What Story Are You Living In?
Our perception of the world around us is significantly influenced by the stories we create about our experiences. The more we become entrenched in our stories, the more challenging it becomes to perceive objective reality with clarity. Often, we’re unknowingly swayed by a complex interplay of thoughts and emotions. We justify our decisions by constructing additional narratives, further entangling ourselves in these subjective storylines.
In crafting our personal narratives, we often selectively draw from past experiences or anticipate future possibilities to fill gaps and create a cohesive story. This process allows us to construct a narrative that makes sense to us. By doing this, we can envision a future narrative that is more hopeful or fulfilling than our current reality. Interestingly, even a narrative that leans towards pessimism can offer comfort. It does so by providing a sense of certainty and familiarity, thereby reducing the discomfort associated with uncertainty and the unknown.
Jennifer Garvey Berger calls our habit of creating stories from the constant stream of data we receive a ‘mindtrap.’ This is because we typically aren’t aware that we’re constructing these narratives. We start to believe that we understand our own character, the causes and effects in our surroundings, and what lies ahead. The consequence of being enmeshed in our stories is that we end up living life on autopilot. We become prisoners of our conditioning, missing the opportunity to exercise our choice to be fully present and deeply engaged in each moment. The good news is that when we exercise the choice to be present, we can break out of the stories that keep us from living our best lives at our fullest potential.
How about you? What stories are you living in? Think about the people that you know. Do you have a simple story about this or that person? Do you believe your boss is incapable of seeing how smart you are? Or will your brother always try to get the better of you in every situation? Or are you always getting picked on? That you can never win? How do those simple stories make you feel?
Think of an important area of your life where you have difficulty or conflict. Consider your thoughts about the situation and your fundamental beliefs about the people, the job, and the circumstances. What is your storyline about the situation? “They are so ignorant! They’ll never support my brilliant idea.” “I am such a mess today. I better just not be seen by anyone.” Working in this place…” and so on is so painful.
After you have brought your storyline to mind, question it. Is it entirely accurate? How do you know? Who made up the story? Is it one-sided? What if some of the opposite perspectives were also true? We interrupt our storyline when we pose these types of questions.
What would happen if you let these thoughts and beliefs go? Try letting them go now, in your imagination. How do you feel now? Even for just a few minutes, what does it feel like not to be so caught up in your simple story about what you think is going on?
When we recognize that our personal narratives are not an unwavering truth but a collection of mental constructs—thoughts unconsciously woven together reflecting our mind’s conditioning based on past behaviors—our stories lose their hold over us and become less defining. From this perspective, our stories originating from past conditioning can serve as catalysts for personal growth and the development of more compassionate, mindful interactions with the world. –Dr. Ruth Zaplin
