you don't. And just like a closet, you have beliefs that you've chosen and you have beliefs that other people have given you. So today, I just want to remind you that just because someone gave you a belief, just because someone else said that it was true, doesn't mean you have to keep it in your closet.

I recommend identifying certain drawers or shelves in your brain that you want to take a look at and splaying out your thoughts on paper and then really trying on the thoughts and seeing, deciding if you want to keep them or not. So this episode is kind of a part two of last week, where we talked about optional beliefs and how you can stop believing something. If you want to, I shared about the idea, she hurt my feelings or he made me mad and how a lot of people choose to believe that that's true.

And I also shared in last episode, why I choose not to believe that anyone else can hurt my feelings. My thoughts are the cause of my feelings, not anything anyone else says or does. And I just like this belief a lot better.

I like how I feel when I quote unquote, where it, I like how I show up and how I interact with others when I take responsibility for my own feelings. So today I want to give you three more beliefs that I think are worth questioning. Three things that most people think are true that I don't believe anymore.

And I just want to kind of lay these beliefs out on the bed for you and encourage you to try them on and then decide on purpose. If you want to keep them stuffed in a drawer inside of your mind, or if maybe you want to eliminate that belief from your life and clear out space for new ideas that are truer or more helpful to you. So here's the first one.

This one seems like such a positive thought, but I don't think it is. Here's the thought. The goal is to be happy all the time.

It sounds kind of nice. Doesn't it like, Oh, we should all be happy all the time. But I want you to notice, how do you feel when you think that thought, if you feel happy, you probably feel great.

But if you think that you're supposed to be happy all the time, and then you feel tired or unmotivated or a little bit depressed or disappointed, like, how are you going to feel when you feel those emotions? If you think the goal of life is to be happy all the time, you're going to feel like you got robbed. You're going to feel like it's unfair. You're going to feel frustrated.

And so what I see a lot of people do is they're like, well, there must be something wrong with me. I'm supposed to be happy all the time and I'm not. And so I there's something wrong with me.

And then we've got some shame. Like, no, there's nothing wrong with you. You're supposed to feel negative emotion half the time, or sometimes people think, well, I'm supposed to be happy all the time and I'm not.

And so there's something wrong with other people. They're causing me to not be happy. And so they're the problem.

They're doing these things that are ruining my happiness. And what I see is actually, this is one of the thoughts that tends to lead toward all sorts of actions that aren't us showing up as our best selves, things like substance abuse or addiction or overeating over shopping, overwatching over Facebooking, like that, those actions, a lot of times are driven by this idea that I'm supposed to be happy all the time. And so then when I'm not, I have to find something to fix it.

I have to find something to cover it up. I'm supposed to be happy all the time and I'm not. And so what can I find to fix it? So you can believe that if you want to, that the goal of life is to be happy all the time.

I actually don't believe that. And maybe that's weird to you because you're like, wait, isn't your entire coaching business, like built around helping people find more joy, but like, you don't believe that we're supposed to be happy all the time. It's like, right.

I don't, I don't believe we're supposed to be happy all the time. Um, the goal of being a human is to have a rich, full human experience, which includes all of the emotions. And actually, you know, the scripture counted all joy.

When you run into diverse temptations, like all of the emotions together that create a rich human experience to me, that's what joy is. And so acceptance rather than resistance of the negative emotion and the hard things means instead of layering on frustration and resentment and all sorts of negative emotion on top of the base one, when you accept that life is going to be 50, 50 and half the time, I'm going to be feeling things and experiencing things that aren't just like pure happiness. Then you can layer on gratitude and willingness instead of resentment and anger.

Like if you're sick and you're like, I shouldn't be sick. I should be well all the time. It's like, well, that's really frustrating.

But if you're sick and you're like, wow, I am so thankful for my body and all that it does for me on a regular basis. And I don't enjoy being sick. It's not fun, but I'm so thankful for my body.

That's different. That's a game changer. So the goal is to be happy all the time.

I think that's a thought that's worth questioning. Okay. Let's do the second one. Here's the next thought. I don't have enough time. This one is really popular.

So many people believe this. Like it's a fact myself included. If I go into default thinking and I don't manage my brain, I fall into this belief and it feels so true to me.

I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time, but I have found that this is a thought that's worth questioning. I mean, first of all, you know, if you reword it a little bit, I don't have enough time.

It could also be like, I should have more time than I do. I should have more hours in a day. I should have more days in a week, or sometimes it's connected with energy.

I should have more energy than I have, or I should be getting more things done. I don't know whatever it is for you. And I just want to offer that that whole way of thinking is an argument with reality.

And I've said this before, but Byron Katie says, when I argue with reality, I lose, but only a hundred percent of the time, right? Like, in other words, you are never going to get more time than what you have. You're not going to get more than 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year. And arguing with reality has you focusing on the wrong thing.

Instead of deciding, how do I want to use the time I have? You're spending a lot of emotional energy arguing that you should have more than you have. And that's an argument you'll just never win. So I say, the truth is you have the exact right amount of time to live a beautiful life.

I think of consider the lilies of the field. They toil, not neither do they spin. And I think about a lily, like, does a lily complain? I don't have enough time.

No, they don't. They just bloom and they just grow. And I want to be more like that.

So think about it. I don't have enough time. Is it really true? Like, why do you think you should have more time than other people have? Why do you think you should have more time than what you actually have? And also how do you feel when you think that thought and what do you do and not do from that belief? What actions and results does it produce for you? It's just, it's interesting to take a look at.

A lot of times people who believe they don't have enough time, pack more and more things into their schedule than what will fit. And then they can prove it true. See, I don't have enough time.

It's like, well, yeah, that's true. You don't have enough time to do everything that you committed to, but maybe if you could unpack the belief about not having enough time in the first place, you would probably stop overscheduling and overpacking and overfilling more and more and more stuff into your schedule. Isn't that interesting? So you get to choose whatever you want to believe, but it's optional to believe that you don't have enough time.

I think that's an idea that's worth questioning. All right, here's the last one for today. Here's the thought that a lot of people believe you get to decide for you.

It's unsafe to love people sometimes really think about that. It's unsafe to love people sometimes. So when you're taking a look at a belief, I love this question.

How do you feel when you think that thought? My guess is if you really believe it's unsafe to love people sometimes, then when you believe that you would be feeling worried, anxious, protective, and that's fine. That's not bad. It's okay.

But I just want to point out that believing it's unsafe to love people is a very fear-based way of thinking. And it might seem wise, right? Like this is how I protect myself, or this is how I protect my loved ones, but let's just examine it. Is it wise? Like, what do we even mean that it's unsafe to love another person? Like we're going to get hurt physically.

If we do that, we're going to get hurt emotionally. If we do that, like, let's just pick it apart for a second and also hold it up to scripture. What does Jesus say about loving other people? Does he say, be careful? You don't want to do it too much.

It's actually unsafe. If you love people too much, no, he says, love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you pray for them, which despitefully use you and persecute you.

And yet it's very common for people to be cautious and for people to be anxious and worried. I don't want to give people too much love. I don't want to, I don't want to love people too much because that could be dangerous.

So here's something that I feel like is helpful on this one. I really like to distinguish between a feeling and an action. There may be times when you want to take action that will protect you or your loved ones.

So I have a friend who experienced abuse as a child from her own father. And so with her own children, she doesn't want them to spend individual one-on-one time with their grandpa. Okay.

So that's, that's a boundary on the action line. That's like, this is something I'm going to do in order to protect my kids. And she can do that from a place of hatred and fear and concern and anxiety.

She can also do it from a place of love, love for her kids, love, even for her father, love for the truth that even anything we experienced, we can actually be healed from love is not dangerous. You can take action from a place of love instead of a place of fear. So you get to decide what do you want to believe? And you can believe that it's unsafe to love people sometimes, and you can be guarded and you can be protective and you can feel anxious and afraid a lot of the time.

But I choose to believe that God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And I choose to believe that love is never dangerous. You can never love too

much.

This is an abundant resource. It doesn't run out. I believe that my energy is a limited resource.

I believe that my time is a limited resource. I believe that my money is a limited resource and that I am meant to be a wise steward of those things. And I could give too much in those categories, but love not as an action, but as a feeling it's never dangerous.

And there's no way that I could give too much of it. That's just what I choose to believe. And I like how I feel when I believe that.

Okay. So what do you think? Which beliefs do you want to keep in your closet? Do you want to keep wearing? And which ones are you ready to toss into the donation bin? Some beliefs are worth questioning. All right.

You guys have been awesome. Thanks for the podcast reviews. I only need one more to reach my goal of getting five by the end of February.

And then I'll stop asking for a while. So if you've been meaning to leave me a review, you still haven't gotten around to it yet. Today is the day my friend, before you move on to anything else, go to the episodes, scroll down where it says ratings and reviews, and just write a few lines of what you enjoy or find helpful.

And you will be the hero that gets this goal across the finish line. Go be the hero, my friend. All right.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll talk to you next week.