Mindset

To say that life doesn’t always goes as planned can be the understatement of a lifetime. I got a large dose of that reality last month when I gave birth to my first child. My beautiful daughter Eleanor was born by emergency Caesarean section on July 21, 2011, weighing in at 7 lbs. 8 oz. and 21 inches.

Being a project manager by trade, I tried my best to anticipate what would happen during the birth. I created a “birth plan,” which outlined everything I wanted to happen from my first contraction to leaving the hospital. Of course, I knew that labor can turn into an emergency, but after attending several birth classes, I felt assured that I would have a less traumatic experience. I mean, I prepared beforehand, right? What could go wrong?

Most of us want things that we don’t have. I, for one, would like to start a family and be the best mother I can be. I want to publish a novel. I want my small business to

Have you ever made a beef roast? I’m a foodie, and I love to cook, so I’ve taken a crack at cooking a beef roast several times now. For those who don’t know how to cook one, you basically take a giant slab of meat and throw it in the oven for a really long time.

But if you toss it in the oven and cook it until it looks brown, you may think that it’s done and ready to eat. After you cut into it to try to eat it, you find that it’s raw on the inside and completely un-eatable. This can be really confusing the first time you cook one, because on the outside, it looks ready to go, but on the inside, a lot of work still has to be done.

So why do we approach change with the same philosophy? We are constantly looking for outward signs of change – we want to see that debt disappear, we want to see those muscles pop or that number on the scale go down, we want to see all those new clients come rolling in. But change starts on the inside first, and that’s where we need to be patient.

What I believe isn’t important. The fact that I can put order to my thoughts, sort them into opinions and fan them into beliefs is hardly impressive. In fact, such thinking is unavoidable. It’s what our highly evolved human brains do. They compare and contrast and judge in an endless attempt to make sense of the world around us. Believing is as automatic as walking or talking or sneezing, and about as noteworthy.

There was a time when I considered my beliefs to be something more than just an assemblage of thoughts. I mistook them for something much more important. I thought they were me.

At various times in my life I believed I was a Catholic, a Unitarian, an agnostic and a secular humanist. I was a liberal, a feminist, an environmentalist and a pacifist. I took on new identities in search of a higher self and, down deep, I think, to distance myself from certain vulgarities that characterize the human condition – qualities like greed and aggression. By connecting certain thoughts, by cobbling together new identities, I convinced myself and others that those unwholesome human traits couldn’t possibly define me. They defined thieves and rapists and murderers. I was above all that, and had a portfolio of beliefs to prove it.