Tag: Philip Dodson

The stories we make up about ourselves

Posted on by philipdodson

The stories we make up about ourselves, this is a follow-up from the stories we make up about others.

Yesterday I blogged about the stories we make up about others and how they create suffering for ourselves and others.

Well, there are also the stories that we make up about ourselves, and these are the most corrosive and create great suffering within us and for others too.

What we tell ourselves affects greatly our self-worth and when we do not feel worthy, it affects everything in our lives. Worthiness is not a conditional thing, we are born worthy and we die worthy…no matter what, there are no conditions to that.

As I talked about in earlier posts when we a loving to ourselves, when we are kind to ourselves, and when we give these things to ourselves, we can feel worthy. If someone does not love us, see our value or question us that does not change our worth at all. Our soul is ours and no one else’s to judge or question, our worthiness is not open for debate.

However, based on other people’s words and actions we create these stories about ourselves that corrode our self-worth. We tell ourselves these falsehoods about ourselves.

Brene Brown sums this up brilliantly in a section about learning to rise in her great book ‘Dare to Lead’  she says:

“The three most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our lovability, divinity, and creativity.

The reality check around our lovability: Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.

The reality check around our divinity: No person is ordained to judge our divinity or to write the story of our spiritual worthiness.

The reality check around our creativity: Just because we didn’t measure up to some standard of achievement doesn’t mean that we don’t possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world. And just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn’t change its worth or ours.“

We don’t need to tell ourselves any stories, the truth is we are worthy and lovable…no conditions.

Something to consider on a Sunday night…

Posted on by philipdodson

Don’t work hard, work deep.

Hard work, as in working silly long hours, not allowing ourselves any break, driving ourselves relentlessly to get stuff done and to be seen by others as hard-working is not hard work it is ego-driven behaviour to match a story we are telling ourselves and self-image we want the world to see.

Anything of real value in life requires commitment, dedication and sacrifice of easy and shallow things, however, it is deep work that matters not hard work.

We can achieve work of the highest value that matters to us and others by committing to a few hours of deep work each day rather than this false notion of hard work. If we work deeply, and in a focused state for a few hours, we then have the rest of our time to focus on the other things in life. The stuff that really matters…like doing the things we truly love to do and spending time with the people who deeply matter to us.

Hard work that is all-consuming damages our mental and physical health, It prohibits us from doing the things that really matter, and as we all have a finite amount of concentration to be able to do high-value quality work what happens is if we work too long the quality of our work deteriorates and then creates even more work to fix the mistakes.

Doing less is more when we work deeply. The deeper we work, the less we need to work because the value of what we produce is significantly higher than hard work. It is deep work, not hard work that matters.