Show Notes
Welcome to A Journey to Inner Wisdom. I am Crystal Kotow-Sullivan and your host of this Podcast.
I am going to talk about the many facets of the Journey to Inner Wisdom. As with any journey, there are many ways to get to where we are going. In this journey, there are many tools available to guide us on the journey as well as people who will guide and mentor us.
I am going to talk about the ABCs of the Journey to inner Wisdom…Awareness, Beliefs, Curiosity NS XRATIVITY, Discernment and direction, the Enneagram AND ENERGY, Focus, Flow, and Flourish and Gratitude, generosity, and grace.
From time to time, I will invite guests to join the conversation and share their journeys and the tools and guides who journeyed with them. And you will hear about my own ongoing journey.
I hope you will join me on this adventure.
Episode 3
Awareness and Beliefs and perceptions
Welcome to episode 3 of a journey to inner wisdom. Thanks for listening...
In the last episode, I talked about awareness. Today I will talk about our beliefs and perceptions and at the same time, awareness will be underlying the conversation sometimes quietly and sometimes in a noisy kind of way. We will begin to see the connectedness that exists between everything!
Let’s start with the words themselves:
Belief - something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion: something believed
Merriam-webster dictionary
Old English - confidence reposed in a person or thing late 12 century
Belief meant "trust in God," while
faith meant "loyalty to a person based on promise or duty" (a sense preserved in
keep one's faith,
in good (or bad) faith, and in the common usage of
faithful,
faithless, which contain no notion of divinity). But
faith, as cognate of Latin
fides, took on the religious sense beginning in 14c. translations and
belief had by 16c. become limited to "mental acceptance of something as true," from the religious use in the sense of "things held to be true as a matter of religious doctrine."
Perception - the way you think about or understand someone or something
Perceive c. 1300, perceiven, "become aware of, gain knowledge of," especially "to come to know by direct experience,
The meaning "intuitive or direct recognition of some innate quality" is from 1827.
Per – by means of Cep (kap) – grasp
Percept - an impression of an object obtained by use of the senses 1864 first used
Eckart Tolle
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.
My perceptions create my belief system. I will call my belief system several different things today… private logic, unconscious beliefs, mistaken logic. My perception of what is happening in the world around me is a continuation of my imagination and my memories as well as the many ways that I am aware of my world. From this combination, I have created a belief system that tints everything I experience in my world. My perception leads me to certain conclusions about myself, the world, people relationships, work, love, sex, and money…everything. It is like wearing rose-colored glasses, everything is tinted. The rose color is created by our own unique belief system which can keep us trapped and unable to move forward.
Here is an explanation of private logic from Adlerian theory. “Private logic is another one of Adler's major constructs. Private logic provides a life pattern that begins in childhood and provides a compass by which to live. Because we are part of the larger social system and must learn to interact with that system, we develop our own set of rules to help us overcome our feelings of inferiority and achieve our goals. Private logic is unique to each person and sometimes is not logical. The goal in Adlerian therapy is to understand a person's private logic to help the person better understand where his beliefs get in the way of daily function, to lessen the faulty thinking of private logic, and to help people change its framework to see things in a more healthy way. Private logic is unique and feelings of superiority or fear of inferiority are meaningful only to the individual.”
(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014).
I create my reality from my perception. That perception is a culmination of my early memories, my family of origin, the conclusions I came to as a child, and the messages I heard every day in my family. And the evidence I have gathered to support this perception that I hold as my truth. I have also gathered a tribe that supports my perspective. We are usually not aware of what our private belief system is. We created it as children and it is like the operating system on a computer…it is there but we don’t see it, we just use it.
How did we create this belief system? Well, as children we are pretty smart, we observe and inspect our little world and we figure out how to get our basic needs met, get attention, get quiet time…whatever it is we need. If you have been around small kids, you can figure out what they are up to most of the time. And in the process, we watch and observe our little world. We pick up the beliefs of our caretakers…parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, nanny, daycare workers…those we spend the most time with. Then from this unconscious belief system we attempt to get our needs met. Here is the rub…we keep this belief system into adulthood…and the belief system was formed by a child with limited experience in a limited world! So, for many people, their private logic works. When it doesn’t it is like finding yourself in Paris but you have a map of London. Where am I?
Let me tell you about my life and an example of one aspect of my private logic that I have unearthed over the years. I grew up as the oldest of 5 children on a farm. My dad was first generation Ukrainian-Russian and there was a general suspicion of other people in our family, which came from my babka as my dad was a kind, happy and friendly guy. My grandmother couldn’t read or write English so she was naturally wary because she could not understand all that was happening. She spoke some English but was certainly not fluent. The distrust was passed on. As a child, this atmosphere was integrated into my belief system. We shared a house with my babka until I was 8. I spent a lot of time with her. I was a favorite and I knew I was spoiled when I was with her.
As a young adult, I remember becoming aware that I found cashiers and salesclerks a bit cranky… (I had part-time jobs as both when I was in school and I was not cranky!). One day I became aware – actually after doing some pretty intense therapy and self-development work, that if I changed my perspective perhaps the salesclerks and cashiers would be different, and I might have a different experience when shopping. So, I experimented and over time, I did realize it was all about how I was showing up at the store and how I was at the checkout! Suddenly, I realized that an old belief had tinted the way I saw the world. And I get it, sometimes people have a bad day…I will give them that.
Only by entering into a deeper level of awareness was I able to examine my private logic, release what I didn’t want, and create a new way of being in the world. Until I was aware, it was like I had no choice about how I was reacting or interacting with the world around me…my unconscious beliefs, my private logic, ruled!!! Once conscious, I had a choice. I could continue to believe that all salespeople and cashiers were cranky, or I could make up a new story.
So, my underlying perception, the private logic I had created as a child, worked for me then, but as an adult, it didn’t. I had picked this up from my family of origin…my grandmother, whom I loved, and spend as much time as I could with her…I learned to not trust people. In my world that meant people did not have my best interest in mind which when shopping was to give me a pleasant experience! But I was the one being cranky and so who wants to be nice to a cranky customer!!!
Now, there is another layer to this! I was the oldest of 5 and, as I said was spoilt by my babka and I just expected (unconsciously) to continue to be spoiled for many years after…of course I didn’t realize this until much later in adulthood when I realized something was amiss when I got cranky when things didn’t go my way. As a kid, I knew how to get what I wanted from my grandmother in terms of love, attention and treats! Didn’t always work with my parents if I remember correctly!!!
And there are many more stories about my own private logic that I have unearthed… more later!
So, our perception of the world, relationships, people, work, money, love, sex, freedom, etc. is all colored by those early unconscious conclusions that we came to as little kids. It worked for us then!
Thai Nguyen says it well, “The window through which you look determines what you see.”
However, I want to point out that as children, despite the fact that we could figure out our world in our little minds and heart, we did not have the bigger picture of our world. I did not understand that the reason my grandmother did not trust people was that she did not fully understand what was going on around her due to her limited English, and not being able to read and write. I also now know that she came from a country that was repressive and that is why she emigrated to Canada. And how could I know then that when someone is in this situation they would become anxious and fearful? I only saw her as a strong, working farm woman who loved me. So even though I could read, write, speak fluent English and had several degrees and for the most part did not have to worry about being understood and understanding, I picked up this belief from my babka.
How can two kids from the same family have two very different inner experiences of the same event – their perceptions and conclusions about life are different. The outer world is the same! We make up our inner world – so if we have made it up in the past we can release it, reimagine it, redesign it, – we have choices about how we perceive the world.
It is like the story of the two kids at a birthday party in their friend’s backyard. They both see a pile of dung in the back corner of the yard.
The one kid starts to cry and runs inside ‘mommy, mommy, there is a pile of poop in the back yard, how can we have a birthday party? I want to go home right now! His sister is running around whooping and hollering…Mommy, mommy, look, there must be a pony somewhere…please help me find it!!!
Think about your own family and how each sibling is a little different in terms of how they maneuver in life. Each one has their own private logic that unconsciously guides them in their life.
What if my perspective is hindering me from living my full potential? What if your perspective is just a bit off? Am I missing out or not seeing what the universe is presenting to me every day? We are back into the realm of I don’t know what I don’t know.
What if my lack of awareness of the beliefs underlying my perspective is sometimes a roadblock to my moving forward and flourishing?
Awareness of my private logic can free me to view my world both inner and outer with new eyes and open possibilities so far unseen.
Awareness is not just looking within – it is looking outside as well to see how the world looked from my tinted lenses. Unravelling the tint in those lenses can reveal some interesting surprises about how we are being and what we are doing in the world.
So how do I become aware of the interplay for my outer and inner world?
Paying attention to patterns is a good first step. Also, working with a coach who can help you unearth those unconscious beliefs and guide you to releasing and creating new beliefs. It is not just about noticing what is happening but more importantly, ‘How is what is happening in my inner world impacting my experience of my outer world and vice versa? How is my heart responding, how is my body responding, what thoughts are surfacing related to this outer event?
Now that being said, it is not a simple task to undo years of creating neural pathways that support our perceptions. It takes some work to rewire our brains. And this we can do! So, begin to be aware at the deeper level beyond the surface of noticing what happens in your life – begin to notice how your perception created what is happening in your life. Begin to notice how your imagination and memories, experiences, environment, etc. have created that private logic – then realizing we have choices about what we believe and then we can move into redesigning and creating our transitions.
Join me for the next episode when I will continue to talk about beliefs and perceptions and how we want to live in the present, the now, not in the past present or the future present… I will also give you some questions to reflect on that can spark your exploration into your private logic.
The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.
Eckart Tolle
The thoughts we choose to think are the tools we use to paint the canvas of our lives.
Louise Hay