Don’t Take Candy From Strangers

From a young age, we are taught what to believe.

We are given baselines and guidelines on how to conduct our lives and what is considered “normal” or “acceptable” behavior.

We don’t really question it…although we may sometimes test the boundaries.   

We create and adopt beliefs in order to protect ourselves and/or make sense of our world.

But a lot of the time, beliefs we have about the world or ourselves are actually misinterpretations based on gaps in our experience or knowledge.

They don’t actually protect us or help make our existence in the world better.

For example, as children, we were taught not to take candy from strangers.

However, we take candy and food from strangers all the time—trick-or-treating, store samples, free leftover food at work, etc.

The old belief of “don’t take candy/food from strangers” tells us we should not eat those things.

But I am not passing up Costco samples!! Yummy! And when you’re on a budget, free.99 is the best!

That old belief no longer serves to protect me in the same way it did when I was taught as a kid.

Because of how we have learned to program our brains, we continue to take information presented to us through the various stimuli of the world, and make incorrect assumptions and/or misinterpretations.  

Our lives don’t fit into a one-size-fits-all mold, so why do we try to make ourselves fit?

We go out into the world and our lives don’t look like what we imagined; so we think we suck and call ourselves a failure.

It’s becoming more and more apparent how harmful and painful this way of thinking really is.

What thoughts or beliefs do you have about yourself that aren’t helpful to you?

Most likely, the thought that came to mind when you read that question is rooted in societal programming.

I want to offer you that those thoughts that appear and sound like:

• “You’re a mess”
• “You have no worth”
• “You’re not loveable”
• “You’re different than others”
• “Everyone else has their shit together, but you don’t”
• “Someone else could do this better than you could”

are just the stranger and candy.

Yes, those are your thoughts; however, they are not your original thoughts—they are not WHO YOU ARE.

They are sentences you wrote in your programming and took on based on what you knew at the moment of programming—which is usually too young to have full context or knowledge.

Think of those kinds of thoughts as a stranger offering you a piece of poisoned candy.

They can’t be avoided, but you can say “no thanks, I’m good.” Or if you want to add some humor to it, “NOT TODAY SATAN!”

You don’t need to be any different to be loved or be worthy of the things you want.

You just have to be your true authentic self who is already 100% loveable and worthy.

Don’t believe me? Look in the mirror and into your own eyes—you will see magic.