Case one – I had my first bowl of borscht soup this week and it was good. My whole life I refused to taste Borsch solely on the basis that I thought I wouldn’t like it. I have no idea why I thought that – I just did, but I was wrong, it tasted great.
Case two – My husband recently started eating mashed potatoes after a lifetime of full of childhood memories of disliking them. Imagine his surprise when he realized that is wasn’t mashed potatoes that he didn’t like, it was just his mom’s mashed potatoes. Sorry Jeannette.
We humans are a stubborn bunch. We make our decisions and we stick with them whether they make sense years later or not. We close our lips tight and shake our head back and forth and say no, you can’t make me, you can’t make me.
You know that I’m not just talking about food here, right?
What have you refused to try, or do or be because you assume you won’t like it, can’t do it or have some past memory or belief in your head that may or may not be true.
Sometimes it will do us good to challenge our old beliefs to see if they are limiting us, stifling us, holding us back and causing out to miss out on some great things.
Maybe some of those ideas were planted years ago, maybe decades ago. Maybe they weren’t even planted by you. Maybe they were true at one time, but are not anymore. Maybe they were never true.
Just because you couldn’t eat mashed potatoes when you were 10 (stay with me, it’s a metaphor) it doesn’t mean you can’t eat them when you are 45. Just because you were picked last for every sport in junior high, doesn’t mean you can’t play a sport now. Just because you were/weren’t …fill in your own blanks here… doesn’t mean you can’t now.
When assessing your options, ask yourself, what do I know for a fact? Is it based on evidence or assumptions? Am I willing to challenge the assumptions? What’s in it for me if I do? What do I stand to lose if I don’t.
What are you resisting because of childhood memories or experience? What are you missing because, well …just because?
This week it’s time to grow up, try the borscht and eat the mashed potatoes and view something from a new perspective. The person you are now, isn’t the person you were. Let me know how it goes!
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