The Secret of the Good Point: The False Belief That We Are Not Good

If you ask a person on the street whether they think they're good, the automatic response will usually be: "Of course I'm good." A deeper examination within ourselves will reveal that we have a part that believes we aren't really good.

What does "not good" mean? It sounds exaggerated and strange.

Do I feel that I'm a good person who only wants good, or are there places where I have difficult beliefs about myself, for example that I'm selfish, or that I don't care about others, that I constantly disappoint others, that I'm unlucky, that I have no chance of succeeding, that I'm a failure, that I don't really have talents, that I'm weak and if people knew who I really am and how I feel, they wouldn't want to be in a relationship with me. That I'm not. Simply not...

Most of the time we aren't aware of these feelings and thoughts, but that doesn't mean they don't exist within us.

Because even if a person says everything is fine and that they love themselves and are connected to themselves, if they secretly believe they aren't good, that they're disappointing, that things could have been different and so on – their behavior will reflect their belief. Our beliefs shape our behavior and our attitude toward ourselves and our environment.

One of the frustrating things is that a person who finds places within themselves where they feel worthless, lacking connection or love − looks around and thinks that everything is fine with others, and that only they feel this way. Such an act only intensifies the negative feeling, and this isn't the truth. Their main problem is despair. We all have struggles. True, sometimes what seems like a mountain to you might appear as a mouse to another, but each of us has struggles and wounds that we carry with us.

The problem is, as mentioned, the negative beliefs that control our lives. The joke tells of three people – a Shin Bet agent, a KGB agent, and a CIA agent who competed to see who could catch a rabbit in the forest the fastest. The CIA agent came out with a rabbit after five minutes. The KGB agent after fifteen minutes, and the Shin Bet agent didn't come out of the forest. The two worried friends went back into the forest to look for their Shin Bet friend. They found him in a forest clearing, with a terrified lion tied up in front of him, and the Shin Bet agent shouting at it: "Confess that you're a rabbit! Confess that you're a rabbit..."

Sounds exaggerated, but that's what happens when we're convinced at an early age that what we are isn't good enough. That we need to be someone else, something else. That we need to be a rabbit instead of a lion. After we're convinced of the bad and negative – we try to cover it all our lives with shiny cellophane wrappers and pretend that everything is okay... And then, even when we tell ourselves that we're in a really good state, that we love and appreciate ourselves, a deeper examination will reveal that deep in our hearts we don't believe we're good.

This gap has several roots, and one of them is planted in our childhood.

When parents and teachers tell a child they're a bad child, they internalize it. We're all very familiar with statements like "you're lazy", "you're selfish", "you're annoying". Such statements shape the child's self-perception that they aren't good. Of course, the parents mean to say that the child's behavior was bad, but over time the child simply absorbs this toxic idea deep inside. Strict education leads to this perception even if these things aren't explicitly said to the child.

Even soft or overly permissive education can cause the child to believe they aren't good: After all, if I were good, at least they would care. At least someone would notice me. I probably don't count, am not interesting, and not good – and that's why no one is interested in me and doesn't insist with me.

There are additional reasons for the basic internal belief that we aren't good, and these vary from person to person. The basic point common to most of us is that sometimes this belief is hidden and concealed, and sometimes it surfaces and overwhelms us. During periods when this belief rises – we feel incapable and unwilling.

Life conditions can also strengthen a person's false belief that they aren't good. When a person looks at their current life – and it's not always what they hoped for, they feel like a failure. They feel that they aren't good. They identify with the external situation and decide that they aren't good.

A story from life:

I'm just lazy, I said indifferently to Devorah, my father's secretary. I was fourteen and had just finished developing a client management software to help my father organize his office. In the end, no one used this program because the computer it ran on was very outdated. I think it took about three minutes to start up.

Lazy? she asked in wonder.

Yes, lazy, I answered her. That's what I am. I'm lazy, I don't have energy for anything, I'm not like everyone else.

She smiled and said: Do you know what lazy is? It's not laziness at all – it's because you're an inventor!

What? I wondered.

Yes. Yes. She explained, you're an inventor, you're a person who constantly thinks about how to improve things and how to do them more easily. It's not because you're lazy – it's like this program you developed, which is supposed to help us do things faster.

Not lazy. An inventor.

"And the principle understood from his words is that a person needs to have faith in himself that he too is beloved in the eyes of Hashem. Because according to the greatness of Hashem's goodness, he too is great and important in His eyes. And this matter has already been explained several times that it is not humility to be in a state of mental smallness, Heaven forbid, and one needs to ask Hashem a lot to merit true paths of humility, etc."

(Sichot HaRan, 140)

Exercise:

Do you believe you aren't good?

Look for places in your life where you believe, or have believed in the past, that you simply aren't good. Something that happened in recent years or memories from an earlier period, times when you simply felt not good in general or places where you felt you were failing. Sometimes it's related to feelings of guilt that surface and overwhelm you.

What is the source of the feeling that you aren't good?

A deeper examination will reveal that we are usually mistaken, and deep in our hearts we believe we aren't good.

From the book "The Secret of the Good Point", by Ran Weber, author, therapist, and workshop facilitator in the spirit of Hasidism. For contact: ranweber@gmail.com