What’s your story?
Think about it for a minute…. what is the story (or stories) that you live by? In what form do you present yourself to the world? What are the conversations you internally have with yourself? Most often, wether consciously or through our subconscious mind, it’s the story we tell ourselves every day. Its the self talk that we have with ourselves that either leaves us in a place of receiving, or blocking what we really want and deserve.
At one time or another, we have all had someone cross our path who seems like they ‘have it all together’. They are forward focused, grounded in themselves, and things effortlessly fall into place within their lives. It is someone such as this, that chooses to create and live by their own story. They do not dwell in the events that make up their past, or labels that others have put on them. For those however, who do not find themselves in line with this path of life, it is usually when we are not aligned with an aspect surrounding our life, and thus we are often choosing to live from our past. When a life event is profound enough, we can easily allow that story to become who we are. We get ‘stuck’ in the story and we can’t move through it…. So instead, we live by it. This is ok when we are experiencing something positive for ourselves. However when the story creates more of a negative impact, over time we begin creating negative self talk, and limitations for which we live by. ‘I’m not deserving of it.” ‘It would never happen.” “ It doesn’t fit my current life” These are the stories we begin telling ourselves every day. They hold us back, they box us in, and mostly, they keep us from receiving what we are truly capable of having.
How Our Stories Get Created
Experiencing A Traumatic Physical or Emotional Event
When our story is created from an event as such, it is often that the situation is too traumatic for us to emotionally process. As a result one of two things occurs; The situation can often very vividly stand out in our mind and will replay over and over in our daily thoughts. Or, we are so emotionally overstimulated by what happened, that we start to disassociate from ourselves and the situation to the point that we barely remember the slightest detail of the trauma. In either case however, the message or the story resinates with us to the point where it creates a permanent imprint. These types of traumas vary from person to person. It could be anything from being abused as a child, going through a rough divorce, growing up with an alcoholic father or pulling through a major health issue. Whatever that situation may be, when we get stuck in the story, we start to see ourselves as a ‘victim of ____” and live according to the ‘rules’ of being that victim. It is not just something we experienced, but instead we begin to view the story as who we now are.
When Someone Gives Us A Label
Children are so easily influenced and often take what they hear with literal value. Often times parents, grandparents, teachers or other authority figures will speak without understanding how the language can and will be interpreted at such a young age. Children often get labels such as ‘he’s not the athletic type’, ‘she can be a bit over sensitive’ “she’s not so musically inclined”, “you’re just big-boned” or ‘he’s just not a good test taker”. These are all labels that only need to be said once, and they create deep imprints as children that often stay with the person into developmental years. When they are said in the context of the label being something problematic, then we don’t have the chance to take it in as our gift. Instead, we take that label in as who we are in the world around us, with the negative connotation that it has been used in. These labels are often the wording we replay over and over to ourselves (whether we know it or not) and that hinder us from experiencing other areas in our developmental life.
Imprinted labels however don’t always occur for us as children. As adults we can receive the same type of wording from spouses, co-workers, parents and even close friends at times. Hearing these labels in our adulthood can sometimes hit deeper for us. But unlike children who take things at literal value, we are able to acknowledge when it occurs so we don’t take it on.
For myself, I was always told I was a sensitive child. As this was very true, growing up I was never supported in the ways that I was sensitive. It wasn’t until I reached early adulthood that I realized my sensitivities were actually a gift and have helped me in treating and healing others. I spent years trying live from of a place of blocking my sensitivities and now, the more I learn about how they serve me in my life, the more aligned I am within myself.
The Situation Has Occurred More Than Once
Think about it this way… when someone compliments you on more than one occasion, you start to feel good about yourself. The more compliments you receive, the more you start to feel in alignment with what that person or people are saying to you. Just as such, the more times a situation occurs that may not be quite as positive, the more we start to believe it, live it, and take it on as our own. A situation such as this can be something as simple as continuously not being promoted for a position at work, in which we start to speak to ourselves as not being worthy or good enough in our career. Another example of this might be one who has been searching for love and their soulmate. Despite how many times, they felt they may have found the right person for them, it just didn’t work out. The more this occurs, the more likely one can start to believe that they will never find love and more so, that they are not worthy of love.
Processing vs Pushing Forward
There is an important aspect here that I need to be clear on. There is no doubt that life will present us with challenging situations at times. And when this happens, it is extremely important we give ourselves the time, energy and love to process whatever we are going through. There is no time limit to this as long as we are processing and moving forward. It is when we try to push forward without processing it, that we have a harder time seeing through to the other side. The side where we can look back at the situation as something that shaped us, that we learned from and that pushed us to grow into who we now are (vs our past events being WHO we are…feel the difference?). When we look back at a situation and have a hard time speaking of it or it evokes a heavy emotional response, then we likely have not yet fully processed it. This is important to understand because it can be hard to move forward and pull away from living in the stories of your past if you have not yet taken the time to process them.
How To Change Your Story
Knowing the story you live by is important. And understanding how you might be stuck in the stories of your the past, is even more important. When we live according to negative belief patterns, we create limitations to what we can receive, to what we think we can have and to what we deserve. Think of it as this… when we live by the stories of our past or the labels that have been given to us, we put a circular fence up around us. The more we choose to live by our story, the thicker and thicker this fence gets. All that we live by and all that we attract needs to fit in the realm and rules within this fence. If we dream bigger (but continue to believe in our story), it never even has the chance of reaching us because it doesn’t fit in the world we’ve created of who we believe we are. To change the story you live by, it is important to become conscious to how and why you live in the story you do by breaking it down. Below is an exercise to help you increase your awareness and move forward to creating your own personal story.
First take a moment to examine all the essential areas of your life; health, relationships, career, personal enjoyment, love, finances, spiritual practice, family. Where do you feel stuck? Where is the place that you long for more, yet you seem to stay in the same space month after month, year after year?
Write it down! For instance, if you feel stuck with being unable to get ahead in your finances write out: where you currently are with your income/finances, where you want to be with your finances, and what you feel is holding you back from getting there. When answering this last part, take some time to think of how you view yourself receiving what it is you want. Do you not believe you are worthy of it? Would it make other people in your life upset if you grew financially? Other questions to consider when dealing with other areas of your life might be…. What stops you from creating your dreams? Do you feel unworthy or guilty? Does it feel as though you might not fit in with the people around you anymore? Whatever it may be for you, writing it out will help you to process, acknowledge and move forward.
Then take some time to think about where these thought patterns might come from for you? Does it stem from a label you have been given and believe about yourself? Are you still in conflict with a situation you never fully processed? Is there someone that made you believe you weren’t worthy of your desires? Understanding the story, label or situation where your thought patterns come from will open the doors for you to understand and acknowledge the influence it has in your life. Once you are aware to this, you now have the ability and the power to change your thoughts and create your own personal story going forward. Blessings 💕