The Stories We Tell Ourselves

We tell ourselves stories everyday, starting with what comes to mind when we wake (Morning, already?!) to what we eat (Is this good for me? Do I care?) to what we wear (I’m tired— sweats it is. I’m feeling good— cute outfit it is!) to how we move through our day (Purposeful, fluid. Or I just need that cup of coffee).

We tell ourselves stories about who we are and how we fit into the world. What we want to ‘do’ when we grow up, who we want to be.

We can become the story we tell ourselves— and most often this involved identifying with the degree or job that we have.

But what happens when fault lines appear in this story?

Perhaps you got your dream job only to lose it six months later.

The industry you’re in changed, and you no longer have a place.

A major life event occurs (birth, death, marriage, divorce)— and suddenly you’re faced with reconciling what you once knew with who you are now.

You wake up one day and realize you’ve been living someone else’s dream— and you need to get your own.

How do you patch the cracks in the story, how do you create a new story when the old one was so thoroughly dispatched, it’s unrecognizable?

In times of upheaval, religion has been a source of solace. The stories offered within religion have given framework to civilization for millennia. There is great comfort in the knowledge of a higher power, that you’re not in it alone, and that other forces are at play.

In our current society, the current religion is science, upheld by logic and reasoning. Science cut through the religious dogma, revealing at its very core the perfect truth: measurable and repeatable.

Except when things can’t be measured.

Or repeated.

Except when things have no explanation other than that it’s unexplainable.

Spontaneous healing.

Terminal illness in remission.

Massive personal transformation.

Logic and reasoning may play a part here, but what underlies the biggest achievements, the biggest breakthroughs, and the most powerful forces in this world are stories.

The fun— and scary— part is that we get to choose or stories.

We can try to see what fits on right, what needs to be refined, what feels like a remembering, a homecoming to who we really are. This is where logic and reasoning fall apart. Logic and reasoning, science as a whole, takes up residency in the head. In eastern traditions, the head is thought to be fickle, too easily won over.

The heart, however, the heart cannot be so easily swayed, and it is from this “heart-brain” that much wisdom can be learned from. It’s our hearts that will lead us to our own life of greatness, if we’ll let it. 

We can choose to believe, to have faith in ourselves and a higher power (whatever that may look like for you).

We can choose to believe that everything is connected, and that life is full of lessons, the most vital of which is this:

There are no failures. The only failure can come is if you give up. The ups and downs, twists and turns are simply part of life. 

In his book, Victor Frankl says the number one thing that determined whether or not someone survived in the concentration camps was not how big they were, nor how old. It was their attitude that kept them alive.

So, here’s a story for you:

You were put on this planet, at this time, with your own unique set of dreams and gifts for a reason.

Now what stories will you tell along the way?