To make sense of the world, we constantly tell ourselves stories. It’s the voice in our head, the chattering that goes on almost all the time as a running commentary: “Woo, that was a great shot!”, “Why do I ALWAYS choke?”, “That guy is so annoying”, “I’d be so much happier if I wasn’t such a fat slob”. And so on. If we pay attention, we’re surprised how tough we are on ourselves saying things that we’d NEVER say to someone else. After a while, perhaps a whole life, those little stories create our story and become a belief (“I always choke, that’s just who I am”) and limit what we can do. It becomes the story of Who We Are.

If I always choke, I’ve no business winning this match or closing this deal and somehow I’ll find a way to screw it up…yep, you see? I was right”

We listen to that voice as if it is us and it’s strangely comforting when we’re proven right, as painful as the result of choking another one away might be.

We are the result of our own stories: good, bad, supportive, vicious; they determine how we see the world. Some of them we got from our parents or a coach or a teacher or our friends but we took them on as our own story.

What would happen if we changed our stories? Believed only the good stuff? Who would we be then? And is that too scary to think about?