What's Your Story?

“The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” ~Abraham Maslow~

As long as we are alive, there is always a story attached to our name.  Better said, we are always attaching ourselves to a narrative that attempts to describe who we are in the world. The story I am talking about is not referring to where we were born, who our parents are and what school we attended. 

I am alluding to something deeper than that. It is the story of our life, seen through the lens of our experiences that shaped us into who we are. It is the story of who we believe we are at the core of our being. As Abraham Maslow said, the story of “us” is mostly selling ourselves short and allowing to be placed on the “discounted shelf” too many times in our lifetime. I believe it is time we find our worth and place ourselves in our rightful place, as children of the creation empowered to design our own path and fulfill our deepest desires. It is time to re-write our life story from a place of peace of mind, self-love and serenity, grounded in the conviction that we are here to fulfill our purpose and contribute to the well-being of the whole with our God given gifts. 

Re-writing our life story forces us to evaluate concepts and ideas that somehow have to fit into the metaphorical language we are using in reference to others, the world and ourselves. From a sociological perspective, no human lives in a vacuum. Therefore, who we become in adulthood is primarily the result of how we mirror the events we encountered, our level of susceptibility to rules and norms, the way our parents allowed the process of individuation to take place and our unique ability to have a deeper awareness about ourselves in relations to the world. 

To be objective about who we are in a pluralistic subjective world raises some difficulties at times. The hardship is the result of the fact that in order to create a story about ourselves, there was already a skeleton, a structure that we intuitively followed when we have decided if we are good, successful, generous, happy, loveable, worthy, confident, valued, etc. The structure already prescribed how the world moves, what is acceptable or not, and what are the norms specific to the time and place we live in.  

Sadly, in our formative years, we quickly learned to compare and contrast ourselves with others, therefore establishing early on how our future will be. That is until the moment we wake up from the hypnotic state and claim the reality of our existence from under the pile called “life.” The moment of awakening is marked by the process of inquiry into the truth of the stories we believe about ourselves.

Attaching ourselves to a story is like a knife with two blades. Depending on the story, it could keep us trapped or could be the ticket to creating the life we want by being the person we want to be in the world. We all have a past!  We all created our present based on the ability we have to see the past from a perspective that creates freedom from it. In my own experience, I had to reframe my abusive childhood in such a way that when talking about certain events, there was no more pain, suffering or anger with my parents or others that caused me pain.

What is the story in your life that you need to reframe in such a way that you are neutral when you tell others about what happened to you? Do you need to reframe abuse, just like me, inability to do well in school, rape, a lost job, broken relationships, illness, death or a lost loves? What story keeps you trapped in the past and holds you back from living in the present or preparing you for the future?

In her book, "Loving What It," Byron Katie teaches us about four questions that can change our lives. This process of personal inquiry is meant to challenge old ways of looking at the world as well as to question the validity of our core believes about a person or a situation.

The author is telling us to focus on the person or the situation that bothers us and write down all the things we are upset about and how we would want the person or situation to change. For example: I am upset with John because he never listens to me. I want John to give me his full attention and not watch so much television. I refuse to continue living with John and see him destroying his health and future.

The Inquiry:

1. Is it true?

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

4. Who would you be without the thought?

and

Turn it around, and find genuine examples of how the turnaround is true in your life?

Let’s briefly look at the above example. Is it really really true that John never listens to me?  Perhaps this is my own conclusion not based in reality. Can I absolutely know that John doesn’t listen when I talk to him? Maybe he listens and doesn’t respond, perhaps he listens and doesn’t know how to respond. The answer is that I can’t be absolutely sure that John doesn’t listen to me. How do I react when I believe this thought?  I would say that I am angry with John and I am mean to him many times.  Who would I be without the thought that John never listens to me?  I would definitely be a happier person. Now, the key step is to turn around my initial statement. I am upset with myself because I never listen to myself. Another option would be that I am upset with myself that I never listen to John.

Following the example above, we can use the inquiry process with all the other statements we have initially written down and do our archaeological excavation with the purpose of finding out what kind of stories we believe as true about others and ourselves in relations to the world. 

The stories we believe about others are usually a mirror of the disowned parts of ourselves reflected unto others, as in the example above regarding being upset that John does not listen to me, just to realize that I am upset with myself that I never listen to myself. Becoming aware of the truth can help us shift from being the victim into taking responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Following the process of inquiry helps us re-writing the story of our lives and forces us to question the reality we live by. By further understanding that in reality we are concerned with learning how to listen to ourselves, we are able to re-create and re-write a new life story. 

The meaning we give to any given situation has the potential to set us free if we choose to inquire into the nature of our reality. We can stand in our power and take full ownership of all our thoughts, feelings and emotions…for no one has the power to tell us how to feel!