What's the Story You're Telling Yourself About Yourself? |
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We often don’t see or recognize the fundamental role our personal narratives are playing in our lives.
Our stories are layered into the way we think, feel, interact, and make choices.
To break these unhealthy cycles, we must recognize that what feels like truth may be a constructed narrative.
Do you ever feel like no matter what you do or say, how you behave, the choices you make, the results are the same? No matter how hard you try, you can’t move the dial forward—can’t experience new things, new people, and new opportunities—can’t change your life. Does it feel like you’re stuck in the same loop you’ve always been in?
If that feels true for you, it may be time to shift your attention—away from your circumstances and from trying to change outcomes, and toward something more fundamental: the stories you’re telling yourself—about your life, your possibilities, and yourself.
Ask yourself, what are the background narratives running in your head that you’re accepting as true? What is the reality your mind is constructing that you’re accepting as what is?
My friend Francesca was furious. She’d been invited to be a bridesmaid at her friend’s destination wedding in the Bahamas. In the story she told me, the bride had only asked her to be a bridesmaid because she assumed that Francesca would never get married herself. And, because she couldn’t possibly have other plans and therefore could just slip off for a four-day trip to the Bahamas at the drop of a hat—with only nine months’ notice! In my friend’s narrative, the invitation to be a bridesmaid in the Bahamas was insulting; the bride obviously thought she was pathetic and was just “throwing her a........