What is your story? Depression? Joy? Disease? Health? Fear? Love?
Every day stories make up our lives, and they change by the minute, by the day. If our minds and ideas help shape the reality we live in, what happens when we believe so deeply in a story that we tell ourselves?
Recently, at work I found myself stressed out of my mind. Story. I told myself that I was handling 3 different jobs (IT, Trainer, Subject Matter Expert). Story. Because of this, there was just no time to get everything done. Story. I knew that I was going to have a bad day from how my morning went. Story. Maybe it was because I didn’t get enough sleep. Story. Or maybe, it’s because I have been stuck in my house for awhile and the lack of normalcy caused me to be off my game. Story.
I found myself spouting story after story to tell myself why I was in this situation, to validate to myself why I was there. By creating these stories, I subconsciously convinced myself that I had no control in this situation. I was then doomed do play out the story exactly as I said it.
The good thing, is it’s never too late to turn a story around. I knew that I ultimately did have control, and after I surrendered my stories and just let everything be, everything flowed smoothly. To describe in a tangible way, my mind stopped trying to think of the ‘why’ and it began using that free space to just tackle the issues at hand.
Stories are very difficult habits to break. Even after getting through all of that, every day doing this grind has led to me feeling exhausted. Every day I wake up feeling the same as yesterday, and if I expect it. It will continue. I am exhausted and I am feeling burnt out. Even when I am not actively thinking it, all of these stories are playing out.
I think an interesting exercise is to consider what you’d respond if someone asks you ‘what is the matter?’ Whatever you’d respond would be the story you are currently living in. Is that the story you want? We have the power to change it if we choose because we have the ability to tell a new story at any time.
Personally, I think the hardest part for me, is that often I think that to solve a problem, you must first know what the question is. However, this requirement I tell myself to solve problems in itself is also a story. If I tell the story that anything is possible, suddenly I make it so.
We are powerful beings that can create the dungeons we struggle in or the palaces we succeed in.
