Mind & Emotions

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.