Tapes and fixed beliefs: we all have them.
Tapes are the series of thoughts or events which run through our minds and guide much of our responses to our circumstances. Fixed beliefs are a set of values or certainties borne out in our lives because of prior realities.
We have set of insights and experiences which trigger or incite visceral responses within us. The human mind is uncanny, yet it can can itself in some empty, negative packaging without the Truth which supersedes our thinking, which passes knowledge.
We are more than the set of ideas which run rampant within our heads. Too much of what we believe about ourselves stems from what others have said or done to us.
Those same people are gone from our lives, and the trying circumstances have long since dissipated, but the residual effects on our thinking and feeling remain lasting.
Going after the tapes is crucial to breaking free of the untruth and letting the truth set us free.
Fixed beliefs are there for a reason: to keep us fixed on some semblance of reality. Like goldfish who leave the confines of their little bowls and then spill into a bathtub, in which they remain confined to the same limited parameters of their bowl, so too human beings have a tendency to remain mentally and emotionally within the confines of their prior experience rather than heeding the intuition of their inner being and stretching out beyond the borders of their certain circumstances.
"Women are not supposed to go to college," goes one fixed belief.
Another set of fixed beliefs centers on the identity which we have received from our parents, our peers, or our own persons. These beliefs can be more difficult to purge without exposing the limits of our thinking or the errors of those who first imposed these beliefs upon us.
These fixed beliefs in turn spin the same tapes which wind us into a set pattern of living. Our thinking informs our feelings, yet for much of our lives we minister to these feelings instead of assess our thinking and accessing the Life given to us in our spirits.
Dr. Phil's insights on tapes and fixed beliefs taught me to fix those tapes by fixing my eyes on Him who sits at the Right Hand of God.
It's no longer a matter of diagnosing what is wrong with us, but rather learning who we are in Christ. Dr. Phil cannot speak to this Truth without offending his audience and hurting his book sales, yet even his insights helped prepare the way for me to receive the love and light of Christ Jesus into my life.
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