“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
~ Albert Einstein
To continue exploring asking the right questions in the movement towards psychological wholeness, question number eight asks:
What are your beliefs about personal growth, and how do they impact your journey towards wholeness?
The difference between perception and perspective is profound. Can you imagine coming into this life as an infant, preprogrammed with a plethora of self-negating and limiting beliefs about yourself and your life? Most would agree that infants are innocent and precious without an internal self-defeating script.
Why, then, do so many people stay attached to their perceptions, i.e., beliefs around their limitations instead of their potential?
We all have the freedom to expand our perspective and become curious about any limiting perceptions. The very definition of becoming more psychologically whole is the opposite of remaining identified with a small and fragmented self.
In his book Don’t Believe Everything You Think, Joseph Nguyen writes “Thought is not reality; yet it is through thought that our realities are created.” Where do all of those automatic thoughts come from?
Research has shown that humans have an average of 60,000 thoughts every single day. Of those, 75% or 45,000 are repetitive. How do we turn those around to be more positive new thoughts?
Every day our minds are flooded with a constant stream of thoughts, ranging from mundane daily tasks to deeper contemplations about life and the world around us.
But what is truly concerning is that 75% of these thoughts are negating, and 95% are repetitive. Many of our negative thoughts are driven by the flight or fight part of our brain. This constant barrage of negative and repetitive thoughts can significantly impact our mental health, happiness, and overall quality of life.
So, if we can bring a broadened perspective to any preexisting thoughts and beliefs that are hindering our potential, per Einstein’s sage wisdom, we can become larger in consciousness than the diminutive and diminishing self-perceptions.
Carl Jung taught a similar philosophy when he wrote “All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, for they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They mostly can never be solved, but only outgrown”.
Perhaps we are forever growing up and becoming larger individuals as we learn to walk away from situations that are contradictory and conflicting to our psychological growth and development.