What are the stories you tell yourself?

I want to talk to you about personal stories and how they keep you stuck. Even the “good” stories can keep you limited.

Human brains are wired to remember stores. We often create rhymes to help us remember things because it is easier when it’s in song form. These silly little songs can stay with us for years, even when we stop needing them. If you ever took Biology you might remember ‘Keep Peeling Onions For Grandma’s Soup’. This was taught to every kid in my school so they would remember what order the Linnaean Taxonomy naming system went; Kingdom, Phylum, Order, Family, Genus, Species. I have not needed to recite this in years but I know it, better than some things I really wish I could remember.   

Why is this important? Once we memorize a story it can stick with us for life. We all have stories, some are positive and some are negative. Some of our stories guide us through life and keep pushing us forward, while others cripple us and prevent us from stepping into our full potential. Some stories are helpful in one situation and harmful in another.

Your stories are linked to your patterns, and your patterns are the how you think you need to react in the world in order to survive. Knowing your stories will allow you to question them with curiosity and love and choose a new way of reacting and interacting with the world.

Think of some of the stories you tell yourself. If you adopt stories about being bad, stupid, lazy, or unlucky you may never acknowledge all of the good things in your life. You won’t be able to see how you do know a lot of about some things. Conversely if you adopt stories that you are a good person, everyone likes you and you are smarter than other people. It can be really shocking when bad things happen to you or other people know more then you.

 It can be really hard to get out of a rut when you want to change because the story remains. Ruts can be comfortable; they are well worn paths that we know, but they can also prevent us from choosing anything else. So if you want to get out of your rut you will have to confront your story, your personal dragon.

In most fairy tales a direct fight with the dragon is never successful. The hero needs a magic weapon or secret knowledge to defeat it. You too will need secret knowledge about yourself and a whole lot of courage to confront your stories.

To be successful you will first need to separate all of your stories so you are only fighting one dragon at a time. Then, you will need to figure out what the dragon represents or what it is defending. If you can sit with the awareness mind and watch the dragon you will be able to learn more about it and see where it shows up in your life. Often when you quiet the mind you can start to see patterns in your life, where the same story keeps popping up and directing your actions. You might also see where the story is distracting you from a deeper truth, protecting your conscious mind from something hidden deep in your unconscious mind.

When you are watching your stories, and not judging, you may begin to question if the dragon is even a threat. Maybe you perceive it as a threat, because yes it is scary and could hurt you, but maybe it is protecting something else. In fairy tales the dragon has a princess or treasure the hero is sent to retrieve. Killing the dragon is not necessarily the goal; you need to get through the dragon to get to your inner treasure.  

Your dragons will often showing up to teach you a lesson and you just need to learn to speak dragon in order to be able to understand it? Your dragon will continue to talk louder and slower to you until you figure out how to speak dragon. In the same way, your stories will not change unless you learn to communicate with your unconscious mind.

Bring forth what is in you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is in you will destroy you.

– Gospel of Thomas

How to learn to speak dragon?

As I mentioned you need to bring awareness to your stories and patterns so you know what you are dealing with. Look for a common thread to all of these stories. What is the underline belief? How do your patterns relate to this story? If you boil them down two one or two phrases, what is there? Reflect on this with a curious and open mind, and try not to judge the thoughts that come up. Also notice the feeling in the body that come up while you are doing this self reflection and listen to that discomfort not just your thoughts.

For example - If you find yourself always doing things for other people, you might discover you do this because you want them to like you. You might have a story about only being worthy if you are constantly helping others and giving them love, cookies, gifts, the fear of not being liked is driving you to over give and may be causing you to become resentful or burnout.

Look for the patterns and try to remember when they first arrived. Many of these deep rooted stories were adopted when you were very young so you may not remember an event, you might just have a feeling of “I have always been like this”. You might remember a parent, caregiver, or teaching saying something to you that crushed you, or lifted you up. It is important not to dwell on what was done or said to you, but to tap into the emotion that set the story in place.

Tapping into your emotions are essential when examining your stories because they act like a key locking patterns into your conscious mind. Logically you can think about how you react to the world, but you need to tap into the emotions to be able to unlock that pattern so you can choose to react differently. We are often taught to push away emotions because they are not logical. Which is true, but it does not mean that they don’t have wisdom.

Summery  

1.       Become aware of your stories

2.       Look for pattern of how the stories show up in your life

3.       Sit with them and the discomfort they bring

4.       Lean into the emotions without getting lost in them

5.       Release and rewrite you stories to tell a more complete picture of who you are becoming

For example instead of saying “I am a screw up” when you mess something up, you can say “I am human”. Knowing that we all mess up and this moment is not a reflection of your True Self  

Good luck on your journey