New Truth

If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance. – Orville Wright – 1871-1948, Inventor and Aviation Pioneer

I find that (for me) the secret to testing what I believe to be true is reading about everything I can get my hands on. Every truth changes as I grow and change. That’s because each piece of knowledge becomes a building block expanding the rooms that I store all of my knowledge in. I get better views of things as the pieces form a new vista to look upon and discover something new around every corner, in every nook and cranny.

The number of inventions and records that have been broken were because someone didn’t believe it couldn’t be done are too numerous to mention. The Wright Brothers plane is just one of thousands. But it isn’t just inventions or sports records that are made that make this thought true. It is also in how we live our day to day lives.

I have learned different ways of thinking from the experiences that I have had as well as the experiences that others have had in their lives; how their truths intersect with mine and how there are threads in their history that match up to the threads in mine. They may have taken the pattern in a different direction, learned something fundamentally different than I did. They may even have different memories of something that we experienced together.

That doesn’t make their memory wrong, or them wrong or right in how they handled the experience. It is just different. Their pattern served them in some way, just as mine did. What I have learned though is that those patterns while serving me in some ways, have not served me in others. What I have learned is to let go of the attachment to my pattern. When I traced the threads of the pattern back to the beginning, I see where it has served me, and where it has caused myself and others pain.

A few years ago I told a story in a class up on stage about a defining moment in my childhood. I told a story about my mother when I was 13 yrs old and we were homeless. There was something that happened during that defined me as a person, with my vowing that I would never put my own family into the situation that we had devolved into through a series of bad choices my mother made.

The positive threads of this pattern were that I became very successful in a banking career. The negative aspect of this pattern was that unconsciously, I had made my husband feel that he wasn’t needed to provide for me or our family. It wasn’t until I told that story that I realized what I had done. It wasn’t intentional but it was an aspect of the pattern that I was living in up until that moment. Once I saw what I had done I had a long heart to heart conversation with my husband, and he said the most amazing thing – he said, “I loved you so much that I figured that I could live with it, just to have you in my life.”

I let go of the attachment to this truth that I had lived my life by. In your life, there are patterns that you are unconsciously living. If you are brave enough, you can trace the pattern back to the childhood experience(s) that created it. You can find in your life places in your life where it served you, and places were it didn’t. You can even realize as I did, that you can let go of that attachment and expand into a new truth.

We don’t have to accept life as it is, we can grow and make life different. We can expand our knowledge and wisdom and let go of the old truths and welcome in the new truths that are from love, trust, and gratitude. My son Joe when he was little had a pair of rain boots that he loved. Even when he outgrew them he would shove his feet into them and wear them. I would hide them (because I was saving them for his younger brother) and he would find them and put them on. I finally had to give them away, to keep them from hurting his feet. Don’t be like my son, and keep shoving your life into those boots who served you, but now you have outgrown them. Let go of the attachment, and accept a new truth or two into your life.

There are no limits, no can’ts, but there are unlimited possibilities and yes’s. We have an acronym with my BraveHeart Sisters “WEIP” – what else is possible? If you live life from that space, then you will advance forward confidently in the knowledge that yes, anything really is possible – even a new thought or truth (or in the case of Joe a new pair of rain boots)