The Stories We Tell Ourselves
We are not the physical pains of our body or the judgements we make towards self or others. I am not, at my core, the writing that even sprawls onto these pages. This is simply a current expression of who I choose to show up as today. I could just as easily show up tomorrow as someone very different given the right circumstances. Who I “am” will continue to evolve and change form over the years. At the end of the day, this being in whom I play in this lifetime… she exists in this moment as a vehicle for something greater to express itself, to experience itself, to know itself.
The moment we begin to have awareness around why we tell a story is a very huge moment. This is where who we think we are, “self,” can begin to be observed from an outsider’s perspective (still self, but detached). With practice, the first person narrative is able to be seen through the third person, unattached and unbiased, and most importantly with the use of a deep love and curiosity. We can learn to hold space for ourselves as, like a friend helping a friend, we gently remove the story from the tight grip of “self” and begin to tenderly unravel it. As we release the grasp on these stories, we learn how the narratives serve to hold together either a holistic or limited understanding of reality. Through conscious awareness we can rewrite the script to include more insight, compassion and honesty, and to increase our effectiveness as transformational human beings.
With this, I hope to make clear, there is a time and a place for our stories. We must be aware of why the story is being told, our intention, and the need of who we are speaking it to. Too often, when wanting to help people work through issues, we are quick to jump to “this one time I went through something similar…” where we then embark on a story that takes us away from the individual in front of us. Our role as friends, family members and counselors is to help people to tap into their own wisdom, intuition and guidance, to dismantle the belief systems we have collectively inherited, and to discover new, more creative and loving ways of living together in this world.
How do your personal narratives work in your life? Do you find yourself repeating the same stories over and over again to make meaning and build importance out of your life? Have you discovered how to take a step back and disassociate with your thoughts to see them more clearly? In what ways can you improve on how you tell yourself and others your stories, to be more present and aware of why the story is being told in the first place?