We can be faithful to beliefs that become our limitations

Someone once told me there's no money to be made in writing. That was a lie. Or more gently stated, an untruth.

Listen, very few people are getting rich writing, but a lot of people do indeed make some money doing it.

The belief I developed around that lie, though, was much deeper than finances. I came to believe that the only value in writing WAS finances; if you can't make a living doing it why do it? And for the longest time, I remained faithful to that belief and didn't dare pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard.

Today, I know just what a limitation not-writing places on my life.

The last decade of my life was a dark decade, but I have literally written myself out of that darkness into light. Writing has helped me explore the world and explore me and deconstruct a lot of beliefs I had turned into limitations.

By offering myself the freedom to write, I discovered the freedom to live with purpose and contentment. And more often than ever: with joy.

The more I've uncovered just how many beliefs I've been faithful to in life that were built on untruths, beliefs that were unknowingly prison wardens in my life, the more I wonder how many other people out there are limited by the same.

I wonder how many of us are not going where we can go, maybe even where we were created to go, because we have beliefs that have falsely convinced us that's a place we can not go.

Or a place we are forbidden to go.

A helpful question I ask myself a lot these days, and often secretly write about to you all without actually asking the question out loud, is: why do I believe that?

As a result, I have very few beliefs these days that I haven't done my best to confirm aren't built on lies. Maybe one of the most freeing parts of that confirmation process has been uncovering a lot of lies I'd been telling me about me. Lies I had believed and been faithful to.

I encourage you to do the same. Confirm the things you believe about the world. About you. About each other. Trace the roots of those beliefs.

Chances are you aren't experiencing the kind of beauty that really is all around you. You aren't experiencing it because you've built fences hiding it from you.

Fences built on the foundation of faulty beliefs.