Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
And he knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
Songwriters: John Coots / Haven Gillespie
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Wixen Music Publishing

Do you have to see something with your eyes in the 3D world in order to believe it? Do you have to hear the ocean waves with your ears in order to know it exists? Do you have to hold an object in your hand in order for you to give it credence? Have you ever imagined something stellar would happen, even if everything in your logical mind convinces you otherwise, and it did? This is the time of year when children all over the world believe in a magical oversized elf named Santa Claus who lives in an icy tundra at the top of the world. He flies around the universe in a sleigh powered by eight flying reindeer. He’s in every mall in America taking memorable photos with your kids, yet lives at the North Pole. He has an army of tiny elves crafting gadgets, dolls, toys and games at a speed even Amazon cannot outpace. He manages to scan the circumference of the earth, visiting billions of homes in 24 hours. He’s obese, yet can scale chimneys with the precision of an Olympic athlete. Santa instinctively leaves the perfect gift for 1.9 billion kids between the ages of 0-14 who currently live on earth. He eats cookies in every home, leaves notes, wraps or doesn’t wrap (that’s a debate for another time - lol) gifts under each tree. How effing insane and utterly absurd does this sound? Yet, most of us believed this to be TRUTH for the first 10-12 years of our lives.

“Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.” – George Carlin

So how do we know what is real and what is imagined? Beliefs are generally formed in two ways: by our experiences, inferences and deductions, or by accepting what others tell us to be true. Most of our core beliefs are formed when we are children. Our parents and environment play a big part in molding our beliefs from a very young age. This is called your “model of reality.” Your whole life is played out by the filters in which you view the world based on these beliefs. Some people believe in God, atheists do not. If you were raised Catholic, you believe in Jesus, our Jewish friends do not. If you were raised wealthy, you believe money flows easily to you. If your parents struggled to make money, perhaps it’s an issue for you as well. Are you still carrying around beliefs that you suck at math based on what your first grade teacher told you? Do you still believe at 40 that you are undateable because your asshole first boyfriend told you so? Take two equally skilled athletes and put them in a race. Why does one win and one doesn’t? Similarly, take two people diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. One believes the doctor is the ultimate authority and dies in 4 months. The other has a Grandchild on the way and says “hell no, I am not dying” and defeats the odds. We believed the earth was flat, you couldn’t fly a plane and it was impossible to put a man on the moon or break a 4 minute mile until evidence proved otherwise. Getting back to Santa - do you need evidence to believe in him? Or can you just have hope and little blind faith? So what is true? Your truth is what you believe it is. What you think about your bring about - whether you believe it or not. The only one who can change your model of reality is YOU. Here’s to believing in yourself instead of a jolly old elf! I hope this has served you as it has for me. After all, it’s an Inside-Project.

“Your mind doesn't know the difference between reality and fantasy. Your mind acts on what you feed it. Feed it good thoughts.” - Zig Ziglar