Our Stories: Why We Have Them And Where They Come From

We humans operate from groups of stories we have told ourselves over the years. These stories control us in almost every way because they define how we see the world, and our place in it. Ironically, very few of these stories were actually authored by us. Instead they were unconsciously adopted from stories we were told by our culture, family, friends, etc.

Some of these stories go like this:

Money is the root of all evil
I must sacrifice my own happiness and meaning for others (kids, family, friends, etc)
I need to be realistic
It is arrogant to take a compliment and acknowledge how powerful I am.
50 is old

And so on…….. These stories then go on to rule our lives and define who we are.
The problem is that in a very real sense these stories are like .mp3 recordings in our brain that get automatically bumped into our mental playlist when we encounter circumstances where the story is relevant.

If your story is that you’re fat you will play that script when the cookies get put on the table. If your story is money is lacking you will unconsciously feel it takes an inordinate amount of work to make it. And on it goes.

When it comes to changing areas of your life around health, wealth and relationships it is these stories you must identify and rewrite. Yet how many people are even aware their brains work like this?

Identify your limiting stories, and begin to write alternatives. Unfortunately, because of the way the brain works, you can never, fully, get rid of these old stories. What you are doing when you write new ones, is giving yourself a choice of which story you play. The more you choose the new story the more the old one gets pushed back into your playlist until one day you will realize you have not played that story for years.

If you try every year to change the same things, feel stuck or never make personal progress, rest assured the culprit is your stories and it’s time to rewrite them.