“It is a wise person who knows where courage ends and stupidity begins.”
Jerome Cady reminds us of the fine line between madness and genius. Too many brilliant people have been called STUPID in the history of humankind, and too many STUPID people have been called brilliant.
However, feeling STUPID and being STUPID are two very different things, but for some people these two states get tangled. I am one of them. How about you?
STUPID is a word I was verbally clubbed with often when I was a young pup.
“She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed,” elders would often say about me to others as I stood beside them.
“She’s not the smart one, her sister is,” these were the subtle polite phrases used in company.
Many of my amazing clients also identify with similar programming about themselves, when in actual fact I cannot find anything STUPID about them at all. So many of us arrive in adult life with emotional hangovers from our youth, not being STUPID in any way, but feeling STUPID and emotionally lost. Often. Way too often. It is usually the most successful intellectually and physically gifted clients that confess to feeling the most STUPID. When were emotionally disoriented it is easy to mistake confusion for STUPIDITY.
When our common senses (sight, taste, touch, scent and sound) get conflicting messages i.e. someone says they love you, you surrender in trust to them, then they abandon you verbally or physically harm you, we can feel STUPID as a result.
However, trusting those we love is essential for a relationship we learn in adult life, it is not STUPID at all. So we learn as we mature what, where, who, how and when to trust and love so we protect ourselves from making any more STUPID decisions. It is emotionally exhausting unlearning in adult life that we were never STUPID to start with.
I have had to do a lot of work with therapeutic professionals to untangle this emotional programming. However, whenever I am in a confusing, unfamiliar new environment the ol’ STUPID scars still are knocked. More often than they would in a familiar environment.
So this particular Emotional Fitness message is to ensure if others or we are in a new situation, relationship or environment that we remain vigilant with our internal dialogue. When they or we become confused or emotionally overwhelmed let us delete the word STUPID from our inner dialogue, it does not apply in these situations. Instead let’s try instead to be less critical and more supportive and patient with ourselves and others.
Lotsa love Cynthia xxx
© Copyright 2016 Cynthia J. Morton Emotional Fitness™
This Word Vitamin is an excerpt from my latest bookset “The Four Seasons of the Heart”. If you would like to order your own full set of Daily Word Vitamins one for each day of the year, in book form for yourself or as a gift just click on the SHOP tab and place your order.
