Who Are You?
The stories you tell yourself create your reality. The three types of stories told are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the stories we tell ourselves about others, and the stories we tell others about ourselves. These stories create multiple versions of yourself and your world. Which version is the real YOU? Ask yourself, “Who am I?” What makes up the definition of you? Are you defined by your past and situations that happened long ago or by how you’re living your life right now? Does your definition include your joys, sadness, hopes, desires, and disappointments? All of these things go into defining who you are, your successes and your failures. Who are you? How do you define you?
Stories You Tell Yourself
The most powerful stories you tell are the ones you tell yourself about you. How do you speak to yourself about you? Do you speak to yourself compassionately or do you hear a critical, harsh voice? What qualities do you use to define yourself? Let’s start with how you define yourself physically. Do you see yourself as beautiful, ugly, too tall, too thin, too fat? What are the stories you have about your looks and your body? Do you make up stories about other qualities like your intellect? Are there things you tell yourself you cannot do because you’re not smart enough? Another quality is success. What do you tell yourself around your ability to be successful in life, in a job, in school, in relationships? What other areas of your life are you telling stories? I call them stories because we make them up, like make believe. And like make believe, we can tell a different story, change the ending, add or remove characters. Do your stories need revision?
Relationship Stories
Relationships are an area of life full of stories. Consider any of your current relationships what are you saying to yourself? Do you tell yourself the relationship is good and healthy? What about the relationship with your children? Is the story I don’t know how to create a mutually fulfilling relationship with them? Do you replay to tough stuff and tell yourself this is too hard, it hurts too much, and I don’t want to do this anymore? Whatever the story is, know that it is impacting the relationship.
My Relationship Story
I want to give you an example from my own life of the stories I told myself about relationships. I had a seven-year estrangement with one of my daughters. During those really difficult times of our relationship, I told myself three main stories. Story 1 – There’s too much hurt between us and I just had to accept that we will NEVER have a good relationship. Story 2 – I will NEVER be the mother she wants or needs me to be. Story 3 – I don’t know how to love her in a way she can receive it. So those were the three stories and I bet you can imagine what those stories did to our relationship. I created the stories and then followed up with behaviors consistent with the stories. Since I believed we could never have a good relationship, I could never give her the love that she wanted, that there was way too much hurt between us, I behaved accordingly. Sounds pretty hopeless, which is exactly how I felt.
When My Story Changed
When I started telling myself better stories, our relationship began to improve. However, my story didn’t change until I did my emotional work. Healthy Story 1 – I’m sorry for the pain I caused her. Healthy Story 2 – I accept responsibility for my part in our relationship breakdown. Healthy Story 3 – I want a healthy relationship with my daughter. The first 3 stories I told myself made it almost impossible for us to have a healthy relationship. With the new stories, I made healthier choices. Different choices came with my acceptance of my responsibility in our relationship breakdown than were possible when I felt like there was way too much hurt between us for us ever to have a good relationship. What I realized in behaving differently is I started to give my daughter the space she needed. I learned that the harder I pursued the relationship, the further she pushed me away. When I stopped, it gave me space and time to do my work. Pursuing the relationship kept me from taking responsibility for my part in the breakdown. I had one agenda and that was get her back into my life, but neither one of us were healthy enough at that time to nurture a good relationship. We had to do our own work first. Here’s a quote by Henry Ford that captures the power of story. “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.” And remember…It’s Never Too Late To Heal
