Who would you be without your story?
That was the name of a program that I did in 2016.
It was about the stories that you tell, obviously from the title, right?
But are you aware of what stories you are telling? Do you realize what those stories are creating ….. or destroying?
WHAT?? How could stories destroy?
Different types of stories do different things. There are the ones you tell to entertain or to explain like when you tell others about what you did on vacation or the time you fell out of a tree or the time you got on the wrong bus and toured all of the city trying to get home or the ones you share to illustrate a point and other things like that.
And then there are the ones you tell about why you can’t do something or can’t change something or have to keep doing something. Those stories are excuses. They are justifications that you use to create, explain and defend the limitations you have made and continue to make. They are creating and holding those limitations in place. Those are the stories that make all those limiting and limited choices right and unchangeable.
What Stories Are You Telling
Think about what stories you ARE telling.
What stories are you telling to others? To yourself?
Are they the same stories or are they different?
Do you believe those stories?
How long have you had them? How precious are they to you?
And ….. drum-roll please ….. Are those stories really true?
Sometimes you even try to force the story to be real, even when it isn’t. If you want to make your story real, you have to hold onto it no matter what. You have to justify it and add to it in order to keep it in existence. So how much of what you have defined as your story of you and your life is based on a lie?
Who would you be without that story?
What could you create? Who could you be?
When you start examining your stories, ask if they are even your stories!
You see, some of those you probably bought or learned from other people. People who told you who and what you should be and do or shouldn’t be and do or could or couldn’t be and do … and so on and so forth. Those stories may be about you or they may actually be about what those people believe about themselves. Either way the stories may be creating and/or reinforcing limiting beliefs for you.
So you may be living someone else’s story, not yours!
No matter where those stories came from, what are they creating and what are they destroying and preventing in your life?
Holding Onto Your Stories
What is the value of those stories? What does each prevent you from doing or keep you doing? What need is each fulfilling?
What have you made so vital and valuable about your stories of your limitations that keep you hiding behind them and never creating beyond them?
Every time you repeat a story you make it more real and true to you and you solidify that story into your world.
It’s About Being Right
You frequently use stories to justify and validate the choices that you made and to make those choices right. If you get something right then everything in your life will work – or so you believe.
Stories validate the choices you made and are continuing to make as well as all of the upsets and problems you have that are the subject of those stories. They are all about the validation, justification and rightness of your point of view.
It doesn’t matter if the story is true, what matters to you is that it explains, justifies and supports the choices that you made and continue making and makes those choices right somehow in your mind.
So whether the story says that you can’t do or that you must do or that you must continue doing something, you have to ask is that actually true or is it just a story that you are using to avoid changes in your life.
You stay in your story because you don’t want to change your choices. You want to prove that those choices were right and were not mistakes. Thus, you must make those choices work, and your stories support you in that!
What are you refusing to acknowledge by staying in your story?
What are you refusing to change?
What are you trying to force to be right?
If You Weren’t Telling That Story
If you weren’t telling those stories, what could you do differently in your life?
What could you choose? What could you change if you didn’t have to force that story to be true?
If you are tired of hearing your story, tired of being stuck in your story when you get to the end say “WOW, that was fun!” or “WOW, that was really SILLY !” and usually you will stop telling it so much. Often it is because you are boring yourself with it or you are limiting yourself so much that you forgot you could let go. So say “I was boring myself to death. You know what? Story sucks! What am I doing?”
And set yourself free.
Then you can start asking yourself more questions like: “What choices do I have here?” and “What can I do differently now?” to allow yourself to have more choices and possibilities
What can you create now that you are not stuck in that story any longer?
Whoo Hoo! Get out the tools, it’s time to create!!
Want to know more about questions and how to ask more effective questions? Check out my eBook, “5 Powerful Questions to Change Your Life” for even more concerning the power of asking questions!!
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