When I was a child, my father would eat steak. He would then cut the meat from the bone and offer me the bone – telling me it was “the best part.” In fact there is a saying, “the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat.” However, there was very little meat left on what I was given.

For many years, I actually believed that the bone was the best part. Sounds silly, but that is what I was told as a child and how would I know anything different? As a child, you have no comparisons to make. You have no reason to doubt what a parent tells you.

Here is where truth comes in. Many of us have walked around our whole lives with beliefs based on false information. This is not generally an intentional thing, but it exists.

How many people still base their self-image on something they were told as a child? You are pretty, you are ugly, you are smart, you are stupid, you are important, you are worthless…

As a child, you take what you are given. As an adult, you do not have to live by the same rules by which you were raised. You can make your own set of rules.

The challenge is to find out who you are and be that. Find out what you desire and seek that. Find out what you believe and think that. You do not have to be bound by your past. Knowledge is power. As you gain knowledge about you and your behavior, you gain power to rise above your past.

It is not an easy thing for a person to throw away the conditioning of their past. Our childhoods cling intensely to our present set of beliefs. One of the benefits of being human is that we do not have to settle for “conditioning”. We can, in fact, choose our life. We can choose what to believe and what to discard. It is not necessarily an easy task, but it is within our grasp.

And, as ever growing, ever changing beings, when we no longer find something enlightening and beneficial, we have the opportunity to change our beliefs yet again. There is no need for stagnation. We as beings continue to evolve, so too should our ideals and insights.

Today, I do not settle for the bone. Now I know that the best part of the steak is the meat. I do not even buy steak with a bone but choose which meat most appeals to me and my taste.

Do not settle for what you have always been told, always been given. Find out the truth and accept no less. Allow yourself the freedom to change and to choose. Be whom you wish to be, not what you have been told to be.