Often I come across friends\’ and coaching clients\’ personal stories and statements that repeat in their minds and mouths — creating a restrictive personality construct that traps them in a cycle of recreating the very thing they want to escape.
I do it too. It\’s pretty typical human behaviour really.
Here are some of my old stories that you might relate to in some way…
“I grew up in a poor family and I never learned how to manage money, so now I\’m bloody lousy at it and never seem to have enough.”
“My dad never expressed a lot of physical or verbal love towards me and my mum was so lost in depression at times that she didn\’t either, so now I have this endless, desperate void I just can\’t ever seem to fill.”
“My first love cheated on me, so now I am scared to commit and I leave relationships before they can leave me — often within days — or I actually choose relationships that can\’t possibly last, as a control mechanism.”
If I keep letting these stories play out in my mind and life, well, it\’s pretty obvious where that will lead me — nowhere good.
There\’s no room there for positive change or the spontaneous, mysterious, blossoming of something new that life so wants to give us.
It\’s hopeless.
But we can turn it around.
“In essence,
> what you think
> determines how you feel
> which affects what you do.”
—Christine Wilding
So, with this extremely simple framework in mind, we can choose to tell a different story — or, my favourite, no story at all (just taking life as it comes, moment-by-moment) — and, in the process, allow positive growth and change to occur organically from the mind outward… thus, eventually changing how we behave responsively and indeed our whole experience.
It becomes a positive loop rather than a destructive one.
Even just imagining who we could be without those stories actually aligns us with a new vibration and a new possibility. And whilst I\’m all for inner child work, regular meditation, various forms of energy healing and, in fact, every other natural/holistic wellbeing practice, it doesn\’t need to be any more complicated than that — just be the change you wish to see by genuinely asking “who could I be without that story/thought/expectation/belief?”.
“Everything is energy and that\’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way.”
—Albert Einstein
“But…”
At this point, many people (including myself) are prone to react with “but I can\’t just forget all that and move on — it\’s who I am and those painful memories don\’t just go away” … and to that I offer again: “so who could you be without THAT story?”.
Granted, at first it seems somewhat heartless, and indeed those memories don\’t just disappear… But I learned a while back that I had a choice: I can hang on to these stories or I can let them go and be free of their influence (over time).
Things don\’t always shift immediately or quickly, so the best thing we can do is just keep doing The Work (click to download an instruction sheet or see thework.com if you\’re not familiar with Byron Katie\’s process) and enquiring into the validity of each restrictive thought and story…. Eventually we see that our feet are tied with many lies, and we can walk free by loosening the ropes with the gradual allowance of truth into our minds and hearts.
The truth is…
…all truth is relative. We\’re not any of those stories — not even the good ones — and we\’re not bound by any of it. Underneath all this fascinating drama unfolding before us is a sea of blissful peace and love (the very thing we long to be and feel)… And by this simple act of openness and curiosity (“who/what could I be with that story?”) we can start to experience this incredible liberation and bliss that is inherently ours.
“When I let go of what I am,
I become what I might be.”
—Lao Tzu
See also: Emotional Self Care Through Spiritual Awakening Experiences