WCoach9 by Maria Koropecky, Wellness Coach
As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed the other day, I came across this classic Mr. Bean video my friend had posted.
It’s from the Merry Christmas Mr. Bean TV episode where Mr. Bean can’t resist playing with a Christmas-themed display at a department store.
Here’s the clip from Merry Christmas Mr. Bean (1992) that I’m talking about.
The familiar Christmas scene starts off in a manger where the father, (Joseph), and mother, (Mary), are shushing the animals so they don’t wake the newborn baby, (Jesus). BTW, shushing animals is funny all by itself.
As more and more characters (who are obviously not from Bethlehem, 2000+ years ago) make their entrance and disrupt the peace and quiet, mayhem ensues and you’ve got a dinosaur, a robot, an angel, and a helicopter, and others, in the mix.
It’s a pretty ridiculous collection of misfits converging on a simple nativity scene, but still, it’s good, old-fashioned Christmas humour at its finest!
Anyway, as I was watching Mr. Bean move the toy figurines around the manger, I thought, as with all good art and comedy, there’s a deeper truth here at play.
Sure, Mr. Bean is like a child playing with his toys where imagination wins over standard rules of logic and historical accuracy — that’s wonderful! We should all dip into that well every now and then.
But underneath all of that, he’s pointing to… of all things… beliefs.
A belief is an idea that a person holds to be true and important.
And this video shows just how easily beliefs can escalate and get out of hand and not make sense anymore and if that’s the case, are they really worth defending so strongly?
Beliefs come up in coaching conversations all of the time. Beliefs, which include the stories we tell ourselves and the way we think, can significantly help us or hinder us in our lives.
In coaching, we identify beliefs that may be interfering with what our clients are trying to accomplish and then help clear them out of the way. If you become aware of your beliefs, then you can change them for something better.
Beliefs can be very stubborn and to us, in our mind and experience, our own beliefs make perfect, logical sense. The more we repeat them, the more we believe them, and the more evidence we collect to confirm them.
Every now and then we have to take a look at our own beliefs to see if they’re still serving us. Perhaps in childhood, they served a purpose to help us survive, but now in adulthood, they’re interfering with our life and dreams for the future.
If you can take a look at the original belief before it took on a life of it’s own and got distorted and corrupted by other “ideas,” you can consciously choose to keep it or let it go — no tinkering or embellishments needed.
If the basic, original version still works, keep it, but if it no longer holds water and has become too complicated and corrupted, let it go.
The English major in me can see how Mr. Bean’s nativity sketch is actually a clever metaphor for how our personal beliefs get out of hand.
To Mr. Bean, building a nativity scene and adding sheep, army tanks, and Buckingham Palace Guards was a fun game with a beginning, middle, and ending and if you had managed to suspend your disbelief, the story would have been entertaining. But to the grouchy store clerk, the story was absurd and preposterous!
Your idea or belief may start off easy enough, (like a manger scene) and then all of a sudden, more and more stuff gets added to the story, stuff from out of the blue that doesn’t fit with the original intention, (like a helicopter flying overhead) and then as you’re watching this convoluted story unravel, you find yourself saying, “Whaattt? This doesn’t make any sense!”
And that’s how beliefs cause trouble.
As time moves on, more stories get piled up on more stories and some things get edited out and new generations interpret things differently and all of a sudden, 2000 years later, we celebrate the baby Jesus and Santa Claus at the same time.
And then Christmas, a truly sacred holy day, becomes controversial songs, late-night parties, over-indulging in food and drink, stress, buying stuff, and offending all kinds of people who have different religious, cultural, and political beliefs, that drags on for a month, and has completely lost its original message, which was:
a message of hope, joy, renewal, light, love, and peace to all.
If you’re celebrating Christmas this year, take some time to reflect on what it truly means to you.
Merry Christmas, Maria
Crystal Mapping Sessions Available
Would you like some spiritual guidance on this topic and to uncover some of your own hidden beliefs? Consider signing up for a Free Crystal Mapping Session with Wellness Coach, Maria Koropecky. Email Maria to book your free Crystal Mapping Session today.
