I twisted open the lid on the jar and the almond butter
heaved as if releasing a sigh, relieved to be opened. I’m sure it wanted to cry tears of joy, it
was so happy.
I just made that story up in my own little head. It’s what I observed, and proceeded to create
a little twist of a story around, yes, a jar of almond butter.
While that was harmless and mildly amusing, I’m sharing
it to make a point about the stories we tell, the elaborations we make, and the
details we add that must just be “true” as we sift through the creations of our
lives through the perspectives that we hold.
How often do you just make shit like that up? Weave a story around what someone said, or
around their behavior toward you or someone else. You make stories up about rightness and
wrongness and what they must be thinking or feeling, or why they’re not doing
what you want them to do, or why they’re
doing what you don’t want them
to. You add personality traits in there
and throw in a few expletives and end it all with an exclamation point. Or maybe a question mark.
You look for agreement, you look for rightness, you look
for justification and validation. You
look for some sense of why you have no money in the bank or why someone didn’t
call you back or why they responded in the way that they did.
You may be right and you may be justified and everyone
you talk to may agree with you. In fact,
you’ll likely find people who have similar stories to tell. Your perspective is valid…for sure…but the question is, do you want to keep telling
that or those stories therefore endlessly perpetuating how you feel about those
things or people you’re telling stories about?
Because the stories you tell - truth, fact, or fiction,
affect you right now. Whether what you’re talking or thinking about
is your “actual” reality or is what happened recently or in times past; how you tell your story and what you tell is creating your present
and laying ground for things to come.
You don’t have to downright tell fibs about what happened
or what-is, and you certainly don’t have to cover up how you really feel. But…. It would serve you well to make a
decision that you’re going to at least give-a-go at telling a story that at the
very least, leans you into a softer or better-feeling place.
Your stories don’t have to be static...you're making them up. You have creative control. Stories can and do evolve and become and change into
different ones.
You tell stories all day long…about everything.
My kids are… (cooperative, lovely, monsters, irritating)
My job is…(awesome, it sucks, I hate it, the best ever)
My childhood was…(happy, downright shitty, playful)
My employees are…(great people, brilliant, trustworth,
unreliable, annoying)
I feel guilty because…(I’m not always patient with my
kids, I don’t call my family)
The government is…(doing the best that it can with what
it’s got, trying to control us, horrible)
No one understands…(me, us, them, what I want)
I feel ….(insert here a way you consistently feel the
same way about something because you keep telling the same story about it)
Things happen. You
live through stuff. You move through
time. You learn, you expand. Maybe
what-was is what-was, but you do get to reach for a different
perspective about it, and when you do, that different perspective lets you form
new stories.
The stories you tell keep a perspective active within
you, which means if it’s active within you, you’ll gather more stories that
feel similar to that. If the stories you
tell feel good and rewarding and life-giving, keep telling them and improving
them. The lengths of which you can feel
good are endless. If the stories you
tell evoke blame, anger, resentment, righteousness, guilt,…you get the picture…you
could decide if this is what you want
to keep weaving. So either stop telling
it completely, tell it less, or, just make it feel a wee-bit better than the
version you’re used to.
It’s going to feel awkward and you may feel compelled to
add details that justify your version.
Try, at least try…not to do that.
Do something different and tell a whole other story about something else
instead. Or go to sleep.
Why? For your
benefit. When you hold someone else
responsible for the way you feel, you don’t use the power you were born
with. When you feel however you feel,
take the credit. It’s much more powerful
that way because you can do something
about how you feel. You often can’t do
anything about what someone else is doing or saying.
Tell the story of your life that you want to live. Tell the stories that feel good. The stories that don’t feel good, tell less
often and over time, you’ll be less inclined to tell them at all. Tell stories about almond butter, and tell
stories about your kids that enhance your sense of well-being and love. Tell stories of what you want to create and
live vs. what you’ve got that you don’t like.
You’re going to tell stories; we all do, all day
long. Decide to sift through your book
of stories and pluck out the best feeling ones and keep telling them until you
find yourself having more and more good stories to tell.
And in the interim, tell harmless stories about almond butter.
Your
life changes according to the stories you tell, almond butter and all.
This is part of the #braveblogging project from
makenessmedia.com. No gimmicks, no upsells, no tactics.
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