Many (MANY) years ago in a therapy session, I was telling my then-therapist about something I thought, which of course, made it true. He looked at me and said, Just because you think it, doesn’t mean it’s true.

I no longer remember that therapist’s name, but I remember the feeling in that moment: shock. Incredulity. What?! Everything I think is not necessarily true? I was very young, and very naïve, to say the least.

Now I know that even though I think I need to clean the house all the time or at least once a week – it’s not true. It’s not even necessary.

I might think that caregiving for my husband takes all my time – but the truth is that I have time for myself when he’s sleeping, which is a lot these days.

I now know I have time to lie in bed, meditate, daydream. Why did I believe for so long I had to be doing something all the time?

When I would try to keep to an exercise schedule, at first I would think I have to do yoga or walking or whatever, every day. Not true. That just makes me not want to do it. That belief didn’t serve me at all. What turned out to be true was that sometimes I need to sleep, sometimes take it easy, sometimes exercise. I just had to trust myself – my True Self – in the process of what felt most loving at the time.

It’s a myth that I need to get everything done – it never all gets done and most of it isn’t important anyway. Just because I have a to-do list, doesn’t mean I have to do it all right now, today. I used to think being productive equated to being worthy. I was the sum of my accomplishments. Really? Now I know the truth that we are all worthy simply by being.

Lying on the couch and drinking coffee and watching TV – in the morning?! How could I?! Actually, why can’t I?

Is it true I really need that new pair of shoes? Maybe, maybe not, but I may still just want them. That may be the truth.

I also used to have the delusion/illusion that a love relationship shouldn’t/wouldn’t have lots of ups and downs. Wow, that wasn’t true at all. What is more true is what Ann Morrow Lindbergh wrote in “Gift From The Sea”:

“When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity. . . “
—-Ann Morrow Lindbergh

I realize I made judgments about many things over the years. I spent a lot of time and effort thinking things that were not true, not my business, not important. Now, when I feel this present and peaceful, when I decide to not do something, when I give up worrying, when I just rest and heal, sometimes I think there must be something wrong.

And now I know that’s not true at all.