If your life includes things you profess to hate, yet you continue to do them anyway, that too, indicates self-betrayal. For example, are you always complaining about being overweight, yet you continue to be? Do you fail to exercise, go back to school, change jobs, confront your dead marriage, get a date, get a hobby, or deal with the pain of abuse or neglect that has scarred you since childhood? If so, you can’t possibly be living in concert with who you were originally designed to be.

~Dr. Phil McGraw

I imagine that you have bought a brand-new computer and have just taken it out of the box. It comes from the manufacturer all shiny and fresh, with hardware and software that has been perfectly and purposefully designed specifically for that computer. Then over the years, you continue to add after-market hardware and software, which was never intended to be integrated with your system, including downloaded information off the Internet from total strangers. Pretty soon, you have a malfunctioning computer, but you continue to endure the problems because beyond the obvious inconvenience, you believe it is less costly in both time and money to live with the problems than it is to restore the machine to its factory specs. I know this can happen because I am describing my own experience.

So it is with life also: You and I came from the manufacturer all shiny and fresh, perfectly designed to be the authentic being God intended us to be. Then, over the years, we are downloaded with “programs” designed by others that cause our operating system to malfunction. Yet we continue to let these programs run long after we are aware that they don’t really serve us well. Dr. Phil refers to this as us  as living a life of self-betrayal. The obvious question we must ask is, Why would anyone choose to continue to betray themselves by living a life that is not only unrewarding but, in many cases, is downright miserable? Is their programming that powerful that they would choose to live in a manner that actually dishonors the authentic being they were originally designed to be? Of course, the answer is “yes,” but it doesn’t have to be that way. What does it take then to live a life in concert with who the Master Designer, God, originally intended us to be? It requires the willingness to reprogram ourselves, to delete all of the downloaded, erroneous information given to us by family, friends, and even strangers, which we mistakenly embraced as the truth about ourselves. It may require letting go of outdated “hardware” (e.g., relationships, jobs, addictions, habits, etc.) that do not serve us in living a life that honors the authentic being we were sent here to be.

This computer analogy works well for me because I can see how for the first thirty years of my life, I was operating with more than a few faulty programs and outdated pieces of hardware, which caused me to painfully live a life of self-betrayal. I share it with you, because if I can upgrade my “operating system,” demonstrating a life of wholeness and inner peace that honors the divine designer, anyone can. When I have a computer problem I can’t handle, I call on Jeff, my local computer wizard. When I have a challenge living in concert with who I came here to be, I call on a practitioner, minister, or a trusted friend who will help me remember who I really am. It is never too late to choose to be who you came here to be.