When I was twelve years old, I caught my mom smoking behind the house.
This was a BIG DEAL because she told me she’d quit, and the church we belonged to said that cigarettes and other addictions were “evil.”
Seeing her with that cigarette dangling from her lips broke my heart.
I don’t think she saw me watching, but I’ve never forgotten that feeling.
It was like she became a different person in that moment.
Here’s the weird part:
Nothing had changed.
She was still my mother. I was still her daughter. We were standing in the same spots immediately before and after I saw her.
The only thing that changed was my THINKING.
I started out thinking that my mother was a non-smoker. I was proud of her for quitting after smoking for fifteen years.
Instantly she became a smoker. A sinner. A fallen woman.
I wondered what else she might be hiding from me.
I confused the thought, “My mother shouldn’t be smoking and I can’t trust her,” with the truth. I confused my thought with her identity.
It’s easy to confuse thoughts and feelings with who we are.
If I think the thought, “I am a rule follower” for long enough, I start to believe it. I make that thought a part of my identity.
Sooner or later I break a rule. Now what?
Who am I if I’m not the rule follower? Am I now the rule breaker? The woman who can’t be trusted?
You are not your thoughts.
You are not your feelings.
Thoughts and feelings change from moment to moment, and they cannot be YOU.
We reinvent ourselves with each breath in the present. I am not my thoughts, my feelings or my past actions. I am everything I choose in this moment.
Choose the identity you want to become; don’t let your thoughts and feelings choose for you.
I’m not quite sure what I am, but this is the best I can come up with:
I am infinite potential. I am the empty space.
I am.
