How Much of What You Believe About Yourself Is Actually True?
From The One True Framework for a Happy Life by Amale Kaiss Obeid — a free book written from a Christian perspective.
Most of what we believe about ourselves, we never decided to believe.
“Yet much of what we come to believe about ourselves throughout life is acquired rather than discovered.”
“As children, we do not yet have the understanding or experience to question everything we absorb.”
How conclusions become “facts”
“These conclusions can become so familiar that we no longer recognize them as interpretations. We experience them as facts.”
What Is Actually True About You?
Four ordinary moments. In each one, something happens, something is remembered, something is felt — and something is concluded. They arrive so quickly that they feel like a single experience.
Here, you'll slow them down.
About three minutes. Nothing you do here is recorded or saved, and this is not a test.
“But an experience, the memory of that experience, the emotion associated with it, and the conclusion we draw about ourselves are four different things.”
What this does not mean
“This distinction does not require us to deny our experiences or dismiss our emotions.”
Where the book goes
Written from a Christian perspective, Chapter 2 describes our true identity as
“human beings created by God, inherently whole, valuable, and worthy of love and dignity”