I Choose... My Story

Hi Everyone!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how whenever I say, “I am…” (or some iteration of that), whatever comes after my “I am…” is what follows me around. Another way of looking at this comes from Maxwell Maltz, who said, “You can never outperform your own self-image.”

Consider the little poem stated in this image:

We can have a beautiful bowl, the most magnificent bowl on the planet, but it’s the quality of whatever is placed IN it that shows how much we value it. We can fill it full of dog poo, or some other gross substance. Or we can fill it with diamonds. The bowl itself doesn’t care one bit, either way. It just IS.

The blank page doesn’t care what we write on it, whether it’s a lovely sentiment or an ugly, hateful one. The page itself (or the blank social media post space or the blank comment field) does not care. It just IS, and what we choose to write on it is completely up to us.

The same is true of our “I am…” statements. “I am” contains my story, and that content is completely up to me. The words “I am” are completely neutral. They don’t care one bit about the quality of the story that I tell myself and the world about who I am. The just ARE. The story that I tell about myself is the substance (that which stands UNDER me, the “foundation,” if you will) that becomes my circumstance (that which stands AROUND me). If I see myself as unworthy of a good life, or lonely, or limited by a lack of financial means (aka “broke”), or stuck where I am and unable to get ahead, or fat, or ugly, or unwanted or not valued, or (as I’ve literally been seeing myself for the last couple of years) as a “useless waste of space,” or anything else that feels painful and bad… what kind of decisions are born out of these stories?

Here’s an eye-opener for us all: I am not trapped in my story. And neither are you. The only reason we keep living it is because we believe that the story we are telling about ourselves (our self-image) is true, so we make no effort to change it. When I was still living my domestic violence story, I literally had NO IDEA that I could change my life by changing the story I was telling about my life… by changing the words and concepts that came after my “I am.”

And then one day a very good friend told me to “GET A BACKBONE.” Those three words shocked me! Especially because they came from someone who loves me and had lived her own domestic violence life for a really long time, so she knew what my life was like and how hard it was to escape it. Those three words were really hard to hear, because no part of the story that I was telling about myself could include me being strong and having a backbone.

I stewed in my hurt feelings for several days, adding more and more angst to it as I fed my hurt feelings, causing my own pain as I did so. And then one day I had a new thought. It was a thought that I had never thought about myself before because it didn’t fit within the “I am a victim” story that I had been telling myself for my entire life. That new thought came in the form of a couple of questions: “What if I’m not as weak as I think I am? What if I am way more powerful than I’ve ever thought possible or given myself credit for?”

Whoa. That was a profound turning point for me. From there, with that idea added into my story, I began making different decisions. I went from telling a solid, ingrained “I’m a total victim and no good man will ever want me” story to “if I knew that I was stronger and more worthy than I’ve ever believed I was, what kind of decision would I be making right now?” As I switched up my story just that tiny bit, I became more and more able to make healthier decisions than I ever thought I could. It was an amazing, spectacular experience.

And now it’s time for me to switch up my story again. I do not HAVE to believe that I’m a useless waste of space. I can if I choose to, but I don’t have to. “I’m a useless waste of space” does not make healthy or empowered decisions. However, shifting my story just a bit, to “If I knew that I have value, how would I be doing this?” causes my decisions to come from there, and they are very different decisions. As I do this for myself, my story changes to match the new decisions. As the substance of my life—my story—changes… As my decisions and my responses to my current circumstances change… my circumstances change to match, and my new story becomes a new circumstance, from which I then get to choose how I want to live it.

This has to happen from the inside out. It’s how I respond within the circumstance that can either perpetuate the current circumstance or change it up. And the story I am telling is what generates my responses. The question is… What’s the story that I’m telling about this? And what’s a story that feels better? What do I want to fill my bowl with? What do I want to write on this blank page? What do I want my “I am” story to contain?

I get to choose all of it. I am not a victim of my story, and I am not trapped in it, either. This week I will be deliberately paying attention to the story I am telling, noticing where it does not generate healthy or empowered decisions, and switching it up to something that does generate the good stuff.

I love playing this game, and I hope you’ll join me in it! 😊

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d love to hear about your experiences if you should decide to play this game along with me!

Love
Sandi