How they control your life.
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Your life is a story. It’s your story, and it’s the story you tell yourself. These stories can cause you great distress for no reason other than you believe them.
Short Stories
We had a great example of this a few days ago when it was my husband’s 70th Birthday. We had planned a garden party but after a month of drought we had a morning of heavy rain, and our contingency plan of the scout hut in the village came in very handy. Especially as we had his band playing for us with all their electrics, it was safer that way, so although the rain stopped around midday when people were due to arrive, we stuck with option two.
All went well until the band started to play. Almost ten minutes or even sooner, we had a complaint, so we kept the inner doors closed to keep down the noise.
Half an hour later though he was back saying ‘they had to play more quietly’. This time I spoke to him and explained it was my husband’s 70th party, the band couldn’t play any more quietly, it was all my husbands favourite songs from his youth — and we weren’t going to go on much longer.
At this news his face visibly relaxed — you’re not playing all evening then — no just for a couple of hours. And his face cheered greatly, he explained he wasn’t very well and was 77 and suggested David had some time to go then. I agreed I wanted him around for a while longer. I think we parted on reasonable terms. I shall pop in later today or tomorrow with a small card saying thank you to him for being so understanding.
Change the Story, Change the Experience
His internal story was that we would make this noise for hours, and it was young people making the row. The immediate moment I said it was a 70th birthday his face relaxed. The story changed and he was ok. His mind had led him into a story that had a bad ending but it was the wrong story.
Longer Lasting Stories
That is a relatively minor story example but I had a personal one which lasted a lifetime. My mother had mental health issues and was a psychopathic narcissist. This is important to understand the power of the story to me at aged three when she told me that nobody liked me and they were only nice to her because they were nice people. She repeated this to me often, when we were out she would look at me and say what nice people such and such was, so they thought she was complimenting them, not telling me how unlikeable I was. I tell that story in full here
This was a story which took me decades to confront and recognise as not true, and in some ways it has helped me not to be a people pleaser and not to worry if some people do not indeed like me, we can’t please all the people all the time. But that is the power of stories and our mind clings onto them to make sense of our lives.
Mindful reality
Mindfulness allows us to recognise them all as just stories, that none of it is reality, that we are all part of a universal whole, a collection of molecules with consciousness which makes us self-conscious. In that self-consciousness lies the need for these stories, to make sense of experience, to create a sense of self, and with it all the false stories that ruin our lives. Stories of what we need to do or to be in order to be worth something when we are already worth everything. Without us the universe is incomplete. The molecules which make us up now will pass through our lives and we will discard them as cells we shed until we die and all the molecules return to source and become something else. In this way we are all eternal.
Stories in childhood
Stories can make or break us as children in childhood, but they can also teach us important lessons in life. We can give the children of the future honest stories about who they are, or we can teach them lies which will influence the future for them in unimaginable ways.
Mindfulness as a Path to Healing
The right stories about what is real and what is not is the central teaching path of mindfulness, along with the practise of developing the skill to look deeply and see these truths for ourselves. Once we understand life is just a story, we can step back, look at it and decide what story we want for ourselves. My story is one of contentment, much love, deep joy and happiness, and adventures in all sorts of ways, especially in writing and storytelling. If everyone developed this story for themselves, just think how much kinder the world might be, and how much wiser the human race might be too.
Stories with World Power
We are at a complete crisis moment in our climate and environmental situation on this planet, caused mostly by the wrong stories being told. We still have far too many people who believe in stories of world power, of wealth and status, of appearances and possessions being the most important things for each person to have. Our entire western marketing machine has been pushing these stories for the last century or so and it is out of control. We tell ourselves we cannot stop how we live, it will be ok and other such stories. Meanwhile, it is getting hotter and the effects are causing more suffering across the planet to those who did and still do not create the problem.
We can Change our Planetary story too
If we just stop and think about it creatively, we can turn it around right now. All we need to do is to change this story to one that is real, that is based on our existence as a bunch of molecules and not an ego, to one where we are part of everything and do not need to dominate everything.
We can put life right for us all if we stop believing the old stories and create or listen to different ones. They are already out there, we just need to believe them instead.