For the better part of my adult life, I have admired women who can wear light colored linen pants and white oversized dress shirts.
They appear so classy, so poised. They look as if they’ve stepped out of Kinfolk magazine and glided effortlessly from their ultra-modern home with drool-worthy floor to ceiling windows. They look expensive.
I’ve always wished that I could be one of these women in white tops and breezy, flax-colored pants. But I’ve always declared with self-deprecating humor, that I could never. I would surely get my period unexpectedly or find myself sitting in the remnants of a melted chocolate bar, looking as if I just couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time. That, or end up with a vibrant Cheeto-fingered smear across the front, mistaking my pants for a napkin.
If only I wasn’t so reckless. If only I could be that classy lady with the linen pants.
We create these narratives for ourselves, often dooming us to live within the confines of a reality we’ve engineered in our brains. To be sure, the color of the clothes I am wearing is not having major impacts on my everyday life, but we can all fall victim to beliefs we hold about ourselves that limit our ability to live lives that feel out of reach to us. Lives that we clearly, deep down, really want to be living.
How many of us have told ourselves that we aren’t morning people? Or that we are bad with money? Or are terrible artists? That we are uncoordinated, bad drivers, and can’t carry a tune?
These things might all be true, but we talk about these characteristics as if they are unmovable, permanent parts of our lives, when they can be practiced and improved upon.
One day, I bought myself a pair of beige linen pants.
And you know what? The pants aren’t pristine. They have some light stains here and there, because I’m a real person and I eat and drink and sit and lie around. But they are not covered in large brown stains and I do give my day a second thought before I put them on to make sure that the pants make sense for the day that I’m about to have.
It’s easy to get trapped into believing certain things about ourselves- either because they are things other people have said about us, or because they are just things we have said about ourselves. Repetition has a way of worming into our minds and before we know it, we accept these lines as facts.
Whether true or not, these self held beliefs deserve to be revisited and reviewed for accuracy. If they are false, let’s do away with them. And if there are elements of truth, it might be worth assessing whether or not they are beliefs you want to change.
Are you really someone who cannot wake up earlier a few days a week to fit in some exercise before work? Or is it that you don’t want to? If you don’t want to make the effort, that is more than fine! But just know that it isn’t because you aren’t the kind of person that can’t.
You absolutely can. But you have to start. And once you start doing it, then you are exactly that kind of person.
One of the most common beliefs that has a major impact on everyday life is the belief that people are ‘bad with money’. It is far easier (in some ways) to declare you are bad with money, YOLO, and speed through life with fear in your heart with your eyes closed.
Managing your finances is a skill that can be learned. It won’t happen overnight, and there might be some sacrifices that need to be made, but ultimately your money habits can change and with some effort, you can learn to be good with money- even great with money.
Limiting beliefs are holding a lot of us back, but we can change that if we are dedicated to shifting the way we think . The language we use to characterize ourselves has a way of boxing us in, making us believe an engineered truth, and we often don’t even recognize that there is space to challenge these beliefs.
There is. And you can.
I’m wearing a white button up and light-colored linen pants today. I don’t know if I look expensive- probably not- but I do feel classy. I feel a little fancier than I usually do.
And it feels really nice. Because I am the kind of person that can wear light colored clothes, because I just started doing it.
