The Story You’ve Been Told vs. the Story You Choose
Everyone tells themselves a story about their own lives. We all carry around a story of who we are and how we got that way.
A lot of those stories were written when we were little, oftentimes during moments that felt bad and made us feel like we weren’t enough.
Being bullied when you’re in middle school may have taught you that you needed to prove yourself, and that you needed to maintain a certain image in order to have value. That’s the story you may have told yourself about an isolated, yet ongoing, event that happened and had nothing to do with your worth.
That was a huge part of my story at one point.
We tell ourselves stories about our lives, but that doesn’t always mean we should keep telling ourselves those particular stories.
A lot of times we don’t realize that we believe these narratives, so sometimes we don’t even recognize what our own stories are. However, if you spend some time with yourself, you can become aware of said narratives, and how they’ve shown up in your life. Check out Reclaim Your Power: Why We Give It Away and How to Take It Back
Reclaiming your narrative isn’t about pretending things didn’t happen. It’s about deciding what meaning you give them as a result.
You don’t have control over what happened, but you do have control over how you let it affect you.
Responsibility vs. Blame: They’re Different
An important distinction here is the difference between responsibility and blame.
We want to assign responsibility where it is appropriate. Ultimately, we are only ever responsible for our own actions.
We do not want to place blame, assign fault, or shame someone. Just remember, blame never gets anyone anywhere.
Responsibility is empowering. Check out How Accountability Leads to Empowerment When you’re responsible and take accountability for your own actions, it opens the door for further conversations and positive forward movement. It builds self-trust, invites agency, and encourages reflection.
Blame looks backward, and responsibility looks forward.
You might want to ask yourself what you blame yourself for that might not be yours to carry.
Meaning-Making Without Rewriting History
Your story doesn’t change, but the way you look at it can change many times over.
Reclaiming your narrative doesn’t require you to minimize your pain. In fact, if you can do it in a safe, contained space, I would encourage you to feel your pain.
When you reflect on past events, don’t be afraid of the truth of what happened or the emotions that follow. You don’t have to deny your reality with messages like, “It wasn’t that bad.”
You’re safe to really sit with your feelings and analyze them. Eventually, you will get to a point where you understand that what happened couldn’t have been any different, and you really were doing the best you could in that moment.
It’s amazing how many times you can approach that concept, and how many times your understanding of it can change.
As a result, you can sit with super uncomfortable truths and still feel empowered. You can always choose to feel empowered.
A wound can turn into a lesson, which can then turn into wisdom, and the facts remain the same.
Authoring Your Story in Real Time
Now that we know about the stories we tell ourselves, we have a choice: we can continue telling those same stories, or we can change them into something different.
What does it look like to consciously participate in your narrative? What is it like to really show up for yourself and live your day making decisions that are in alignment with you?
Check out Being in Alignment and Aware of Our Worth
It looks like going about your day and pausing to take a moment to tune in with yourself and see how you feel. It looks like pausing to think before you respond in conversation. Really showing up for yourself includes being aware of your thoughts and your emotions, and knowing how to handle them in a way that works best for you. That’s emotional maturity.
Check out the Show Up for Yourself workbook and my other blog post, Your Most Important Relationship: The One You Have With Yourself
Self-authorship does not mean you can control all of the situations that happen around you. It means you control the meaning that you give to those situations.
When you decide that you’re the main character of your own story, you choose how the story goes. You decide how much energy you give something or someone. You decide what to lend your attention to. As the main character in your own narrative, you get to take care of yourself and spend time learning more about who you are so you can embrace that in your life.
Check out It’s Your Show – The Reality of Main Character Energy
Being in relationship with yourself, having established a strong sense of self-trust and security, and knowing who you are brings about feelings of steadiness and calm. When you’re in alignment with your values, your wants, and your needs, the next steps forward might be a little easier to see.
Empowerment Without Performance
Something I’ve learned about finding your own empowerment is that when people seem to appear a certain way on purpose, they usually don’t actually feel that way. Real feelings don’t need to announce themselves.
Certain feelings are obnoxious by nature. They’re loud and they get a lot of attention, but that’s just because of who they are, not because you feel the need to make them known.
Real healing, empowerment, and self-trust don’t require an audience. In fact, when you work on those elements of your relationship with yourself and grow in your sense of self, it feels much better to talk less and observe more.
Performed empowerment is loud and obnoxious. Real empowerment is calm, grounded, and steady.
Other people don’t need to be aware of your journey. You might want to tell them, or it might come up naturally, but it’s not necessary. That eliminates any feeling of needing to act a certain way or be perceived a certain way. What matters most is how you feel about yourself.
Then Everything Changes
When you stop asking, “Why did this happen to me?” and start asking, “What do I want this to become?” everything in your life changes.
When you view the entire world around you and everything you interact with as an opportunity to learn, everything about your life changes. Check out Curiosity Leads to Clarity: How Asking Better Questions Brings More Growth
When you become more open and honest with yourself, and you’re willing to learn and show up for yourself, that’s when you can really make big changes in your life.
Narrative shifts happen internally before they show externally.
Keep in mind that reclaiming your story is a practice. It requires time, patience, and learning. Sometimes you have to go over the same chapter again and again and again, but it’s always worth it.
Closing: You Are Not the Plot Twist – You Are the Author
Always remember that you are the author of your own story. You are the main character living out the story that is about you and centered around you.
Let’s talk about it.
You’ve likely been through a lot of challenging experiences and have known pain, and that’s valid. When you rewrite your story, it becomes the vehicle for growth.
Keep an eye out for the final step in the RETURN Method, The RETURN Method: Navigate Life Authentically. In the meantime, check out related reads, and Sign Up for the NEWSLETTER below!
Related Reads:
Self-Trust Series: Self-Trust in Real Time,
Recognizing Patterns in Others,
Emotional Boundaries: How to Create Healthy, Sustainable Connections,
Let People Show You Who They Are
Curiosity Leads to Clarity: How Asking Better Questions Brings More Growth
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