If I believe it it must be true – right?

As I sit here typing through half open eyes, clutching at my coffee after a very restless night, I can’t help but feel ridiculous.

My exhaustion is caused by the fact that, when I awoke last night quite by accident at 11.59pm, my first thought was “ OH MY GOD. HE’S COMING IN 60 SECONDS”.

Who you may ask? Freddy Krueger of course! As I lay there, paralysed with fear and with that horrific melody ‘one, two Freddy’s coming for you’ playing on a loop in my head.

As it turns out, he either can’t tell the time or he terrorised some other poor soul, because I survived and rationality finally prevailed again.

But, it’s quite amazing the impact that still has on me some 20 something years after seeing the movie. And, you can just imagine me, when I went through the phase of being woken every night at midnight by the call of a young fox!

So, how can it be, after all of these years of understanding how videos are made, receiving a good education and having extensive life experience, that I find it impossible to believe that it’s not true and that Freddy isn’t coming for me after all.

The problem is that we hold on to the tiny bit that could possibly happen and we construct it in our mind until it all becomes a ‘real’ truth – in our heads anyway.

In my case, this was finding out about a laboratory which monitors people’s behaviour whilst they are sleeping. A small part of their findings provided me with all I needed to ‘confirm’ my ‘truth’ about Freddy coming to visit me at night … although that was quite patently not what their comprehensive conclusions actually pointed to.

I am typing this hoping that I am not the only person who has managed to do this to themselves!

Just like a ‘truth’ that was delivered to me by my own mother - that you are given two weeks’ grace when your tax disk runs out. I couldn’t believe my partner didn’t know this when we met. How could anyone not know this? I was even more dumbfounded when I relayed this back to my mum and she didn’t know this FACT either. But she thought it may be true. WHAT? I believed this my whole life because someone I trusted told me it was true.

So, truth may not actually be everything we believe it to be.

Our thoughts, beliefs and values are shaped on our ‘truths’ as we grow into adults and beyond. But, sadly the information that is received, be it the way it’s delivered or our own interpretation of it, is not always the truth nor indeed healthy.

For example, I remember working with a stunning, intelligent girl who had developed an eating disorder due to the fact she had been raised by a grandmother who referred to her as the ‘big girl’. As the oldest of the siblings, many others referred to her also as big. But, sadly her mind did not make the link with the ‘oldest’ child often being referred to using the phrase ‘big’ sister. Instead she equated the innocent word to mean ‘fat’.

I work a lot on client’s beliefs, especially the ones which have become limiting or harmful to them. It’s important to remember that our mind has no read-only file. So, every time we access a memory we add to it in accordance with our own beliefs or our internal map of the world.

When you run that cycle of thoughts or replay the voice that says ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘clever enough’ or anything else that’s not constructive, ask yourself: “Who says?” Whose voice is it that you’re hearing? And, if it’s not yours (and it normally is not) and it’s not helpful, then I am sure you can think of two new helpful and constructive words to tell it:

GO AWAY!!!

Sandie

Sandie Robertson is a respected lifestyle coach, wellness expert, hypnotherapist trainer and author of Amazon No.1 bestseller “I Believe I can” An expert on anxiety and stress management she has helped hundreds of clients with problems from weight loss to sports performance, trauma to grief. If want her to help you contact her on www.sandierobertson.com