Teach Me Who You Are


We all have a privately held belief system that defines who we think we are. This belief system is composed of ideas that we have accumulated over time that we think describe us accurately.

These ideas came from sources that varied widely in quality. Most of the ideas we have chosen to label ourselves with have come from origins that would be clearly absurd to us if we encountered them for the first time today. Many others have origins that can longer be recalled because they are too old, or trivial, or have been suppressed. Yet these collections of labels are still maintained as part of our self image despite their murky history.

We mistakenly believe that only we can know what our true assessment of ourselves is, because only we have access to our private thoughts. The reality is that our speech and all our actions teach everybody around us about our internal model of ourselves and our world. There is no way to be alive without constantly teaching others about our belief systems.

What we believe is true about ourselves completely determines how we interpret the things we see, the sounds we hear, and the meaning of the events that take place around us. Our beliefs act as filters that serve to reinforce our internal models