Self-stories are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. We humans desperately want things to make sense, so we make up stories to explain the world around us including who we are and what we are capable of and these are our self-stories.
These self-stories become part of a belief system with powerful impacts, for we rarely try what we do not believe we are capable of. Therefore, if not brought fully into our conscious awareness and examined carefully, our self-stories can become crippling limitations. Awareness requires effort and alertness since our inner storytelling is usually an automatic process, an automated sub-routine that kicks in without thought. However, the more attention you pay to the process, the more you will catch your stories, allowing you to question their origin, their truthfulness, and most of all their usefulness.
Remember, your self-stories are not the gospel truth, they are simply one possible interpretation of reality, and you can re-write them at will, choosing better stories that uplift you and move you forward.
Closing Quotes:
“The stories we tell about ourselves are the people we become.” – Lauren Groff, Apocalypse Camp, Harpers p. 45, March 2020
“We often think that our day-to-day life is a result of our actions, behaviors, and decisions. That isn’t necessarily wrong, but we often miss the fact that our actions, behaviors, and decisions are based on the experiences we’ve had throughout our lives and the stories we tell ourselves about those experiences.” – Kindra Hall, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life
“We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or hate, to see or be seen. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them and then become a storyteller.” – Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier