The Daily Vulnerable | What’s your story? 

Failure

I shared one of the most profound moments of my life with the audience of TEDx Ungwarimi, where I was invited as a guest over the weekend.

My therapist was helping me through a process of confronting and working through loneliness. And we agreed on an exercise: take a trip to the world. But rather than going with someone, or going to meet someone (until she pointed this out, I didn’t know it was my wont to do this), go alone. Go only with resources that do not require others, and start re-learning to fall in love with yourself.

She asked me to go with things that I loved, and that were deeply personal to me. She asked me what the number one thing would be.

Music, I replied.

Then why don’t you have a lot of music around you, why don’t you do more music in your life?

It was a very common sense question. But I realized I had never consciously thought of it. I spent some time thinking about this. Why?

Then it dawned on me. The simplest of reasons, seemingly foolish to me. So foolish I almost didn’t want to share with her, I believe.

“I keep thinking to myself, that if I have too much music around me,” I said. “Then the enjoyment I get from the music will begin to disappear.”

For music, or plenty of things around me, to continue to be enjoyable, my mind had tricked my soul into believing, it first had to be scarce.

Wow.

Wow.

It was like a bolt of lightning.

My therapist smiled.

That one moment completely transformed how I deal with my conscious and unconscious minds.

The story I had been telling myself for much of my life was a story of scarcity, of lack, of self-deprivation.

And we all have these stories.

“The human mind is addicted to stories,” evolution scholar Jonathan Gottschall has written. “We make them up all time, and we can easily be taken in by them. Once we latch on to a story (be it a religious narrative or a conspiracy theory) it’s hard to give it up.”

Not the story of what happened to you, but the story you tell yourself of what happened to you – the interpretations and meanings you give to them often depend on the foundational story you tell yourself about yourself; that you are not enough, that you are not good enough, that things never go well for you, that God is punishing you.

“Storytelling helps us all impose order on chaos—including emotional chaos,” vulnerability researcher Brene Brown has written. “When we’re in pain, we create a narrative to help us make sense of it. This story doesn’t have to be based on any real information.”

“One dismissive glance from a coworker can instantly turn into I knew she didn’t like me. I responded to Steve so defensively because when I’m in doubt, the “I’m not enough” explanation is often the first thing I grab. It’s like my comfy jeans—may not be flattering, but familiar. But this unconscious storytelling leaves us stuck. We keep tripping over the same issues, and after we fall, we find it hard to get back up again.

“The good news is that we can rewrite these stories. We just have to be brave enough to reckon with our deepest emotions.”

What’s the story you’re telling yourself about yourself and about reality? What’s the story behind your feelings, your reflexes, your fears?

What’s your operating story, friend?

Have you confronted it?
Have you interrogated it?
Have you taken the time to consciously create or recreate it?

Now is as good a time as any for you to begin that journey.

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