– Patrick Rothfuss, “The Name of the Wind”
Most of us don’t realize how powerful stories are in our lives because we don’t even notice we’re telling ourselves a story. But stories shape everything. For example, the stories we tell ourselves are the reason we feel:
• Resentment toward a loved one or coworker
• Guilty about what we haven’t done
• Overwhelmed by all we need to do
• Anxious about the uncertainty of the world
• Stuck in our old habits
• Avoidant of our difficult tasks
• Bored or lonely Nothing in the basic reality of life makes us feel these things. It’s our stories about our reality that create the feelings. Let’s look at how this works in our lives, and how we can use the power of story to change everything we want to change.
If someone you know says to you, “Would you like some of this salad I’m making?”, what kind of reaction would that provoke in you? It depends on how you view the situation – what your narrative or story of the situation is:
• If you see this as a generous act of kindness, and this person is contributing toward your healthy life, then you might feel grateful.
• If this question is seen as part of a narrative of hundreds of times this person has criticized your weight or criticized you personally, then you might feel hurt and angry.
• Or maybe you have a narrative that salad is terrible, and you might feel disgusted and insulted.
These are three very different reactions to the same act, and they’re determined by your view of things – your narrative or story. Every day, our lives are shaped by the story we have of ourselves, of others, and of the reality around us. We have feelings about politics, world crises, our community, social media, our work, an upcoming meeting, a conversation we had this morning, or how good we’ve been at keeping up with new habits. Very different reactions and results from the same act, and it is all dependent on story.
I invite you to reflect: what results are you getting in your life right now, and how are they shaped by your stories? What is your relationship to others in your life right now, including yourself, and how is that shaped by your stories? What is your relationship to food, exercise, meditation, self-care, rest, work, play, and how are those relationships shaped by your stories? Once we can become aware of our stories and how they shape our lives, through the kind of reflection I’m inviting you to do right now, then we can start to reshape things through new stories. You can completely change how you feel, change the results you’re getting, and change your relationship to anything, by changing your story.
If you’d like to change how you feel, consider using story as a tool for that change.
Here’s how it could work:
1. Identify the feeling, result or way of relating to something you’d like to change. Examples: I eat a lot of junk food, I am constantly frustrated by people, I can’t stop looking at social media.
2. See if you can identify the story that is responsible for that. Examples: Junk food comforts me when I’m stressed; people shouldn’t act that way; I need social media apps on my phone to stay con nected.
3. Identify a new result, feeling or way of relating to something you’d like instead. Examples: I want to eat more vegetables and love healthy food; I want to see the good in people and be more accepting; I want to read books whenever I would normally look at social media.
4. Draft a new story that will help you get that. Examples: Veggies and fruit nourish my body and make me feel amazing; there’s a loving heart behind every person’s action; when I have downtime, I treat myself to reading a good book.
5. Remind yourself to tell yourself this new story every time it would help. This takes a lot of practice, so also create a story that you don’t need to be perfect at this, but that you’ll be persistent, because you care deeply about this.