Читать книгу Chasing Worthiness - Tammy Sherger - Страница 11

I’m going to take you back to where I can recall being impacted by the “right path.” I’m going to go back to my first job at Ponderosa Steak House. Can you remember your first job?

I was thirteen. I lied about my age to get this job. A dollar thirty-five an hour. Can you imagine that as your starting wage? I had to wear a nice little shirt and a cowboy hat. I was a bus girl. I cleared tables and sang “Happy Birthday” to children. I really, really needed that job because I wanted something: I wanted a pair of star jeans with the star on the back pocket. Oh my, they were designer jeans back in my day! And they cost twenty-five dollars. Although my dad worked hard every day, he couldn’t afford twenty-five dollars for a pair of jeans. Hence, I was willing to put on that cowboy hat. Even if I didn’t look cool while at the job, I was going to look cool when I went to school in my star jeans.

I learned belief number one while in this environment. It came directly from my parents, Toivo and Florence. My dad would say, “Just go to work. Go to work and work hard. Because if you work hard and you’re good to your boss, everything is going to be okay.” That’s what I learned: to work hard. I took this belief to heart, and I developed a very strong work ethic. Much later in life I learned that working hard and waiting for people to notice was not going to guarantee success.

I jumped off my proposed right path. I dropped out of school, I was a teenage mother, and I was married before I was old enough to vote. If you look at the list of everything I was supposed to do to be on the right path, I wasn’t.

Another belief was formed from these experiences. Success is for other people. Because I didn’t take my parents’ right path, I was never going to be successful. And there was nothing I could do to change that. I gave myself a life sentence. So, I didn’t dream very big. And the beliefs snowballed from there. I’m not smart enough because I didn’t finish school. I will never be successful because I was a teenage mother.

But is that really true? No. Think about what you believe to be the right path. What was the right path you thought you had to take? What beliefs did you develop from childhood? What beliefs are you carrying still? I carried my beliefs from childhood just like you. But I challenged those beliefs to become a different person, to define my own path. I found my worthiness.

What is worthiness made of? Worthiness is made up of your beliefs. And what is a belief? It’s an acceptance, by you, of a statement. You decide that statement is true. That’s the only thing a belief is. It doesn’t matter what belief you have. It only exists and persists because you decide it to be true. Your decisions on what is true about yourself impact the way you are living your life.

My dad Toivo in 1945

My parents, Toivo and Florence, 1950

All the words you tell yourself are made up in the context of the messages, the people, and your experiences. Things like I’m not good at reading. I’ve failed already. I’m not smart enough. Success is not for me. Worthiness—or its negative flipside, the feeling of unworthiness—is made up of all the beliefs you have. So I ask you to consider how important it is to be aware of the process that creates these beliefs. We are not aware of the origins and impact of most of our beliefs. Remember this: whether you believe you’re worth it or not, beliefs are not true unless you decide they are.