Follow me down a path, if you will. Take out a piece of paper and write the words “I am” at the top of the page. You don’t have a paper and pen readily available? We will wait…. Ok, now that you have your pen and paper and have written down the words “I am” at the top, you get to brainstorm. No, this is not a religious exercise, though it will involve your spirit. Write down all the descriptions of you that come to mind. Do not over think this. Write down everything, be it a word or a sentence that you feel describes you. If you were to paint a picture of you to someone, how would you describe you?
Are you finished with your exercise? Now, look over your paper and take a bit of inventory. How would you tally up your comments? Are they predominantly negative or positive? Maybe I am not the only one who had this result, but mine were heavier in the negative remarks than the positive ones. If you are like me, are you wondering why as well? How do we get to a point of focusing on ourselves in such a manner? I believe it is because we are liars. We are liars to ourselves, to our spirits. We are so quick to convince ourselves that our makeup consists of such negative propaganda. I am rather certain that if we asked our closest loved ones to describe us, they would not use such pessimistic words.
Take a look at this old Cherokee proverb:
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The grandfather simply replied, “The one you feed.”
We often believe the words of the loudest voice in our lives, and who is louder than our inner self? Here is our question, the ones like me - the liars, which voice do we feed? We could have a rather lengthy explanation for how we got here. We can say the media, society, our culture, our childhood, our families, our ex-loves and our ex-friends have helped fuel the fire of our inner deconstruction. Because that's what all of this is: the deconstruction of what makes us beautiful people inside. Maybe we all started out in life listening to the good wolf, but as our lives and brutal challenges and people came about, the good wolf grew quiet. Yet, if we all came by boat, plane, train, or car to the same destination, it really doesn’t matter how we got here, but rather where do we go from here? Which wolf do we continue to feed? Are we surrounded by people who feed the evil wolf as well? Perhaps their evil wolf has also won the battle. Do we set ourselves up to be in situations that will give the evil wolf more voice over work in our heads? Maybe once we work on silencing the evil wolf, he will become obsolete.
In a marketing class in college, I was taught about how grocery stores market their cereals. The highest price items are on the shelf that is at eye-level or the shelf above. The lower priced items sit just below, and the generic, low-grade items are on the bottom shelf. The bottom shelf is usually where you can find an undecorated, clear bag of cereal for 50 cents whereas the eye-level shelf houses the five dollar boxes with cartoon mascots. I think if we believe all the evil wolf has to say, we buy into the thought that we are the 50 cent bags of cereal on the bottom shelf. However, we try to convince/lie to others and ourselves that we are the five dollar boxes on the top shelf. We cannot be effective salesmen if we do not believe in our products.
So, let’s all take a new trip together. Or, as my son loves to say, let’s all go on an adventure together! Let’s make the evil wolf anorexic and feed the good wolf a big spoonful of much needed comfort food. We have to be our biggest fans for the rest of the world to buy it. I want each of us to tear up our evil wolf pieces of paper. Put them in the paper shredder, burn them, let your dog eat them, etc. They are no longer the words we will allow to be in our life’s constitutions. Instead, we are going to amend our constitutions. We are going to take out new pieces of paper and write only what our voices of “joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith” have to say about the great “I am”.
Take a look at the picture at the top of the article. Do you see the liar? If you look for it, you will see it. Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying “When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will”. We need to stop looking for what is bad within ourselves, because it is in there – just as with everyone else. We need to stop lying to ourselves when we say that all we are made up of are negative, pessimistic, evil components. We need to put the lies beneath to rest and raise the truth to the surface: we are great people!
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