How Do I Change My Story?

What if we don't like our story? What if we are living a life that is uncomfortable, unhappy, or dishonest to ourselves or others? Can we just change? What are we changing? Changing circumstances? Ourselves? The world outside of us?

What does it even mean to say that we are living a "life" that is not us, or right for us, or the wrong life?

The first order of business is to use the wonderful strategy of a brilliant woman, Byron Katie. Check in first to see if you have a belief that there is either something wrong with you, or wrong with your life. Take these beliefs through The Work; http://www.thework.com/index.php

Often times it truly is our limited perspective. Our belief that there is something wrong with our life can cause us discomfort and pain. If we believe that there is something wrong with ourselves then that certainly can make us so upset that we try to escape our emotional reaction. If this is our situation then it doesn't matter what circumstances we change. If we have seed beliefs that there is something wrong with us or something wrong with our lives, then no matter what we do to make changes, we will always come back to feeling that way. We must change the beliefs about the wrongness of things first. Then we will be able to make changes without an underlying undermining of our changes.

"The other night I had a crazy dream
'Bout a man in a fishing hat selling magazines
All the way from Kingston he'd worked his way down
I bought him a drink on the night they kicked him out of town
He said, "You know I don't like the way I am."
"No, I don't like the way I am."
And I saw an old fisherman out swayin' on a dock
Swigging a jug of something and a string of fish that he had caught
His wife had left him just a week before
She packed up her bags and waltzed on out the door
She said, "You know I don't like the way I am."
"No, I don't like the way I am."
And then she cried
And you and me walked down the shores of our youth
Chasing the sunrise, challenging the truth
It's all so distant now I've seen too many lies
Turning my vision into crumbling demise
Makes me wanna say
You know I don't like the way I am
No, I don't like the way I am
But I'm gonna change the way I am
I'm gonna change the way I am"

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

So, now you have decided that, after all the changing of yourself, and the awareness of self, that you do, in fact, wish to change your story.  There are many reasons to change your story and changing your story is important. The story of who you think you are, and especially who you think you can become, can be easily tampered with.  Someone might believe that he cannot ever truly succeed because he doesn't have a college degree. This person can go out into the world (or go online!) and find a college degree program that will match his needs.

There are tangible ways to change our life story. However, sometimes it is very difficult to change our life story because of a past trauma that is REALLY velcro-ed onto and into our psyche.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can come from war, being abused, living with a mentally ill parent, and other experiences. It might seem impossible to change those stories, and the life that we are in that manifested from the energy of those stories. It is not impossible. We can become unattached to the memories of the past and release ourselves, like completely cleaning off the hard drive of a computer. This can be seem odd and feel uncomfortable as our reference points will go away from us. We often note who we are based on reference points. Reference points allow our very important ego to do its very important job of keeping us on the planet. If we release even one reference point to our ego's identity, it can be extremely painful and confusing.

Most of us have experienced the breakup of a significant relationship, or the loss of a job, or home. These events can truly cause disorientation of our story. This is can be a good thing because sticking to a story about ourselves and our life, no matter what, can cause us stagnation, loss of potential, and depression.

“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
― Eckhart Tolle

How do we change our story? Well, sometimes our story is changed for us such as the death of someone we love. The impact of these kind of changes can be wonderful if we allow the story change to unfold.  We also can change our own story by choosing a different one.

Back in 1994 I decided to take a year long certification program in Polarity Therapy. To do this program I had to get off of Nantucket Island, where I was living at the time, and drive to Concord, New Hampshire. There were no cell phones back then, I had only been doing minimal driving on a small island for ten years prior, and I had two children who I was worried about leaving. My story was that I was incredibly scared to drive on the mainland for each weekend training.

I was telling my very good friend, Sandy, about the program and the off island requirements. Her face lit up. "I LOVE driving alone off island! You are so lucky!" she exclaimed with envy.

I thought she was nuts. I listened more and more to her descriptions of how great it is to be alone driving off island. I felt panic, fear, and dread in my body. She felt exhilaration, self alignment, and pure joy thinking about the opportunity. Wow, was I ever in the catbird's seat as she saw it. As I saw it, I was a bird in a seat alright, but it was surrounded by menacing cats!!

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
― Albert Einstein

I decided that I would rather make the drives with Sandy's thinking than my own. If I was Sandy, I concluded, then I would look forward to these drives as being the best opportunities in life! That sentiment sure would make the week before the trip and the trip itself alot more emotionally tolerable! With that clear bit of logic, I made the commitment to act as if I was Sandy, pretending that I was thrilled and eagerly driving on the evil-lurking-every-five miles highway route.

The first trip I got into my car and said out loud, "Here I am. I am Sandy and I LOOOOOOVE driving for hours alone." I then proceeded to quote all her reasons for loving it. Along the way there were moments where my old story kicked in and I would think, "My God, if my car turned over and fell down that ditch, no one would ever find me. " or "If I get a flat right now this is a perfect

place for a creepy guy to stop and then force me into the woods!". As soon as I caught myself with my old programming, I would pull in good old Sandy programming and start singing some made up song about how I love to drive alone, laaadeedaaadeeedahhhhh....

 I am not sure which weekend it happened, but soon I was actually singing all on my own. I was happy driving alone off island! I looked forward to my driving adventure to New Hampshire! It no longer was me pretending to be Sandy, Aileen now had a new story. Aileen liked driving on the mainland alone for a few hours. In fact, there were times when I was downright digging it!

“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you've come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”
― Madonna

I have to thank a wonderful woman, Pat Toalson. In the late 80s Pat and I were talking about some pretty serious stuff in my life. She gave me permission and encouragement to just live my life. She told me that I didn't have to spend all my time digging through my past to find things out about why I did things. She told me that I didn't have to dredge it all up, over and over again, before I could enjoy my life today. She said to me, "Aileen, if something is suppose to come up for you to remember and deal with, it will on its own. You don't have to go looking. In the meantime, if you don't like the way you are doing something, then just do it differently. Just wake up, and make a conscious effort to do it differently today."

May today be a First Day to Begin a new story about who we are, if we are unhappy and uncomfortable. May today be a First Day to Begin to understand that we can have a new story  about who we are and what happens to us. We can make a choice to release attachments, erase our hard drive, and load on some new software, software of our choosing. Everyone of us can "lay new pipes" and change our story, today. 

May we all celebrate and experience peace knowing that today is a First Day to Begin to change our story!