What makes us tell the stories we tell about who we think we are?
We all have reasons and explanations we give ourselves about any situation we are going through or have gone through that become stories that we tell ourselves and others. We have stories about our lives that we tell over and over. Some are stories that may or may not even be true, but we’ve told them so often we now believe they are true.
Sometimes things happen to us and in the telling of it we exaggerate or minimize the circumstances to make it a better story. We like entertaining our friends and family with our tales of adventure and courage (how I almost won the race even though I got a flat tire), or misery and woe (my exe left me with the kids and no money).
We are more attached to some of our stories than to others. We make ourselves heroes or victims depending on who we are talking to. When we meet someone new and we want to impress them we will come up with some tale from the past that we know shows us in a good light and we tell them about that. We go to the past and fish for the one that we think the person in front of us will like or relate to. We have stories about the best and the worst things that have happened in our lives and empowered and embellished them with a life of their own.
So the question is – who are we without our stories? Do they create our own personal myth that we live that we want or need to believe and maintain? Why? What happens if we stop telling these same stories over and over? How much is our self-esteem or self-love reflected in the telling? What gets re-enforced? Does the story create separation or union? Why are we telling it? When we tell a story over and over what is it we are needing to hear? What is missing in our lives that the stories fulfill for us? How much of our conversation is about our own self-image and the past and how much has to do with what is happening in the moment?
All of these questions are powerful questions that will provoke a certain kind of looking into our behavior and why we talk about what we talk about.
Questions:
What’s your favorite story about yourself – one you tell frequently?
Which one is your tale of woe where you get to be the victim?
Who would you be without either of those stories?
Thanks for your insightful article on the human desire to tell stories
about ourselves. The questions you ask can be
enlightening if we search ourselves for the answers. They could lead
us to recognize that believing in our stories can prevent us from seeing
the truth of the illusions we create around ourselves. We can become
so preoccupied with “Me” that we forget that we are interconnected with universes of beings and that everything we think, say and do, affects that whole. Benign and imaginative upbeat
stories can be inspiring and entertaining while the opposite can contribute to the
miseries of the Whole.