Living your life without realizing the stories you tell yourself is dangerous. You may believe these stories without questioning them. Without awareness of their existence.
You want to change and see what is possible for you. A life of traveling and seeing the world. Who wouldn’t like to be free? Know other places. Meet different people. Get experiences that will last them a lifetime. Think about your personal dream. Now think why you are not living it. Well, my friend, the reasons you just put out are Stories you tell yourself.
This post is about your story and how this molds what you are experiencing at this stage of your life. Understand these stories. Be aware of them. So to not be controlled by them.
We wake up and we are part of a story. Unconsciously. We live in this situation. When we wake up kicking, we are living a dream of falling.
Same thing when we are awake. We have no recollection of the unconscious stories that are taking place.
All this happens behind curtains. In our unconscious. But impacts us. In every way.
We live within a script we have.
The script can be ”Everything is ok”. Or “Next year I’m going to quit my job.” Or “I just need to have X for me to be happy.” It can be broken when suddenly your okay life is disrupted and it is no longer okay. When you are afraid you won’t find another job and don’t quit. When you get X and you are still the same.
We love deceiving ourselves. Why do we do it? We like deceiving ourselves. We do it by saying “I love my partner more than anything”, and “Everything is perfect in my life”. The reality is we are more self-interested than we care to say. And our life is less than perfect. We love the feeling we get from saying these virtuous things. This strategies we engage in all the time. These things make us feel good. All the feelings we get are why we do it. And it is perfectly healthy in some ways, it is how nature made us. But there is a risk.
Why is this important to you? Do we tell stories to ourselves? We are first historical, then we are logical
When I was growing up (and still when I was an adult) my biggest insecurities were two.
I was never 100% sure about anything. I did not give in to this fear, but I didn’t trust the lectures at school, religious beliefs, or what my parents told me. I had to learn everything by experimenting. I had to go deep into most things to feel certain confidence.
The second fear was no one would love me the way I was. Every time someone did something nice for me I thought they were just being polite. I started behaving nicely when I didn’t feel it. It became part of me and so I was nice but didn’t feel it. And that was painful but necessary for me. I needed to feel loved. And I believed love came from someone validating me.
People would recognize this and tell me that I was deserving of love. They told me to chill and accept what is without questioning so much.
That didn’t do much help.
Because the reasoning made sense, and it was sound. But the stories I was telling myself were still there.
It wasn’t until I came face to face with my deeply held stories (beliefs) that I could accept these parts of me. I finally accepted what they did for me. I observed where they came from. And then I could move on.
The stories I told myself, constructed in the past, were holding me back.
Once I healed and accepted these stories, I made great progress in feeling more confident and validated.
The insecurities didn’t have their grip on me.
And see that listening to reasons didn’t help so much. I needed to be listened to. Accept my story. Piece my past together. Piece my feelings together and trust them. See my behavior and the behavior of those around me.
This comes to explain one thing, We are first and foremost creatures of our stories. Stories that we generate inside ourselves without notice.
If reason was all that was needed to change, obesity would be cured with a logical argument, drug abuse too. Therapy wouldn’t exist. The stories we tell ourselves are the ones that keep us tied to the same fears, the same emotional responses, and the same behaviors.
It is important to acknowledge this fact first. Many times this realization can come through a very painful experience. Like a breakup or the death of someone we care for.
We are inside a story of our own making.
It is easier to think that everything is just the way it looks like. The sky is blue, we love our job, and the matrix is just perfect for me. But there will come a day when the comforting lies will hurt more than the uncomfortable truths. It doesn’t have to be today. But trust me, if you are not aligned with your heart, it will happen.
What is the risk of not recognizing we live in stories?
Ok, I live stories inside my head, What is the risk?
Why is it dangerous not to be aware of the story we are living? The danger is believing it is true. Reality is like a dream when we can’t tell what story we are in. The danger is not being aware the dream is not the truth, no matter how close it resembles it. How the dream is not complete and can lead us to fall in holes that exist in reality but we haven’t mapped ourselves.
We need an accurate enough map of the world not to fall into a hole. Therefore we need to update the story we are living of the world. For this is better to adopt a humble position when it comes to the truths we hold, better to hold them as opinions than truths. But never let go because of some weaker opinions, only for more actualized valid ones.
We need to accept that the way we see is a perspective. It is formed by our story, our identity, and our beliefs. There is no objectivity in how we see the world. Objectivity is to obtain some sort of deeper truth from the world. But it exists in a gradient where absolute objectivity is unattainable. Still, when we see more objective information, it is subjectively observed. Therefore less objective. Objectivity is an ideal never achieved.
We need to know ourselves to better know what is what we are putting into the things we see. What part of our observation is obviously added by us. Our perspective. We need to get good at understanding what we add to the things we perceive. What we add belongs to us. I talk about this in the article “what is for you” in the following article. We add a lot of things that are of us into what we see. Part of or character.
We need humility to accept we don’t know. We don’t know many things.
We need an open mindset to be able to accommodate new information in our map of the world to have a more complete map to navigate the world better.
You are inside a story all the time, you just need to check that these stories are aligned with where you want to go, and your heart and that they are accurate enough for you not to fall into a trap.
Stories change our perspective of the world
Stories we tell ourselves make a difference in how we navigate the world. How we feel about things. How do we get invested in some results and not at all in others. We need to be really smart with what stories we are telling ourselves. Especially when we are in a not-so-safe environment. Or when we are with manipulative people.
There you need to see the emotions you feel. Emotions are signals of your unconscious. Take these signals. Filter what people say through your emotions. It changes the game.
There is another world behind the stories we tell ourselves. We never see it until something happens that breaks the script. We need a painful experience to break this mental state.
It is not a lie, it is a perspective
We are so immersed in our story that we don’t realize how deep we are in this deceit. It is not deceitful in the normal way of the world. It is not a lie we knowingly accept. It is not a lie that once disclosed the truth it falls apart. It is a perception that even when we know it is not true won’t abandon us. Because it is the very thing we use to derive meaning from. It is the truth when it comes to talking about what actually happened, but it turns when we find another better truth. When the present stories of the truth shatter for not being a trustworthy representation of our reality.
The effect of your story is that it defines for you what you have as true. This will be the limits of your paradigm. This is your world. This will make your challenges and your comfort zones. This will make the whole landscape of your subjective experience.
I am alone in the world makes the world bleak and dry. I have time for myself and to make happen my most amazing project fills me with energy and love. Same situation, a totally different experience of the world. A different story. Stories that generate a negative emotion in you you need to break free from. Or if they are accurate enough, you need to attend to the need that is not being met in the real world for you. And you need to provide for yourself what you need.
The function of story: to provide meaning to the world
We need stories to deal with the things we have in our minds. We need heaven to deal with our lost ones and our absolute dread of death. We need god to deal with the absolute lack of meaning and significance of our existence in the big scheme of life. We need stories.
We construct our lives around our personal stories. I am a writer in my personal story and I dedicate a considerate chunk of each day to writing and putting to paper my ideas. I put a great deal of time into reading and that is also something that I derive meaning from. Stories we tell ourselves are also part of what I call our identity. If we believe our representation of the world is the truth then there is not much we can do to change our results. But if our representation of the world is just one of many possible ones and we can change it, then we can change everything by changing it. How we see the world predetermines our personal point of view and how we feel and think.
Articulating the story I am living. How powerful this is. How this healed me. The healing is provided by understanding. It comes from seeing the deceit and understanding that is part of me and now being aware of it.
The use of stories in our personal life
We are a puzzle, each puzzle is different. We need different puzzle pieces. Each of us needs different puzzle pieces. We need to make different connections inside our heads. We need different kinds of stories. That is why we need to read stories we resonate with, we need to explain our experience to ourselves and find out how to better explain the world to be more effective in it and change and adapt. If we lose the capacity to formulate our own stories about what happened to us, we lack the basis to get back and change our lives and become resilient.
Writen fiction stories and their function in our life
When a story resonates, it has to do with a challenge we need to overcome. It tells us a piece of the puzzle, a change in how we see the world, a transformation in beliefs and distinctions. It is always aiding us in the fight to be ourselves, and to be more conscious. To adapt, to overcome external situations. You need to find the pieces of this story yourself. You need to listen to your unconscious. You need to come up with the pieces yourself. Many of the inspirations for the pieces will come from stories from books. The novels with a hero protagonist overcoming his challenge and having an internal transformation, a personal belief change. That is why it is so important to read fiction books.
Read books like the ones of Herman Hesse. Yesterday I was reading Steppenwolf. I resonated with the story of the protagonist. There is a part of me that resonates with the fight taking place inside the protagonist. His Steppenwolf self is wild and untamed, nihilistic and solitary. Unsophisticated and raw. Un-adapted. His human self is civilized and sophisticated. Learned and controlled. Social and kind. Both are wise in their own ways. Each has animosity against the other. What a beautiful piece of the puzzle of myself I had received.
Once you construct these pieces for yourself, you can tell yourself a story about yourself that makes sense for you with your beliefs and your personal history.
You integrate this into you from the unconscious it becomes conscious. All the more power to you.
Summary
In this post, I presented the basis for questioning our own perception of reality. Why it is useful to do so. What are the risks to taking our perspective at face value?
Then we went into how stories we tell ourselves change our perspectives of the world.
How our story is not a lie, it is a perspective.
The function of story: to provide meaning to the world.
The use of stories in our personal life.
How fictional stories have a instrumental place in our life.
Hope you got a valuable piece of your puzzle.
Until the next one.
Recommended Reads:
Man in search for meaning by Victor Frankel.
Maps of Meaning by Jordan Perters.