The stories you tell about yourself
All of your life is a story you're telling
Our lives are composed of stories.
We construct a narrative around ourselves that anchors us within our world.
You are the hero of your own story, of course. Yours is the point of view through which the events that unforld will be seen and interpreted. Your interests are the ones that must be front and centre.
You assign labels like “ally” or “villain”, depending on your interpretation of the actions of others. But these are also stories that you’re constructing.
“She likes me, because she did X and that means Y.”
“He hates me, because he said A, and that was because of B.”
We’re constantly scurrying to gather the disparate threads that fly at us from people and places and experiences, and trying to weave them together into a tapestry that we can read and understand.
It’s not easy.
Other people are not reliable narrators - they can often say one thing and mean another. They might not even understand, themselves, why they said or did that thing that we’re seeking to process.
When we’ve spent time painstakingly constructing the narrative of our lives, we frequently choose to interpret new information or experiences in a way that will fit with the theme we’ve woven so far - otherwise we’d have to unpick the whole thing and start again, and that would be a pain in the arse.
So we stick to familiar narratives, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades, even when they’re unhelpful to us, because they fit with our understanding of… well, everything.
Breaking out of our stories takes effort, and disrupts our world view, which is disorientating.
Paid subscribers, we’re going to take a look at how you can recognise the stories you’re telling about yourself, and how you can begin to explore alternatives.