Stories We Create

As children we love to have stories told to us. They allow us to dream and use our imagination. I encourage kids to use their imagination and these fairytales take them to far away places.

But somewhere along the way, the lines get blurred between fairytales and what people start telling us about ourselves.

We start to believe things and even make up things in our heads based on what we think is fact. Tony Robbins says “We are defined by the stories we tell ourselves.” I say that we are, but we don’t have to be!!

Let’s talk about our past. The past is a part of our story, but it isn’t the whole story. The past shapes us into who we are in the present but doesn’t have to define who become in the future. I strongly believe that we need to know where we come from to get to where we want, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to let it define it!

I have been delving into a lot of my personal thoughts lately and how they have been affecting me and where they actually came from. As I started digging into things that were said to me as I grew up (from friends, family, and even acquaintances) and the context that was meant, I realized that my perception had changed that story for myself and that’s what I carried with me. It shaped my beliefs in myself and changed my mindset every step of the way.

These stories that I created from my own perception and mind started to stump the growth I was desiring and gave me the excuses I needed to continuously halt in the middle of my stride.

The key here is to stop and look at how you define certain aspects of your life: What does success look like and mean to you?  What are the roles you want to play? What type of person do you want to be? Once you answer these questions, then dig to find out where those ideas came from. Were they from you or something that someone taught you along the way that you adopted as your own story? If they were adopted as a story you started telling yourself, start from scratch and figure out your own answers to those questions.

This is where I started and one thing I realized is that almost all my fears came from these stories. Now anytime a negative story comes into my head, I stop. I do this exercise and then figure out how I am going to think about it moving forward.

Let’s move FORWARD.

asha

Our Story with Fear

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.”

- Cheryl Strayed