What are the biggest stories you tell yourself?
Do you tell yourself you’re too much or, that you’re not enough? Do you tell yourself that life is just hard or, that opportunity lies around every corner?
We all make up stories in our head, it’s how our brains make sense of the world. These stories influence how we see the world, how we see others, how we see ourselves.
These stories might be true, but they also might be a complete load of made up rubbish.
Some stories are told to us but others are stories that we make about ourselves, about other people, about the world. We can pick up on other people’s stories about us by their words and their behaviours and, we can misinterpret those stories too.
I used to make up a story that I was rubbish at PE & anything remotely sporty. This story was founded on the experience of being either last, or second to last, when classmates were picking people for teams in PE. I fed this story, the story that I was rubbish at PE, every time I failed to catch the ball in rounders, when I failed to score a goal in indoor hockey and, when I was just laughingly bad at football.
I genuinely believed that I was bad at all of those things and that belief lead me to actually BE bad at those things — I shied away from sports at school, only taking part when I had to and then staying as far out of the way of the ball as possible. (Granted, there were some VERY sporty kids at my school and they probably would have run through me to get to the goal, but that’s not the point.) My brain made up a story that I wasn’t good at something and, over time, I started to behave as if I was truly bad at it and thus, confirming that made up story to be one that was actually true.
But… something else interesting happened at the same time. My brain filtered out all the evidence that was contrary to that story — it filtered out that I sometimes caught the ball in rounders, that sometimes I hit the ball so far that I got a “round.” My brain continued to blatantly ignore that I was one of the last few standing when we did the high jump, that my long jump was pretty respectable and that, sometimes, I could run the 200m reasonably fast. My brain was looking for the evidence to prove that it was right, that the story (which my brain considered to be “fact”) was 100% correct and that everything else was fake news.
Remember when I mentioned earlier that the stories can be ones that we make up ourselves AND they can also be stories that we get from other people about us. Well, my “bad at sports” wasn’t just my brain spinning a yarn, there were other people involved, people who either told me directly that I was “Rubbish at catching & throwing a frisbee” or people who said other things that I used to build into the narrative: “You won’t be able to carry that, you’re too weak”, “You can’t go roller-skating because you’ll only fall over an injure yourself.” My brain took those things and wove them into the story as more “evidence.”
Yet, somewhere along the line, between school and my 20’s, that narrative shifted — I mean, you don’t end up teaching group fitness classes to studios’ full of people for 8 years if you’re “not good at PE & sports stuff” right?! I think it started to shift when I finished school. I was in a new environment and many of those old brain prompts were no longer there — no indoor hockey matches, no being made to wear a coloured sash and run around a netball or basketball court. There were new prompts and new people who didn’t know these stories — people who invited me to the gym, people who had made up their own story that I must be good at sport because of my build. The more I started to do these new things that were contrary to that old story in my brain, the more the old story started to loose it’s place. I started experimenting with lift weights, yoga, karate, kick boxing, Tae Kwon Do, running… and then eventually getting my Personal Training qualifications and qualifying as a Group Fitness Instructor (still something I’m pretty proud about!) before stepping into the world of distance running and triathlon. Not bad for someone who thought, for YEARS, that they were “Bad at PE and sport.”
So, how do you break out of that cycle where brain makes up story, brain looks for evidence, brain ignores everything else, you start to act as if the story is true, brain sits back, puts feet on desk and sips tea saying “told you so”?
The first step is becoming aware of the story — It’s easier to change something when you can see it. Take a pause right now, grab a notebook and a pen and write down: What stories are you telling yourself right now?
Pick one of those stories and start to break it down — How long have those stories been hanging around for? Is this a story you made up or did someone else teach it to you?
Then start to unpick it — What evidence do you have that the story isn’t true?
Then, this is where it might get a little uncomfortable — How has that story played out in your life, where and how did it show up? What happened?
I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t aware about my brain making up stories when I was younger… perhaps that’s why it took me until my late teen’s / early 20’s to start to change the habit of shying away from sport. I don’t like to think what my life would be like now without gym and and yoga and running and triathlon and all the people and friends I’ve met along the way.
I wonder, what might your life be like without some of those stories?
