59 Would you like a Hero or Victim Story?
So last week we searched around in why we don’t get started on things, why we procrastinate or if we are actually paying attention and taking action on the things that we’re thinking about that are clues to the next part of where we want to go. Are we paying attention? This week we’re focusing on the thread that goes through the way that we look at our lives, the lens with which we look at our experiences so far and put meaning on those. So we’re starting just with stories that we tell. This topic is a massive topic for expansion for people. Within it lies many, many clues that you can unlock and shift to change the trajectory of your life.
Often we think that something that happened in the past is in the past and it’s done, there’s nothing we can do about it, but it’s actually not true. As you go back into your stories, you can discover new understandings, you can see new things, you can release old things, and you can get a whole new perspective on what your life really was about. You can actually change your life story. So we’re starting this week at what stories you tell. Do they feel good? So today, think about some of the stories that you tell about yourself, the prominent stories about things that you experienced in life. How do they feel when you tell them? Do they feel great or do they feel like you’re justifying something? Do they feel like you are proving how tough you’ve had it? Or are they telling a story that has you as the hero or has you as the blessed expander? Or is it empowering? Or is it disempowering?
Really you can get to the point in your life where you decide not to tell stories that aren’t empowering, because the stories, they guide us to how we really feel our life is, what our beliefs are around our life, what we’re worthy of, what we are not worthy of. They speak to the patterns that we govern ourselves by, so they’re not trivial. So let’s get started by looking at your stories today. You started yesterday, but let’s look deeper now and see. Do your stories feel good when you tell them, and what’s the purpose for telling them? What are you proving there, and can you take them further? What did you get from the story? What did you get from the experience? What did you learn from the experience? What did your understanding of the experience put in front of you for you to then have the next chapter of your life?
So back when I was teaching and some things felt like they were happening to me, I felt like a victim. I had a really incredible career, really top level, doing things that no one else was doing in my midst. And all of a sudden, I found myself… It felt like I was thrown out into no man’s land. Like, how did this happen? And after I got through it, after I navigated through it to the other side, I discovered that that situation propelled me out of a career that actually I felt like was getting close to its completion, but I probably, on some level, wouldn’t have had the fortitude, the guts, the foresight to leave, to just leave if there wasn’t something that was amiss. So when I thought about it later, I drew to myself a way to transition out of that job into where I am now, into actually several things that brought me to where I am now, and I’m incredibly thankful for how it played itself out. But for years I was caught in the story of how I was blindsided and I almost felt fired, but I chose to leave on certain principles.
So I told myself then a story about how I was kind of wronged and how I chose to leave with my principles intact. It was a courageous story, but it wasn’t the story of a hero. It wasn’t a story that really propelled me forward. And then as I took some coaching and I went through some experiences, I realized what a gift that whole situation was, and that’s typically what happens for us. Life is happening for us, not to us. Think about that. So let’s get back into your stories. Look at them. Are they empowering or are they stopping short of the very beauty of the occurrence that happened and how essential it was to getting you where you are now? All right, that’s your homework. Get going.