My Ol Man Sez - Rev. Paul Gonyea

We need to recognize that the beliefs we hold about our own abilities, about how smart or dumb we are, how talented or incompetent we are, how attractive or ugly we are, or how lovable or unlovable we are, are learned beliefs. We learn them, for better or worse, by listening to people we admire and respect, people who have a lot of credibility, like our father or our mother. As we’re growing up, as our mind and our personality are developing, we gather beliefs about ourselves and accept those beliefs as the way we really are. That’s why, if your father tells you as a child that you’re not very smart, or if your mother tells you you’re not very pretty, it can take a long time to find out that these are their misguided opinions rather than statements of truth