‘We’re breaking up’
‘What?! Why? What wrong things have I ever done to you? I am perfect, everything I do I perfect.’
‘Are you kidding me? I could make a list five miles long of the things that you have done. I’ve had enough of all the things you are constantly putting me through, without giving me or my feelings a second thought. We could have been amazing, if it weren’t for you’
This was about the third or fourth time I had gone through my imaginary break up conversation between my boyfriend and. And it was about the third or fourth time that I had come out victorious, the absolute winner of the conversation. Every time showing him that I was always right, he was always wrong, I had done nothing to cause our current situation, and he had done everything.
I love to have these imaginary conversations with myself. They tend to be a frequent reoccurrence in the constant noise my brain makes. I ‘talk to’ people at work, boys I like, my best friend. More often than not they are not easy conversations that I imagine; they are the hard one, ones about how they are frustrating me, or about how I am not performing very well.
And in every conversation I have, it is the same. I win. I always have the upper hand. I always have the perfect comebacks, the amazing justifiable excuses. It is always the same.
A couple weeks ago we had a conference here at the office, and it was all about soul care. It was about self-awareness, lies, and sin. It talked about things that could hold us back, and things that could help set us free.
One of the things that really stuck with me, was when Rob was talking about lies, and identifying lies that you believe about yourself. He told us to begin listening to those imaginary conversations that run through our mind. What are the things that you are saying to yourself? He said they can often point to those deep rooted lies we have been believing.
I had never thought of it that way before. I always thought those conversations between me, myself and I, was a way I psyched myself up, and preparing myself for those hard conversations.
And in some instances they were. But in more instances then not they were not me encouraging myself as much as they were me putting everyone else down.
It so often is me making list after list of ways that I have been hurt or have been wronged. Making myself a victim to all of those who have hurt me, and in those imaginary conversations, solidifying a victim mentality within myself.
You know, the mentality that you are subject to all of those around you. Thinking everyone is out to get you, and there is nothing you can do about it? That’s what I was convincing myself of every time I had an imaginary conversation.
I was subconsciously continuously solidifying this mindset that I am never wrong and everyone else is just out to get me, and I didn’t even know it!
I didn’t think twice about those conversations I would have within my own mind. The crap that I was letting wade around, polluting the way that I think and interact with the people around me.
And so now, when I find myself arguing with my boss, or breaking up with my boyfriend –all inside my head of course, I stop, and ask myself what I am really believing; making sure that my heart isn’t in a place of a victim as much as it is in a place of finding solutions to problems, or recognizing actual conversations that I have to have with actual people.
What kind of conversations are you having in your mind? What are those conversations teaching you, or establishing in you?
