Lying Liars Return

The most efficient way for me to let people get inside my head and bang around in there is for me to give them permission to do so.  I try to avoid the trap of letting other people's opinions of me - good or bad, right or wrong, true or false - define who I am.  I guard against mislabeling these opinions as facts.  This is particularly troublesome when I was young and some older person, some person in authority with control over parts of my life, repeats the same warnings or criticisms over and over, in a stern and serious voice.

"There is nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."

William James

I hold myself responsible only for the clarity and truth and integrity of what I say and not for what others hear and feel because I don't control the perceptions of others.  I have to remember that beliefs don't exist out there in the world; they exist only in my own mind and only as long as I continue to believe them.  Damn, though, some of them are really firmly lodged in there.  They have become part of my identity and sometimes I'm not ready to let them go.  I think of my studied intolerance of other people - which must feed some twisted and warped sense of superiority - and my perfectionism - which drives me to unrealistic expectations of myself and can lead me to always feel that what I've done or accomplished is not enough.

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it, and you will come to believe it yourself."

Joseph Goebbels