I’ve been writing my personal history. Which means I have been digging through pictures and journal entries. Which means I’ve been reliving in my mind events from the past. There are definitely wonderful memories. But the ones I’ve been pondering are the painful ones.
In high school, I tried out for cheerleader freshmen year. We performed our routine on the stage in front of the freshman class. During a pyramid part of our routine, we toppled to the floor. I was so embarrassed. I guess I was resilient though because senior year I campaigned for senior class president. The three candidates were called into the principal’s office just before the announcement was made to the school. I was mortified. It was a tie between the other two candidates.
What makes it a painful memory? Not the falling. It’s painful because I still let the 30-year-old memory shelter me from doing things that might evoke embarrassment. I have an emotional comfort zone and I remember how humiliation feels and I don’t want to feel it again. But seriously, it’s just a vibration in the body. Pretty sure I could feel humiliation again and live another 30 years.
We probably all have those types of defining moments in our life.
--We raise our hand in the 5th grade only to get the answer wrong. The other students snicker and the teacher looks disappointed. We feel stupid.
--A parent praises the older sibling constantly. The younger sibling makes choices with the hope of getting the parent’s approval. We feel invisible.
--Someone said, “Why do you have to be so nosy?” Now we avoid being inquisitive because it might be misconstrued. We feel offended.
Maybe it was a moment in time. One thing said that pierced. Maybe it was a couple times, but then we spend our life looking for evidence to prove we are stupid, or invisible, or offensive. Maybe it was hundreds of moments drilled for years. Either way it’s time to let it go. Just because it was said doesn’t make it truth.
“We drag expensive ghosts through memory’s unmade bed.”
-Paul Hoover, Theory of Margins
We let those experiences—those ghosts—occupy too big a space in our lives. They are expensive to our time, our energy, our well-being. They rob us, if we allow them to, of living up to our potential.
When we choose to stay in our emotional comfort zone, we are actually still choosing discomfort. We avoid the discomfort of putting ourselves out there, but we trade it for the discomfort of not living the life we want.
Why do we hang on to past beliefs that aren’t serving us anymore? Why do we make it mean something horrible about ourselves? It’s time to break free of those limiting beliefs and start believing we are smart, extraordinary, self-assured. Because we are.
