Last week, I talked about the brain and its story-driven belief powered operating system. This week, I promised you I would talk about the power of Zero and how the story you tell yourself about what Zero is and its value determines your reaction to being called a Zero.
My Early Introduction to Zero
When I was first introduced to Zero, I was a child and my teacher taught me that zero was nothing. It was emptiness. It was a place holder. It wasn’t that important. It’s job was just to tell you where something ought to be but wasn’t. I didn’t think to question my teacher. Why would I?
Getting Called a Zero
I don’t remember who did it. I don’t remember where I was or even how old I was, but it didn’t take very long for someone to call me a Zero. I remember how hurt I was. I remember feeling tears form at the corner of my eyes, though I refused to allow those tears to fall and be seen.
I remember thinking, “But I’m not nothing. I’m not empty. I’m not a place holder.”
But even though I thought that was true, part of me wondered if this person wasn’t right. Maybe I was a zero. Maybe I was nothing, a nobody, a place holder. There was certainly evidence to support that in the way I was treated by others. And that negative belief about myself found a crack in my self-esteem and settled in to be carried with me for the next 33 or so years of life.
Re-Examining Zero
I don’t even remember what caused me to do it, but at the beginning of 2016, I began to re-examine the story of Zero. I began to challenge my early beliefs about what Zero was and what it meant. What I discovered in the process was eye opening!
Zero isn’t nothing. It’s everything. Literally every single number pair out there, positive and negative, is joined together inside of zero. This makes Zero the perfection of possibility. All things are possible inside of zero.
Far from being a place holder, zero is an essential ingredient in the realm of higher mathematics. Trigonometry and calculus and half of algebra were impossible for us to figure out until we discovered the existence of zero and began to understand how it works.
Everything that is contained inside of Zero is so closely united that it is literally impossible to divide it. Nothing can tear those things apart once Zero has brought them together.
Zero Is God’s Favorite Number
With my new perspective on Zero, I began to see it everywhere, and I began to understand that Zero is God’s favorite number. The Bible is full of people that everyone else deemed as nothings, nobodies, and mere place holders and proving them to be the perfection of possibility by elevating them in status and power.
The Power Is Yours
Once I understood that the story I’d been told about what Zero is and what it means was very wrong, I was empowered to go back to that wounded self and re-write her story. Yes, I am a Zero. I am the perfection of possibility. I am an essential ingredient for higher things. I am a perfect fusion of positive and negative events that nobody can tear apart or break down. I can no longer be hurt by being called a Zero. I have claimed my power to dictate the meaning of the story behind that word.
The Fine Art of Emotional Self-Defense
It doesn’t matter what someone else calls you. What matters is the story you tell yourself about what that word means. You can defuse any verbal taunt anyone tosses your way if you get into the habit of looking for the positive inside of that negative word and drawing it out.
Let them call you an extremist. “Yes, I am. I believe in living life to the extreme.”
Let them call you a radical. “Yes, I am. I believe in radically changing my life and helping others do the same.”
Let them call you whatever they want to call you. You find a way to take that negative word and tell yourself a positive story about its meaning. They will never be able to hurt you again.
The Use of Labels
Our brains love labels. Labels help us organize things into neat, tidy categories that make them easier to remember and store away. But labels aren’t appropriate for people. Labels do not fit people. On people, labels become limits. Labels become an easy way to dismiss the complex reality of an individual. You can watch this short video I created on the power of labels and the stories they tell.