What's Your Story?

What's Your Story?

What stories are you telling yourself & how are they impacting your life?

The stories that we tell ourselves impact the way we view, feel & think about ourselves & the way that we experience the world around us. We all have stories that contribute to our behaviours, habits & opinions. And those stories can either be beneficial or detrimental to our physical health; mental wellbeing; relationships; careers; financial success; our overall happiness & our quality of life. 

Are you telling yourself stories about not being capable of achieving something that you truly desire? Perhaps you want to study at University but there’s that niggling little voice in your head, or even your gut, telling you that you’re not smart enough. Or perhaps your dream is to start your own business, but that niggling little voice keeps telling you that you don’t have enough training, knowledge or experience to begin.

Just imagine if your story reinforced your capabilities, instead of diminishing them. Just imagine!

Are you telling yourself stories about it not being safe to show up as your true authentic self in the world? Maybe you resist revealing honest opinions, beliefs or emotions. Or maybe you resist expressing your fears or dreams to anybody. Because you’re concerned that they may judge you or they may not like or accept you. So, instead, you just conceal yourself & play the people pleaser.

Just imagine if your story reinforced the value of your truly authentic self, instead of diminishing it. Just imagine!

Are you telling yourself stories about not being good enough? Maybe you don’t apply for jobs that you could actually do with your hands tied behind your back, or you don’t pursue a relationship with someone that’s perfect for you, or you just don’t ever step out of your comfort zone to challenge yourself. And so, you continue to stagnate in your life, instead of growing & developing into your full potential.

Just imagine if your story reinforced your intrinsic worth, instead of diminishing it. Just imagine!

The stories we tell ourselves are deeply embedded within our subconscious minds. They are stored in that emotional, experiential, limitless, non-verbal part of our mind, along with every single thing we have ever heard, felt, touched, seen or smelled. Your subconscious mind is the storehouse for all of your memories & everything you have ever experienced is stored away securely in there.

If only the stories we create were stored in our conscious minds. After all, it’s the logical, thinking, verbal, cognitive part of our mind. But, alas, our conscious mind can only process between five & nine chunks of information at any one time, so there’s definitely no available space for those stories there. Whereas, the subconscious can process millions of pieces of data at once & has limitless space.

So, those stories just keep building up in our subconscious mind. And they keep gaining momentum & traction. And they keep gaining emotional force. And they keep becoming more & more deeply embedded within our subconscious minds. And they keep guiding & controlling our actions, behaviours, habits & opinions.

And you may wonder where these stories originate from? And how the seed for the story gets implanted within your subconscious mind & then continues to grow so pervasively? And how do we not realise this is happening?

Well, it can be as simple as someone saying something like, “You really aren’t very good at public speaking are you.” And, voila, there’s your story! Your subconscious mind doesn’t question whether the person making this statement is a reliable or trustworthy source, whether their opinion is biased or not, or whether there’s even any truth to their statement. Instead, your subconscious mind swiftly moves into protection mode & creates the story that you really aren’t very good at public speaking. 

By creating this story your subconscious is trying to protect you from any potential embarrassment, ridicule or criticism in the future. And it does this by instantaneously, without you even consciously realising it, stopping you from doing anything that may involve speaking in front of people. Protecting you is an underlying intention of your subconscious mind when it creates your stories, habits & behaviours.

Or when you were a child you may have heard your parent say to a friend “It’s just so hard, I sometimes wish I hadn’t had children.” And, voila, there’s your story! I’m worthless, unloved, unloveable, unwanted. And your subconscious doesn’t question this statement, it doesn’t consider it from different objective perspectives, it doesn’t contemplate everything else overwhelming your parent at that stage of their life or how much that may have been impacting what they said. 

No, instead, it just creates the story that your parent doesn’t really love you, so who else possibly could? And, as a protective mechanism, it makes you aloof, or it makes you overeat, perhaps it makes you disregard your appearance & physical health or be negative & angry when dealing with people. Because with all of these traits & behaviours, nobody could possibly even want to try to love you, could they? Well, that’s what your subconscious believes! So it has achieved its intention of protecting you from future emotional pain by making it extremely difficult for anybody to get close to you.

So, how do these stories continue to develop & grow? Well, we tend to suffer from confirmation bias & this means that our mind favours information that supports our existing beliefs or stories. Anything that could potentially disrupt or dislodge our story is ignored or explained away & everything that supports our story, no matter how tenuously, is magnified.

If you don’t believe you’re worthy of being loved, when someone does try to get close to you & form a relationship, you will subconsciously do everything possible to push them away. You may behave erratically, be unkind or even cruel in the way you speak to & treat them, or just generally be dismissive of them & their feelings. Because they couldn’t possibly genuinely love you & there must be an ulterior motive. Right? They must want something from you or to embarrass or hurt you. Right? So, let’s prevent any possibility of that happening by doing everything possible to repel them.

Is this behaviour logical? No. Is this behaviour sensible? No. Is this behaviour beneficial for us or those around us? No. Is this behaviour emotionally driven? Yes. And that is what’s behind all of our subconscious behaviours … emotion! Not logic, not sense … just pure emotion.

And it’s only when something more emotively powerful than our story comes along that we may even notice what belief base we have been operating from, what story or stories have been steering our behaviours & decisions. 

It’s only when something significant happens that forces us to look at ourselves, & our situation, from a different perspective that the full potent power of our stories is revealed. And this could be something like an emotional breakdown, the death of a loved one, witnessing a traumatic event or even a serious illness. 

Because, unfortunately, unless something with more emotive power than our story comes along to slap us in the face & disrupt us, we will just continue to be controlled by that old story.

But what if you can allow yourself, even for a moment, to become an observer of yourself & your life. What if you can just allow yourself to float up & out of you, & out of the role of participant & into the role of observer? 

And as you do this, as you become the observer, you realise that you can see so much more. As you become the observer, you can see things as they fit within a bigger picture of your life that involves more than just you & your emotions. As the observer you can see everything from a different perspective, a broader perspective, a new perspective. Instead of that old myopic, limiting, tunnel-vision view that you used to have. 

As the observer now, there is no emotional attachment to what you are seeing & you can just notice, ponder & contemplate different perspectives. You can just see different points of view & alternative reasons for why people may have said things they said, or why they may have acted in ways they did, you may even see what stories they were telling themselves at the time. Or, as the observer, you may see unexpected reasons for why certain events occurred around you & to you.

And these different perspectives, possibilities & reasons may just impact your old story, they may just wobble your old story. They may just dislodge your old story & allow a new story to begin to form & develop. A new story that is more resourceful, more beneficial & more rewarding for you & your life. A new story that allows you to experience your life instead of endure it?

What if? What if this is possible? What if you can become the observer? What if you can just see what you see, hear what you hear, feel what you feel & experience what you experience, as the observer? What if?

And most people don’t enjoy the experience of watching movies or reading books that have stories that make them feel sad, fearful, depressed, worthless, angry or frustrated. 

And most people don’t enjoy the experience of watching movies or reading books that have stories that have a negative outcome. 

So, why choose to endure a story like that for yourself? When you can choose to just ask “What if I become the observer?” What if? And just see how your story wobbles, changes & evolves. What if?

Kim Harrison

mindmakeover.com.au/