you get to decide

one of the most radical mindset shifts I ever made was realizing how I get to decide what messages I do and do not internalize.

Imagine life as a cute quaint little town, and we are all villagers interacting with each other in many different ways. Mostly we are just passing through the streets and in doing so there is the strong possibility of passing someone who wants to hand us whatever they are holding. We don’t know what they are holding, we may not even want it, but with each interaction we have the opportunity to receive from each other.

We may not have control over who is giving to us or what they are giving. In fact, most of the time it feels like someone opens up our hands and places in it whatever it is they are giving. These things being placed in our hands could be treasures or literal trash. What we do with these things is entirely up to us, We get to decide if we keep this thing or throw it aside now or maybe later.

A big part of the human experience is almost constant exposure to what others think of us, believe we need, believe we should do, etc. These “things” we are handed by our fellow villagers manifest as ideas, compliments, insults, etc. The treasures are the things we want to internalize and the trash are the things not welcome into our internal landscape. We have the power to decide if the thing we have been handed is treasure or trash, and it is equally important to not dispose of treasure believing it to be trash, as it is the purge blatant trash. We are the keeper of our internal landscape and do not need to accept trash disguised as treasure. Likewise, do not throw away treasures (like compliments) because you think they are untrue, hold onto them for awhile, maybe they will begin to grow vibrantly in your internal lanscape.