Let me clarify.....

In my Three or Under video this past Sunday (link is below in case you didn’t see it or want to view it again), I talked about the idea of grounding ourselves and shared a process I use that works really well for me. I referred to “thoughts that are not our own.” A reader took issue with me about dealing with thoughts that aren’t ours and I realized I hadn’t explained myself well. This is one of the challenges of doing these little three-minute videos. My thoughts and words are kept to a minimum and I don’t have time to explain myself well. Here’s what I meant.

Just about everyone I know, has negative thoughts about themselves that run through their mind at various times. These are things like, “I’m not good enough,” “I can’t do that,” “I’m too fat/thin,” “I can’t draw/sing/make music,” “I’m a bad person because I’m gay,” “I’ll never amount to anything because I’m black/Latino/a woman/a man,” and so on.

These thoughts aren’t ours; they were put into our minds when we were children. Well-meaning adults such as parents, teachers, ministers and society-at-large sent these messages to us. Because we were young and vulnerable, we believed what they said and took these thoughts as our own. They aren’t our thoughts. We accepted them as true and the thoughts became a part of our mental landscape.

One of the tricks to maturing is being able to ferret out these thoughts, identifying them as belonging to someone else, deciding whether or not they’re true, letting the false ones go, and replacing them with our own true thoughts. The process of grounding that I shared is just one way to release some of these thoughts when they show up so we can be free to live as our own authentic selves.

Hope this clarifies things….here’s the video again!

Living in grace and ease,

Krysta