Stories have been the fabric of our society, from Indian Mythology to the moral stories of Panchatantra to the plays by Rabindranath Tagore. Stories have been there to guide and instruct us, on every facet of our lives. When we interact with family and friends, it’s about stories we and they tell each other about our lives of work, past etc. Some are positive and some are negative stories. Some lift us up and some bring us down.
But the most important story of all is the one that we tell ourselves, “The Me Story”. Everyone is telling themselves a story, all day long about what life and their life in particular is all about. These stories have been shaped by our upbringing and the stories we witnessed when we were growing up, especially in our early childhood years.
If while growing up, we were repeatedly told that life is a struggle, chances are that we look at life keeping that story in mind and that would influence what we experience. If we were taught that life is an interesting game, that is how we will probably play it. The point that I am trying to make is, “We look at the world through the filter of our stories.” Consequently, that is all we see around us.
So, if you wonder, “Why things like this always happen to ‘me’,” one of the best places to look is, how whatever is happening, fits into the story of your life, which you keep telling yourself.
When bad things happen, we don’t have to make them worse, by adding a bleak and tragic story. Yet many people have been telling themselves their own worry story so compellingly, that they are literally hypnotized by it. It then becomes so real to them that they can’t see it, even as a story anymore.
Let us take a moment and recollect what are the worry stories that we have been telling ourselves. These are some of those I have told myself repeatedly,
“I don’t have enough time”,
“I can’t cope”,
“The world will stop if I had a day off”,
“I have to struggle hard for success” etc.
While there may be some truth in these stories, the more we tell them to ourselves and others, the more we believe them, and the more real they begin to seem. But they are still just stories.
The most wonderful thing about a story is that it can be changed often more easily than we think.
The only thing we need to do, to change the story is to recognize it is a story. Once we know that our worry story (no matter how compelling it may seem) is just the sum total of what we have been telling ourselves, we open up to the possibility of making leaps of changes.
The point is this,
What we thought of as our limitations, are just stories that we have been telling ourselves. Let us drop our worry stories one after another. As we have got all the power to frame a strong and empowering story exactly opposite to the old one. Let that become the story of our life.
“When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen.”
-Rebel Thriver