The One Question That Can Change Everything for ASDPs

These statements come from ASDPs I know. Do you recognize them? Or maybe you can think of others not listed here.  Here’s the thing to keep in mind and hold in your heart: If you have automatic negative beliefs about yourself or the world, they were likely installed by earlier generations who wanted to protect themselves and their secrets. Don’t blame them for teaching you only what they knew about life.

Why “Are You Sure?” Can Change Your Life

When you consider the above list of sample beliefs, you might recognize some. Or their example might bring to mind others that have become so ingrained in the way you experience life that they’re practically unconscious at this point. Either way, they are beliefs that were designed to keep you safe at one point, but instead they served to keep you playing small as you grew up to become a working adult. Or the influential adults in your childhood taught you some of these debilitating beliefs to explain away why they were struggling – even failing – to thrive themselves.

Overall, you can bundle all these beliefs and put them into a basket of hopelessness, barriers, even ongoing threat. These life lessons were passed on to you to help your caretakers cope with their own stress. The result: You ended up inheriting the stress itself, with few tools to cope with it in a healthy way.

Says Molly Birkholm, an expert in trauma treatment and resilience-based programs and co-founder of Warriors at Ease, which teaches yoga and meditation on military bases and throughout the Veterans Administration:  “If we believe that the world is a threatening place, we are likely to feel stressed most of the time.”

For ASDPs, that stress shows up as chronic stress – that ongoing hum of tension and dread that just won’t be relieved no matter how much you work, how frequently you job hop, how much chocolate you eat, how much wine you drink, how much money you lose at the slot machines. And then, because of the chronic stress, ASDPs suffer a higher incidence of high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, premature aging, even cancer.

Chronic stress can literally make us stupid. It attacks the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain we depend on the most at work. And it makes us lonely, disconnecting us from not only others but also ourselves – which results in higher suicide rates and a life of violence.

So three simple words.  Are. You. Sure. Can they really change your life?  Yes. Here’s why: They make you stop that headlong run into a self-destructive thought pattern. If you recognize yourself as an ASDP, you already know that you grew up not getting everything you needed. But you got that basketload of messages you specifically didn’t need.

Undo those messages every time they come up as undeniable beliefs.  “Are you sure?” Look at each one as it comes up and you’ll very likely come to believe that, huh, maybe there’s a more helpful way to experience each moment as you learn healthier ways of interacting with people.

Don’t blame yourself for carrying those beliefs into your adulthood. But it can all stop with you. There is almost always a more empowering, compassionate way to view the world.

Now you have the single most important question to ask yourself every time a debilitating belief comes up for you. And as you reprogram your mind to take a moment and ask that one simple question, you are reaching into the future and influencing new generations to choose a more positive way to look at a happier life.

Yes, I’m sure about that.