how to be more flexible with your beliefs about yourself?
How we see ourselves is what defines us. Who we say to others that we are defines us as well. It is important to see what is the type of language that we use and what it actually means to us.
We each have beliefs about our operational system, how we work, in other terms.
For example, we can be very set in the fact that we are someone who would never eat vegetables, then one day we discover an avocado and we have to destroy this whole belief that we have because we now like A vegetable (one of the best ones if I might say). Or who knows, maybe we never break this belief and we stick our whole lives without trying the wonders of vegetables because this is who we are.
There are more “black and whites” than we think, and in this post I will avoid using this term as I already have several articles about this topic specifically.
Said articles:
But this is a lot more about being flexible than about being in the grey. The grey allows us to linger in the unknown and accept it, while allowing flexibility lets us explore all of this and really dip our toes into the whole exploration.
We are a world obsessed with identity. Are you a clean girl, a granola girl, a vanilla girl?
This is especially seen in women as we try to find who we are in the things that are around us and subscribing to a definition hoping that would give us value in a society in which our worth is not constant.
You are either vegan or you are not, you either are a gym girly or you are not.
It has become harder to just try things for the sake of trying and doing things once in a while.
We don’t have to commit to actually being something to try something new.
Liking something doesn’t necessarily make you that type of person.
I believe this is something that we do to find community around us to find those that we identify with, but we forget that there is so much to a person apart from some things that they like. This comes with the idea that once we stop doing said thing that has brought us to a certain community, we would no longer be part of it.
If you join a running group and they become your friends and then you cannot run for a while, you leave this group more or less. Unless you have fostered these friendships outside of the subject of running.
It now becomes either you run or you don’t run.
What if we want to run only 3 times a month, or whenever we actually feel like it? It is this flexibility and the lack of absolutes that lets us explore who we are.
Curiosity is a tool that allows for so much growth within us.
There we can find so many new things that we might like or we might not. To create this space within us to look around helps us break all the ideas that we have about who we are.
Which don’t get me wrong, it gets really scary to not know who we are, but it also allows us to create a different definition that frees us within us.
I guess in a way, being curious could also be part of an identity, and the identity of exploring a lot of things, but since it is a free identity, then it can morph and change into other things.
Whenever we use the phrase “and that’s just who I am” as an excuse for our behavior or for why we can’t do something, we are reinforcing our absolutes and we are reinforcing who we are.
For example:
Let’s say that very time that you are about to travel, you become the person who’s really anxious when traveling. Your partner kindly tells you to breathe through it this time and you just answer that it won’t work because “that’s just what happens when you travel and that’s just who you are.” Well…
Then that’s how it’s going to stay, and nothing is going to change, is it?
You are now set on the fact that you are anxious when you travel and that nothing is going to change that.
But what would happen if you thought to yourself that maybe this time you can move through it, that trying different techniques might change this for you? Allowing for some change for trying different things to see if you can move through this will probably change your outcome of your travel in the future, wouldn’t it?
And the good absolutes?
You might think, what about the good absolutes that we have about ourselves? Like I am always bubbly. I am always excited about life; I am always happy.
The thing with these is that there will be a point at which this is not true. We are human and it is also important that we don’t forget that. There might be one day in which you are not all happy and bubbly and then it will be harder to be sad and to let out your emotions. The sadness and the stress will be harder to explore and to feel because they are not part of the identity you have bought into.
Every time you would feel “negative” emotions, you would also grieve the beliefs that you have about yourself.
My therapist always guides me to view things as facts, and that is not to say to take all emotion from everything around you.
But it is a great lesson on being objective. When people see things as facts, we tend to see them as being pessimistic and emotionless. Seeing things as facts is not ignoring the emotions, it is allowing the emotions to be and being able to explore them without creating absolutes and definitions, without searching for outcomes or solutions.
When you remove the unnecessary future of a situation and bring yourself back in the moment, things become clearer.
If you fall and scrape your knee badly and you are just thinking about all the pain from a future perspective and from a feeling of awaiting aid, your pain will be amplified.
But if you just sit with the knowledge and the feeling that you have scraped your knee without trying to escape it and without buying into “the person who scraped their knee” identity you will find yourself calmer and more flexible to deal with the situation no matter how angry you are that you scraped your knee. Even if you had a yoga class later this evening and didn’t want to get blood on your matt.
Picture yourself in the situation and feel how just the knowledge of viewing it as a fact and not a problem makes you calmer. You can’t unscrape your knee, you can only allow it to heal.
Metaphorically, we need to be flexible enough to move from the person with the knee scraped identity to the person without the knee scraped.
Does our situation define us?
I believe that where we are in life has a big impact on who we are, because it is true. You wouldn’t act the same way if you found yourself suddenly in the middle of Delhi as if you were back in your hometown (if you live in Delhi, imagine a different city).
But, and this is a big “but,” you would still be the same person at the core. If you are flexible enough with your absolutes and with your beliefs about yourself, who you are would only change as you grow and learn more, and it wouldn’t be very circumstantial.
Benefit of flexibility
Life is a big question mark, and I hope we all know that by now. I know that this bothers many people because I am bothered by it myself, but time and time again we see how things are sometimes not fair and sometimes they don’t go how we wanted them to go. Maybe that’s for the best or it is for the worst, but it takes a lot to be constantly thrown out of your current idea of yourself.
That is why we are constantly grieving our past selves, because we shift so much as time passes that we have to integrate these old parts of us into who we are now.
But the more flexible we are with who we are, the easier it is going to be to grow and become who we want to be.
The person that you want to become in a few years might have a whole different identity and personality than you do now and getting there will take you grieving who you are and the life that you have right now. If you open up to this flexibility, you can start reaching for this idea that you have without completely shifting your identity of the moment.
Of course, at a certain point, you will realize you have gotten where you want to be and that you are no longer that person, but it seems like it would be a much seamless process.
Prompts
Flexibility allows us to move through life exploring different things and being open to learning, so here are some questions about being flexible and breaking up with absolutes.
- What are the three things that define you the most that are not something outside of you? (i.e. not, “I like football”)
- What are three statements that you say often about who you are that you don’t necessarily love?
- What are you afraid would happen if you parted with these statements? How would you feel?
- How flexible is the person that you desire to grow into? How do they use flexibility?
- What old beliefs about yourself are you grieving?
Just as it is hard to become physically flexible, it is hard to become flexible in this way. It is a muscle that we have to work on and stretch to be able to use it fully when we need it. And as all muscles if you don’t stretch it often, it loses its flexibility, so make sure that you practice once in a while breaking up with your absolutes or at least questioning defining beliefs that you have about yourself.
Just be a fact sometimes.
