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Have you ever thought about what story you are telling yourself? Have you ever noticed the thoughts that are continually going through your head? See what happens is, when we’re younger we’re told a story, this story rarely comes from us. This story is usually from a trusted and or authoritative figure, it could be a parent, a teacher, coach, family member, etc. It may have even been something you’ve heard not exactly told about yourself.
We could start with ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’, ‘money is the root of all evil’. Maybe at one point in your life you mismanaged money so you think and now believe ‘I’m not very good at managing money’. This same goes for relationships, we may have been told we aren’t ‘meant for relationships’, maybe you had your heart broken at an early age. These are stories we’ve continually told ourselves for years, over and over again until that becomes our reality.
How about ‘you’re a trouble maker’, how many times do you think a child would have to hear this before they believe and make is so. So here we have a child that was told a story at a young age that was continually repeated in his/her heard and throughout childhood they struggle ‘being good’ when all the while everything inside them tells the opposite.
This exact opposite method works for positive as well. Think about at a young age if a child may peak just a little bit early, so they’re stronger and faster than the other children. The other children start to talk about how good an athlete this particular child is, the gym teaching might favourite her a little, then a parent puts their child onto a soccer team and the continual stream of positive reinforcement pushes this child into being a ‘good athlete’ most of their life (at least at young age).
More than anything this story of being a ‘good athlete’ was repeated over and over again in their own head making it so.
The struggle with this whole story ordeal is, most of the time these stories that are repeated are negative and are the reason we struggle with certain things in our life. The good news is we can change our story, if we believe, if we put in time and effort and continually find a new story to tell ourselves we can change our mental state of mind and physical as well.