If You Want to Move Forward, You Have to Move With the Truth

I wrote my memoir not sure why I needed to do this. I’m an artist. Having been painting and learning to paint better was my life. I knew little about writing.

But something deep inside was stirring. I had the urge to write about myself. Maybe I wanted to explore why I’d done what I had, but I was so intent on knowing truths that lay deep inside, the why’s seemed irrelevant. Something was there to explain why writing my story would make sense.

I couldn’t get what I was after by planning what to write. Thoughts kept me further from what I was after.

The truth comes from that place of feeling good; the place known to be in the flow. It’s where you embrace what is. We find truth living in the moment without a care in the world.

The truth never comes from our thoughts. Our thoughts are full of beliefs, judgments, and fears we formed through the years. Our thoughts are in the truth’s way. They’re the blocks to our happiness.

Arriving at the truth requires us to put aside our beliefs, judgements and fears. How do we do this? There are many teachers who can show you a way like Byron Katie, Joe Dispenza, and many other teachers on Mindvalley and other sites.

But I’ve found a simple way you can learn to do this for yourself. Writing your story will help you see where past experiences contributed to form those beliefs, judgments and fears. Let me give you an example from my life story.

When I was first married a long time ago, in the 60s, I believed I was beholden to my husband. He was the one earning the money I lived on while I was free to do what I wanted to do. In return for my freedom, I believed I had to comply to his wishes.

On Sunday nights, when our maid had the night off, I’d ask my husband if we and our four children could go out to dinner. He’d tell me it was okay. I bathed and dressed the children, and when I was ready to go my husband would decide he’d rather stay home. He’d go to the grocery store for TV dinners.

I’d feel harassed and beaten down. I’d cry.

Several years later my beliefs, thoughts and fears had gotten worse, and I became depressed, I went for therapy with a psychologist. When I told him what happened at our house on Sunday nights, he asked me why I didn’t take the children out without my husband.

It was as if a light bulb went on in my head, illuminating all the options I had that I hadn’t seen before. In that moment I realized no one was keeping me from going out to dinner but myself. The only reason I couldn’t see was that I believed it wasn’t possible.

Where did the belief that I couldn’t spend money without my husband’s approval come from? When writing about that time in my life, I saw how that belief came from all the times he admonished me for spending money. Each time I capitulated, and the more I didn’t question this belief, the harder it became to see any options for myself.

Writing my story helped me see how I’d believed I wasn’t good enough. Why else would I allow someone else to dictate what I can or can’t do?

The first step in changing and moving forward comes when we realize that questioning our thoughts leads to empowering ourselves. The opposite — when we blindly continue following our beliefs, judgments and fears — we disempower ourselves.

If you really want to change and move forward in your life, you need to begin to “clean house” of disempowering beliefs, judgments and fears. It gets easier with each success. In fact, after a while you will hear your thoughts and be able to turn them off.

One easy way to learn how to do the work of disempowering your thoughts is to go to Katie’s website https://thework.com/, where you’ll find a step-by-step description of how to do it.