Stories

Are powerful. Not the fun party kind. The narratives we recite to ourselves and build up about our lives and the people in them. They. Are. Everywhere. It’s very sneaky, what they do. I’m really only noticing my stories for the first time. Just like a lot of things we carry with us for a long time, it becomes automatic. It takes effort to perceive what we’re telling ourselves.

So, for myself I need to define what I mean by a story. Each one is a lens through which we view our memories, our actions, and our thoughts and what those things mean. What do our actions say about our character? What do our memories say about who we are?

I don’t know about you, but I have a story for just about everything. When I feel depressed my stories are of how much I’ve failed in life and that that’s all I can expect from myself. When I’m “lazy” my story is that being productive is an exception and not the rule. I have tons of negative ones, these are just the first 2 that came to mind. So I’ve been living with these in some shape or another for at least a decade. It can start in so many ways. A thought or someone else’s words can just stick in you, and then you take it to heart and make it “true”. I say true in quotes because that’s what our stories are for us. Functionally, they tell us what our reality is. It is so important to me that I know what they are so I can challenge and change them to benefit me.

Most of my life I was saying all sorts of nasty things about myself and the more I said it, the more I believed it. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy and it kept me from seeing the good parts of me and the good parts of life. I’m still very much in the beginning of uncovering them and trying to change them. But having awareness of even some of my narratives is really impactful for me. It’s no longer an uncontested “truth” that is on repeat in my mind about whatever’s going on. I can see it for what it is and because of that, it loses some of its power. If I don’t sound like a broken record yet, that is so helpful to continuing my good habits. I’m learning to anticipate and prevent the negativity my mind is so used to producing. I’m working on replacing the bad with good. Repainting my past, present, and future, one day at a time.