Truth: what is it? Tell yourself the truth.

Have you thought about Telling Yourself the Truth?

   Most of what happens in your life happens because of the way you think. Wrong thinking produces wrong emotions, wrong reactions, wrong behavior and unhappiness! Learning to deal with your thoughts is the first step on the road to healthy thinking.

   Telling Yourself the Truth can show you how to identify your own misbeliefs and replace them with the truth. This book is for me, for you, I am not to read this looking for ideas for someone else.

   Typically, I want to put the blame on something or someone else. There is something in all of our lives we’d like to change. (I sure would like to loose a few pounds. As I am typing this paper, there is a plate of great home baked cookies to nibble.) But what am I telling myself about these circumstances? (I do not understand why I cannot drop this extra weight.)

   If I take the above example of the cookies and my weight, I can still have the plate sitting next to me but learn a different mind set. The circumstances have not changed, but what I tell myself about the circumstances change.

   The three steps to changing my thoughts, according to William Backus, are:

1. Locate my misbelief. (In order to look good, I have to produce a perfect class paper without any errors. As God thought it was necessary to create me with a perceptual challenge this can produce pain. The cookies numb the pain.) Does this sound like performance-based acceptance? Or, God made a mistake when creating me?

2. Remove them. (Not the cookies, the misbelief. I am writing the paper for my enjoyment not to look good or entertain others.)

3. Replace the misbelief with the truth. (Gen 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Gen 5:2 “He created them male and female and blessed them.” God created me for worship and His pleasure. If I never write another paper, God would not love me any less.)

   The Bible teaches that man’s feelings, passions and behavior are subject to and conditioned by the way he thinks. Proverbs 23:7 “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” It is not the events either past or present that make us feel the way we feel, but our interpretation of those events.

   Our feelings are caused by what we tell ourselves about our circumstances, whether in words or in attitudes.

   You’ll be on the road to freedom when you take the first step and identify your misbeliefs for what they are. Learn how to recognize them and put them in their place as lies of the devil.

   “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” is a promise of Jesus. Let the truth expose your misbeliefs for what they are!

   In emotional and mental health, what you believe is all important. It makes a difference what you believe. Other people, circumstances, events and material things are not what make you happy. What you believe about these things is what makes you happy or unhappy.

Telling Yourself the Truth by William Backus & Marie Chapian