Our lives are a collection of stories, that we live throughout our lifetime. Each story contains a different set of characters that mesh together to create a coherent narrative. Each one of those characters has its own stories.
But the story I am referring to here is the one we tell ourselves every day.
The dialogue that we do with ourselves internally. It shapes our identity. It makes us who we are. This is so powerful that we even see and make sense of the world through this identity.
You can realize the importance of this inner chatter now.
Now, this story has different versions for everyone.
For some, they are the heroes of their stories. They developed a positive attitude to deal with whatever crap life threw at them.
For some, they are the victims. They mourned at the slightest sign of trouble, cursing the universe why it was being cruel to them.
It is in our hands what we choose to tell ourselves. Our mind is often a factory of negative emotions, thoughts and beliefs. We are over critical of ourselves.
This incessant barrage of negative thoughts need to stop. We need to cleanse the story that we tell ourselves. It needs to be positive. As in an earlier post I mentioned a quote from James Clear, that our mind is a suggestion engine only, not an ordering engine.
It can only give us suggestions, not commands. Thus we are in control always. Anytime we choose to see that and really believe that we can instantly make a positive impact.
Here’s what author Michael Lewis on the stories we tell ourselves:
“As I’ve gotten older—I would say starting in my mid-to-late 20s—I could not help but notice the effect on people of the stories they told about themselves. If you listen to people, if you just sit and listen, you’ll find that there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves.
There’s the kind of person who is always the victim in any story that they tell. Always on the receiving end of some injustice. There’s the person who’s always kind of the hero of every story they tell. There’s the smart person; they delivered the clever put down there.
There are lots of versions of this, and you’ve got to be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are—in the way you craft your narrative—kind of crafting your character. And so I did at some point decide, “I am going to adopt self-consciously as my narrative, that I’m the happiest person anybody knows.” And it is amazing how happy-inducing it is.”
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #427: Michael Lewis on the Crafts of Writing, Friendship, Coaching, Happiness, and More
Did you notice the last paragraph here?
We should be really careful of the version of our story that we feed ourselves. That needs to be positive. Because our stories starts to become us. We start to believe our stories, and think that we might be that person. And that is true.
Herein lies your choice too. You can choose a positive story and become that version of yourself. It is that easy.
If until now you have been led to believe that you are a sad, low energy individual, then just tell yourself that you are a happy person. It would be difficult at the beginning but eventually people will notice the change.
By just saying the word happy pushes us to smile. Do that. Smile. Force one at the start. And it will become your default state.
Take back control of your own story.
Change it to a positive one.
Become that person that you always wanted to be.
Because you can. In the end it is entirely up to you.
I write daily here on my blog. There is no limit to the word count. I am not focusing on any topic here. I want to build a daily writing habit. This is Day 36 of the Daily Writing Challenge in 2022.