Our Stories Influence Our Choices
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I haven’t met a person who didn’t long for a fulfilling and purposeful life. One that is full of love, connection, creativity, contribution, passion, and joy. One where there’s a balance between their personal, spiritual, social, and professional lives. One where they can be wholly themselves, fully expressed, without constraint, and rich with aliveness. Unfortunately, I’ve met just as many who haven’t realized it yet. We could point to their circumstances as to why, but the truth is it comes down to choice.
The famous psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and author of one of my favorite books, “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
The trouble with choice is not in the choice itself but rather the stories we have about making a choice. There’s a natural power that comes with choice - a sense of self-authority, freedom, and self-determination. Some are quick to embrace while others feel they may not be ready or deserving to make the choice. So they stew in fear and anxiety of making a mistake or failing, never moving towards the life they long for. Again, it’s not the choice that creates the fear and anxiety but rather the stories we have about being in choice.
We are a collection of stories and they go by different names. Beliefs. Memories. Values. Traumas. Identities. Labels. Perspectives. Points of view. Opinions.
Many of our stories we’ve inherited through our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, spiritual or cultural traditions. Some we’ve earned or gathered through lived experiences. Then add in the myriad of stories we’ve been told by politicians, business leaders, scientists, philosophers, marketers, and celebrities through the relentless streams of media channels. These stories serve as the lens through which we experience everything. Most of the time we are unaware of how we glide from one story into another without questioning if the story we’re living actually serves or empowers us. We live as if they’re all true, or real.
Take some time today to become conscious of the stories you tell yourself about the people you interact with, your environment, your work with this simple inquiry. In this moment, is life happening to me, where I’m a victim caught in a lose-lose situation? I keep making the same kind of choices never feeling like I’m moving forward in life. Or is life happening through me, where anything is possible and everyone wins? I see myself being a limitless pool of creativity and resourcefulness where anything is possible.
I think it was Albert Einstein who said, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
If we find ourselves stuck in old disempowering stories, we will find it very difficult to make different choices that will lead to a more fulfilling life. However, if we can shift our stories where there is more aliveness or resonance then anything is possible, even in the most difficult situations.