TELLING A NEW STORY...
WHAT'S YOUR STORY?
People tell me I'm a natural storyteller, which still surprises me as I always thought that despite the myriad of colorful life experiences I've had, I personally feel like I'm living a groundhog-day.
I now know it's really what I tell myself about my own story that matters.
First time I was properly introduced to the concept of retelling my own story was through my NLP Coaching course. They term it 'reframing' which is a beautiful word, as the lens and frame we look at the world through is often clouded by our childhood conditioning of rose-tinted glasses or the lens of abuse, trauma, grief and mistrust.
Our point of view is The I position that we tell our stories from. Carrying on from our childhood conditioning we do inadvertently and often unconsciously see the world through the eyes of the past.
Projection rather than Perception
This is why many people can view the same car accident and see it totally differently, hence the need for several witnesses. We all see the same event differently, depending on what's behind our eyes not beyond them.
Learning to see your stuck situation from another point of view is what growing up and maturing is all about. Putting oneself into another person's shoes and seeing the situation as if through their eyes is hard to do. But deep connection, compassion, understanding and community come from this. Especially if the person or situation you're trying to understand is a loved one or a family member. Even better if the situation is one you have been returning to year after year, decade after decade!
TELLING A NEW STORY
As long as you're breathing and aware, you always have the opportunity to re-write your story. Especially if you feel like you aren’t living, you are merely surviving?
3 Easy Ways to Break out of Old story
1. By observing your story as just an experience - one possible experience amongst many - then becoming aware of it, then when you can do that, you are no longer completely consumed by it.
2. Take an inventory of the places in your life where the same patterns seem to keep repeating again. Maybe it’s the type of people you date, maybe it’s your home situations, your job. Whatever the pattern is, write it down in your journal.
3. Identify where you are stuck in the cycle of Reactive DO-ing rather than potentially Responsive BE-ing with and how you can start to shift your relationship to these circumstances to allow new paths to reveal themselves to you. Journal new possibilities, read over them daily slowly and deliberately and notice any sensation, impulses and emotions that arise.
THE FINAL STORY
Remember if you don't write your own story, clearly and succinctly, know that one day someone else will have to. It's called an Obituary and often highlights the best of a person's life experiences- the final story of how one has loved and lived.
Maybe a bit morbid- though since I've been to my own mother's funeral - alien to me - and my father's funeral; whose obituary I wrote, I do now often contemplate my own obituary. Whenever I reframe my current experience, immediately the aperture widens right out of the current experience, for me to see that through directing change - rather than being victim to it- I can create a new chapter I'm happy with.
Then ultimately chapter by chapter I get to live the story I'll be proud to have read about me, at the end of this lifetime.
What needs to be listened to in your life right now in order for real change to happen?
If you carried on with your life as it is right NOW, unchanged, how will your closing story be told?
Will you be happy with that closing story?