core beliefs

The Five Rules for Ideally Healthy and, Therefore, Rational Thinking

1. Rational thinking is based on obvious facts.

2. Rational thinking best helps people protect their lives and health.

3. Rational thinking best helps people achieve their own short-term and long-term goals.

4. Rational thinking best helps people avoid their most unwanted conflicts with other people.

5. Rational thinking best helps people feel emotionally the way they want to feel without using alcohol or other drugs.

 So have you figured out what your core beliefs are? I'm still working on it. 


“The realization that what you’ve been living and telling yourself all these years was based on a skewed perception of something that happened as a child, is a freeing moment. You have to wonder how you didn’t figure it out
a long time ago.”

Your core beliefs dictate the life you live.

• Who you are
• What you think of yourself
• What you are and are not allowed to do and be
• How to behave and react to people,
  experiences and the world
• What to expect
• Your success
• What you can and cannot have

Wow, that's a lot to take in. Who I am is dictated by what I believe. Fascinating concept really.  People like to use it as an excuse for many things and some hate to hear it, but our parents really do fuck us up. Not on purpose. They don't mean to. Most of the time they think they're doing things right. Either because they don't know any better or because that's how their parents did it (same thing I suppose). I know my parents tried. But they both came from pretty messed up backgrounds. They didn't know any better.

I know that neither of my parents ever realized how the things they did and said affected me. I never realized how those things affected me. When you're a child and you move every 3 to 6 months you don't expect that to develop into detachment issues later in life. When your parents have dysfunctional relationships with their parents and with each other you don't realize how that affects the mind of a child. Not at the time anyway. So most of your core beliefs are formed before puberty.

“If you were able to rewind your life and watch it in slow motion from its very beginning, youwould be able to see the key times when certain beliefs were formed and you would understand why you developed those beliefs.”

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT)

It's funny. I actually know this is true because to some extent I've done it. I've had memories from my childhood that brought with them the realization of exactly the moment in time a certain belief or habit was formed.

Your core beliefs are not stagnant ideas that merely sit in your unconscious mind. They are active, and play an important role in your everyday thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions to people and events.

• A person who believes that they are a failure (remember that this is an unconscious belief therefore beyond their awareness), constantly hears mind chatter to support this idea “you can’t do it right”, “you are hopeless”, “you aren’t good enough.”
• They feel the emotional response whenever they hear this ‘so called truth.’ It would be very sad to think that you are a failure.
• Their perceptions make them blind to success, and they miss opportunity after opportunity – all they can see is failure and hardship.
• They play the role of a failure personality (without any idea that they are doing so) – expecting the worst, irresponsible with money, ignoring their finances and financial responsibility, business failure, engaging in self-defeating behaviors.

This person physically lives their core belief that they are a failure.

I've come to realize that no matter how I wish to and try to deny it, one of my core beliefs is that I am a failure. Along with quite a number of other negative beliefs. My mind, my inner voices (all three of them) really don't want me to discover or think about my core beliefs. Or, let me explain this a little more. Some back story if you will.

In my head I have, for most of my life, had two voices.  Kind of like those you see in a cartoon. The good voice and the bad voice. The logical voice and the emotional voice. The emotional voice often spoken by the vile creature in the basement, depression. The more logical of the voices frequently gets silenced by the depressed emotional one. 

The are the voices that beat me up. The voices that call me names and rip my self esteem to shreds. Neither of them are very nice voices when it comes down to it. Though I'm just recently realizing this. I'm developing a new voice. A very quiet, very shy voice. I think it's the rational voice. I'm still working on figuring that out. It's just starting to talk. 

So the two original voices, they've locked my core beliefs in a room of a thousand doors and locked all of them. My new rational voice is in the process of picking the lock on at least one of those many doors. For now, while the lock gets worked on, it seems to have found a window to peek into. It's a dirty, smudged window with a very limited view, but a window none the less. 

Here is a very general list of negative core beliefs:

• not good enough (incompetent)
  not good enough (unlovable)
  unwanted, different
  defective, imperfect, bad
  powerless, one-below
  in danger, not safe
  don’t know, wrong

With the exception of the in danger/not safe they actually ring pretty damn true with me. 

An elaboration on those; the core belief followed by the feelings it causes.

Not good enough (incompetent)

I am no good
I can’t get it right
I can’t make it work (klutz)
I can’t fix it
I am unsuccessful
I am not good enough

I’m not valuable
I am inferior
I am nothing
I am worthless
I am invisible
I am insignificant

Not good enough (unlovable)

I am not lovable

I am unacceptable
I am plain and dull
I am not special
I don’t matter
I am unworthy
I am not interesting enough

Don’t know, wrong

I don’t know
I get it wrong
I am always wrong
I can’t understand
I’m not understood
I am in the wrong place
I am no good
I am a mistake

In danger or not safe

I’m not safe
I am afraid
I am uncertain
I am vulnerable
I am helpless

Unwanted, different

I don’t belong
I am unwanted
I am alone
I am unwelcome
I don’t fit in anywhere
I don’t exist
I’m nothing
I should not be here at all
I’m not anybody
I am left out
I am unsuitable
I am uninteresting
I am unimportant
I don’t matter

Defective, imperfect, bad

It’s my fault
I am guilty
I am bad
I am not whole
I am imperfect
I am unattractive
I am flawed
I am stupid
I am awkward
I am slow
I can’t be me
I’m not true
I’m dirty
I am ugly
I am fat
I’m shameful
I am unclean
I am useless
I am crazy
I have a mental problem
I am out of control
I can’t make myself clear
I am mistaken
I am unbalanced
I will fail
I am a failure
I don’t deserve to be loved
I don’t deserve to be cared for
I don’t deserve anything
There’s something wrong with me

Powerless, one-below

I can’t do it
I can’t
I am a victim
I am weak
I am powerless
I am a failure
I am ineffective
I don’t have any choice
I am less than
I am helpless
I finish last
I am always number two
I am always one-below
I can’t stand up for myself
I am inferior
I am a loser
I am inadequate
I can’t say ‘no’

Other:
I am a klutz (awkward)
I am a schmuk (unsophisticated)

Having never thought about this before I find it rather disturbing how much of it is as if I wrote it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that most of my core beliefs are negative.