The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can be helpful or harmful.
For example, my life is over. I won’t meet someone and form the family I want. I won’t have a fulfilling career helping others to achieve their dreams. I will die alone.
How do you feel after reading this story? Depressing and limiting! It is a common harmful story many of us have. I have it!
How could we turn this story around to help us? Curiosity and some mental training will help. Associate excruciating pain with this story so your mind will avoid this negative loop. Ask, how is this story absurd? How will this story hurt me, my family and people who love me? How would this story cost my life?
For me, this story is absurd because I don’t know what is going to happen in the future. I am still alive and well. I am sure challenges will come and I will deal with them. It is also possible that good things can happen. Believing in this story will literally kill me and prevent me from taking actions towards my goals and my dream. It will cage me in tunnel vision and miss all the good things that I have in my life and potential opportunities. There are people who I want to help and they are counting on me to show up. It all starts showing up for myself so that I can give them a powerful example. As for dying alone, I can’t control how I will die but my spirit will live on. I want a spirit that’s filled with love, joy, strength and hope, instead of one filled with despair.
Let’s rewrite a helpful story together.
My life is full of limitless possibilities. I show up to support myself and others. I am taking the right steps towards my dream and my goal. I will build a meaningful life filled with love. I will live a full and beautiful life by creating more beauty and meaningful connections in this world!
This is a much more empowering story that propels me to take action. After all, only by taking consistent actions, can I unlock my potential. I remind myself that I am not my story, my thoughts or my emotions. I am so much more. When my brain tells me everything is over, I will call BS. As long as I am alive, there is hope.
What’s your harmful story? How can you turn it around to a helpful version?
Write it out. Read it out loud to yourself. Share it with others. Then take action. Don’t let inertia kill you. Once you take one step forward, take another, do one more, before you know, momentum will take over. Waiting for someone else to take charge of your life will kill you. Take charge of your own life. I am saying this to myself and to who needs to hear it.
Make sure to read your helpful story out loud a couple times a day until it is ingrained in you. I am reading mine out loud now!
