The story of you — is it helping or hurting?
You are your own master storyteller.
You are your own audience.
Your story is about you.
Here’s the kicker: The story you’re telling is lifting you up or dragging you down. As long as you keep telling it, you can expect more of the same, for better or for worse.
I’m not talking about stories in the traditional sense — the kind you tell in break rooms and around campfires. I’m referring to the endless loop of a story that goes through your mind whenever you think about who you are, how you are, and why you are.
John’s story starts with the time he quit his high-school track team halfway into the season. Then it moves on to college, where he dropped out early. Then he tosses in those other times since when he called it quits — from an early job, a relationship, and so on.
The theme of John’s story is obvious: I’m a quitter. By telling the story over and over, it snowballs in John’s mind, until he convinces himself that he can’t finish anything. Over time, he starts avoiding new challenges. His rationale: Why take on new things when I’ll just quit?
That’s how self-perception becomes reality.
The good news is that we can edit our stories. We can send ourselves an endless loop of self-talk that accentuates the positive, makes us more productive, and moves us in better directions. It’s not easy, but it can be done.
The first step is to become more aware of the story we’re telling ourselves — to hear it clearly, to decipher the overall theme, and to determine whether it’s helping our hurting.
If it’s helping, then keep talking. But if the story is holding you down, your next step is to install your own equivalent of an early-warning system. Whenever your mind starts replaying the same old story line, hear it like nails on a chalkboard. Stop yourself. Then reframe your story.
By “reframe,” I’m not encouraging you to twist the truth into fiction. But I am urging you to see your past in a better light, and to revise your story accordingly.
Perhaps John quit the track team because he had to get a job and help support his family. Maybe he dropped out of college early because a different opportunity came his way earlier than he would’ve liked. Maybe he walked from that early job and relationship for good reasons — come to think of it, walking away required more initiative than just sticking around and enduring a dysfunctional situation.
A new theme emerges for John’s story: When it comes to taking on new challenges, I have the strength to make tough decisions. The more he tells this story, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You’re not John, of course. You have your own story. Chances are you’ll be telling it to yourself several times before the day is over.
Should you stick with it? Is it a story worth living for the next year or five years or forever?
Or is it time to grab a figurative pencil and start editing?
Being still in the process of climbing back up out of a very dark place, driven there by far too much negative self-talk, this article struck such a strong chord with me!
The story you tell yourself has so much power over the way you interact and feel about the world; something that amazes me now on the “other side”.
This is definitely a story I shall keep pinned to my wall – thank you!
As always, fabulous!
Here are some stories my clients and I have let run us: ” Once I had [this great thing/position, etc.], and now because I lost it, I’m doomed to ______.”
“No matter how well I do the job, someone else will reap the rewards.”
“If I’m my true self at work, it will cost me ____.”
The list could go on and on and on.
I love stories that affirm hope, resilience and reality. My favorite: “I approach challenges with wonder and gusto. When I fall, I just pull myself back up, see what I can learn, and keep going. And I’m never afraid to take someone’s hand.”
Thanks again for continuing to fulfill your mission! Pat Sullivan, co-founder, Spirit and Work Resource Center
As a writer (fiction, nonfiction, technical and copy) I find myself telling stories everyday. Some are true, some, not so much. This entry made me sit back and think about my personal story. What was I telling myself and the world? How could I change that story to help me move in the direction I want to go? I’m going to ponder this for the next few days. Don’t be surprised if you get an email from me about connecting on this topic for a project together. This is eye-opening.
Bravo Tom! Once again you’ve so beautifully articulated how we support – or sabotage – ourselves with how we think and how we communicate with ourselves.
When I turned 56 I had a huge “AHA” moment. My maternal grandmother, who I adored as a child, died at the age of 56. As I thought about it, I realized that as I lived my life moving forward I could be living “bonus” years – that maybe these years moving forward could and should be very different from the years previous and it all started with the story I told myself about them.
As I thought about it more I decided that I was about to go into “Act 3″ of my life and began to think about the story as I wanted it to unfold.
And unfolding it is – in ways that I never thought it would at first – and now it feels like such a blessed adventure.
There’s more to my story of course and each and every day I am crafting the next chapter.
The “early warning system” you talk about is pretty firmly in place (sometimes it needs a new battery) and I can usually catch that self defeating language (after all, I am a Happiness Coach) before it can take me down the old road.
I love rewriting my story – why just yesterday I did take a (real) pencil and sat down with my journal to discover even more adventures I’d like to have before the bonus years run out. I am enjoying the process of discovering who I might become.
Keep up the good work!
JoAnna