Are you there?

Yes, we are here.

Today, I want to talk about our stories. The stories we tell about ourselves, the stories that shape the way we interact with others, the way we identify ourselves in the world.

This is an excellent topic of conversation. There is a great deal to be understood about the way human beings operate in the physical world by examining the stories that they tell about themselves.

During all the years that I have been doing this kind personal, spiritual work, I have heard or read many, many times that the way to transform your life is to change the story that you are telling about yourself.

As always, with anything having to do with the process of remembering who you really are and why you have come, the first place to start is with awareness, acknowledgment and awareness of the stories about yourself that you tell yourself and others. As we have said before, many human persons are not even aware that they generate a constant stream of creative thought, much less an abundance of individual storylines that are also used to create life experiences.

We had a conversation recently about belief systems and I’m wondering if the stories that we tell ourselves are actually the same as our belief systems.

One could say that, yes, a story that you tell yourself and others about yourself is actually a belief system in narrative form. Let us take a fairly common thought held by many human persons. How about “I always seem to struggle with money?”

I would say that that is a pretty common thought for a lot of people, myself included.

Very good. Chances are, this thought is based on a sequence of repeated experiences – for example, always finding your paycheck spent before the week is out – that have led you to the conclusion, to the belief that you “struggle with money.” If this thought were standing on its own and you were to approach it solely on those terms, it is quite possible that you could pivot away vibrationally with a simple, repeated positive affirmation, such as “Money always comes to me when I need it.” But once you accept that thought as a part of your story, it is hard to shake. It will take hold within your energy field and you will use it to create experience.

Even when I repeat positive affirmations like that to myself, it still feels as if I’m not making a dent in my story about money, or about anything.

That is because you are still allowing your current reality, what you see in front of you, what we call “your story,” to define your experience. Do you see the paradox here? It is as we have said before – you believe that the thought follows from the experience. “Of course I believe I always struggle with money because I DO always struggle with money.” In truth, it is the thought that comes first. Indeed, it would be more appropriate for you to say to yourself, “I always struggle with money because I believe that I am the kind of person who always struggles with money.”

I see that. And I can see how that one initial thought can eventually form a story.

Indeed. This thought, “I always seem to struggle with money,” might be the first sentence, the seed for the flowering of your story around money. As with any belief system, eventually a thought like this, or any thought for that matter, will begin to attract other thoughts that are of a similar vibration. Thoughts like “I need more money to be happy. I’ll never make enough money. Why does everything cost so much? I’m just going to be poor all of my life. If I have money, there won’t be enough for others. I hate rich people!” These thoughts are attracted to each other and eventually form a bond that reinforces and strengthens the original thought around money, builds on it, complicates it, entrenches it, makes it more and more difficult for you to believe anything that opposes it.

And that’s how it becomes your story.

It becomes a story, per se, when you begin to think it and tell it to yourself and others over and over again in a narrative form, when it becomes a part of yourself and the way you experience the world. Eventually, you reach the stage where your story is so familiar to you that you do not even realize that it IS a story, that you have, in essence, made it up. Made yourself up. Do you see? By creating your story, consciously or unconsciously, you have created a version of yourself that you present to the world. Soon, you become comfortable with your story, even if parts of the story cause you unease or pain. Your story becomes your friend, in a sense. The narrative that you rely on to define yourself, the narrative that brings you comfort and security, an identity to lean on when you are unsure or confused about who you are in the world, one that sets the parameters of how you behave in the world and how others expect you to behave. You can always tell that you have created a story about yourself when you find yourself saying things to others like “Oh, that’s just the way I am” or “Yes, I have a history of that” or even “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” But as you very well know, such stories can become a trap, a hinderance to your true creative abilities. By sitting back and simply allowing your stories to define you, to carry the day, so to speak, you allow your innate creative abilities to languish and lie dormant. That tendency to relinquish creative control of your own experience, more than anything else, is why you must always be aware of the story you are telling about yourself to yourself and to others.

Yes, of course. It’s so easy to do that, just let it all stay as it is. But you’re right. As a consequence, you limit your experiences to only those that align with your story. For example, you avoid certain stores because your story is I can’t afford to even browse in there. You dislike certain kinds of people because your story is I’m a liberal or I’m a conservative. You complain about your aches and pains because your story is I’m sooooo old now. And through all of that, you keep waiting for your story to change, at least I do. Just keep waiting for it somehow to magically change or improve in some way. And yes, your stories, like everyone’s personal stories, are based on what you see in front of you, what you’re experiencing in the moment, so your story certainly seems true, as far as it goes, but it becomes a vicious circle. Your stories create your experiences which in turn reinforce your stories.

That is why, if you want your experiences to change, YOU must change your story. It is your story, after all. You are writing it. No one is going to do it for you. You are more than capable of creating the kind of person and the kind of experiences that you want, ones that bring you pleasure, ones that bring you joy. The only question lies in your willingness to acknowledge your own stories and to affirm for yourself that it is the story you are telling that is behind your experiences and not the other way around. Then it is your job to release those stories that no longer serve you and create new ones. That is what it means to be a creator inside of a human form residing on the physical plane. You are in charge. You decide what your story is going to be. Do you want to continue to tell a story of lack in your life, for example, or do you want to see yourself as someone who is tapped into and aligned with the abundance of the Universe? If you believe that you cannot have what you desire, that there is not enough to go around, you can also believe that you can have EVERYTHING that you desire and that there is ALWAYS enough to go around. It is simply a matter of changing your narrative, changing your story to match your desire.

I have tried in the past to consciously change my story about this or that, but I’ve never really been able to gain any momentum. What happens is that when I try to change my story about something, whether it’s by using a series of affirmations or by actually writing a new story down in a journal or something, my current reality rises up in front of me, the reality I’m already creating with my old story, then resistance to the new story starts to build, and before long I lose heart and tell myself it’s impossible to make any changes because “That’s just the way I am” or “That’s just the way it is.”

At the risk of repeating ourselves once more, this is the work that you have come here to do. You are here to remember who you really are and why you have come. And what better way to remember who you really are then to take a good, long, close look at who you currently THINK you are. We have been exploring these ideas with you, these ideas that reflect who you really are, over and over again for the past year or so. How many of these ideas have you incorporated into your own story about yourself and how many are you still resisting? That is where you need to focus your attention and then do what you can to create the story that you want, the story that makes you happy and peaceful and content. Use affirmations, write in your journal, enlist a friend to sit and listen to you as you literally re-invent your story. And then do your best to believe it. Think and act as if your new story were true. That is how you build momentum around a new narrative and ground it into your energy field. In the meantime, test the accuracy of your current stories. Start with something simple. “I like cats, but they don’t like me.” Is that true? Spend time in an animal shelter or a cat café and see what develops. You may be surprised at how many of your old, entrenched stories no longer hold any truth. One more thing to bear in mind. Not all of the stories that you currently tell yourself are stories that no longer serve you. There is much to appreciate and to be grateful for in the way that you now think about yourself. Focus your attention on the parts of your story that are working for you and allow yourself to build on that energy. Have fun with it. There is no one watching except every single being in the entire Universe, so no pressure. Just relax and enjoy yourself!

You’re so funny. Actually, that was very informative. Another way of looking at how our belief systems create our experiences. I look forward to our next conversation and the next part of our story.

As do we. Until next time.

Thank you all.

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