THE THOUGHTS SHE INHERITS

When I ask a girl, what do you think about yourself?

Do you know how she tells me about herself?

She looks to her thoughts.

“I’m good at this, but I’m not very good at that.“  “I’m fine, but not great.”

And she usually thinks that she is just observing the truth.

It is just what it is. Relaying the facts to me.

But those sentences she just presented me with feel true only because she believes them.

Not because they are the truths passed down to her from the universe.

Or that they rise up from the depths of truth inside of her.

No. Not at all.

Rather, she is just taught to think a certain way.

Many times she inherits thoughts from past generations that get passed down from one person to the next. Perhaps what they value, a religion, or how they view the world.

Other times the society and the culture she lives in impacts her outlook on life.

Maybe she internalized the way a girl should be, or what her culture approves of. How failure is viewed, or success is defined as.  

And of course she can adopt sentences from her parents, family, friends, teachers, coaches…

Especially at a younger age, as children don’t tend to question the thoughts that they are given… whether it’s related to Santa or their own abilities.

So her thoughts come from her programming.

They come from what other people have taught her.

How she’s been socialized to think a certain way.

In addition to the thoughts she creates on her own.

And this is very important to know because we think that our brains are just accurately reporting the facts to us.

Which is what brains pretend to do.

But that’s never the case.

Instead, there are just facts in the world, such as oceans, viruses, siblings, our bodies, grades.

And then there are our interpretations of those facts.

Perhaps your daughter is thinking - I am just not good at math – which her brain will present to her as if it were a fact.

But maybe she thinks this because she is comparing herself to her sibling who gets straight A’s in an effortless way. Or maybe her math teacher got exasperated with her one day.

Who knows?!

But whatever your daughter may be thinking, whether about herself, her abilities, or about the world, is always an optional interpretation.

And this, she needs to know.

However, often then the problem becomes that we may not even know the thoughts we believe.

And that’s because when we have thoughts going on in our mind that we think are true – they become unconscious.

Because when we think we are just observing ourselves or the world…

we stop questioning our thoughts.

Or evaluating them.

We stop being conscious of them.

As a result, it might take an event or a crisis to get visibility into our minds that usually we may not have access to.

And due to this pandemic, our brains have been startled to pay attention.

It’s as if the volume on our thoughts have been turned up, giving us an opportunity to look inside our brains and see things that we wouldn’t normally see.

So I want to suggest that you take this alertness and focus it on your mind.

Because the thoughts you are having right now in this pandemic are very similar to the flavor of thoughts you normally have – only possibly more intense and frequent than they usually are.

And when you take a look at them, you’ll see why you are feeling the way you do.

Not because of the state of the world, but because of those sentences in your brain.

And once you see those sentences, you have to ask yourself these questions –

• Do I like how these thoughts make me feel?

• Do I like the results they create in my life?

• Are these interpretations of the world, or the virus, or myself, serving me?

• Do I want to keep thinking this way?

Because now that the volume has been turned up on your belief systems, it's a great time to question them. To sort through them. To clean them out.

Because your brain is now turned on.

It’s alert.

It's ready.

It wants new information.

And you should be the one telling it what to think…

Not your great-grandmother. Or your peers. Or the media.

Because your power as a human comes from your ability to choose what you want to think and believe.

On purpose.

Because ultimately, these beliefs are what determine how you experience the world - whether with fear or confidence, hope or determination.

So choose deliberately,

and help your daughter do the same.