What Story Do You Tell about YOU?

What does it mean to have a story about someone? About yourself? If you took some time to just write about who you are, what would you say? Not your name and stats but what kind of person are you? What are your ideals and how do you measure up to them? What is: your personality, your struggles and conquerings? Are you smart, dumb, afraid, confident? Connected, frazzled, detached, overwhelmed? Who ARE you?

Or rather, what story do you tell yourself about who you are?

It can be hard to look at ourselves because of the culture we have been raised in. Our brains are brilliant at avoiding pain. And we have been taught that looking at ourselves is painful! Your hair, feet, clothes, face is not enough. It has to be not enough or they can cant sell you stuff! So we resist and avoid. Who wants to see that anyway?

What if instead of resistance you could meet yourself with compassion and love. What if “they” were just trying to sell a load of goods we didnt have to buy and you could just look at yourself objectively with no judgement.

Just see where youre at. See a full and beautiful picture, with landscapes that go up and down, beautiful vistas and barren plains. Have you considered the possibility that you could make like the Taoists and see each part of you as a great teacher. And each experience as something you could be profoundly grateful for- not because everything is rainbows and unicorns but because of the lessons and wisdom to be found therein.

So often self evaluation comes with such high doses of hostility and censure. “I can’t believe I act like that. I hate that about me. I never get it right” With such personal disdain we can’t see ourselves clearly and therefore we can’t know where to begin the process of change! Or maybe all that needs to change is how we perceive it! We write about an experience but we don’t focus on the facts of the experience. We interpret what it means about who we are. We assign and attach all sorts of meaning and judgement.

But what if we had other options? What if there were different ways to write a story…YOUR story. And once you see that as a possibility, a light comes on. Just because the story you have always read to yourself about yourself keeps ending the same way, and you come to the same conclusion about what that must MEAN about you- that you’re afraid, ashamed, never going to change, fill in the blank….IT DOESN’T MEAN IT HAS TO CONTINUE THAT WAY! If you stop seeing it that way it will in fact BE DIFFERENT. You won’t just tell the story of you as a character with a fixed role to play in the drama of your life. You’ll become the author of YOUR LIFE and write it as you choose. And even if some of the facts of your life remain the same, you being different because you see it differently will make all the difference!

But today, no changing. Just noticing. Enjoy this brilliant woman’s TED talk. and should you like, take some quiet time, with a yummy beverage of choice and write who you think you are. What is your story of YOU? Raw an unedited. And don’t judge it. Or do. :). But just see what comes up. I promise it will be enlightening!