Think back to when you were a child. There may have been a pivotal moment or perhaps a pattern you recognized and from that experience you created a story about yourself. Why the experience of not getting chosen until last for dodgeball is coming to mind, I have no clue and yet I’m going to roll with this one. So let’s say you weren’t chosen until there were only three of you left to pick from. You felt that flood of upset and desperation mixed together just praying the next words out of your classmates mouth were your name. Perhaps this wasn’t the first time you were picked in the lower half of choices available. In that moment, what story would you or did you create about yourself?

If it wasn’t this exact scenario, you can surely think of a time when an experience caused you to create a story or belief about yourself. Maybe it was that one of your parents, or both were too busy working and taking care of the household to play with you and only focused on responsibilities of life. You could have felt alone, unworthy and unlovable. Say you struggled with getting decent grades because you had difficulties reading or understanding complex problems and when you got your tests back with a below average grade, you started to tell yourself that you were dumb, stupid and you’ll never get far in life.

These are the stories that become the foundational backbone to our lives and affect the trajectory of it, whether we know it or not. We have been running on autopilot since childhood not stopping to take a pause and look at these beliefs and stories we have told ourselves for far too long. What these stories do is disconnect us from our true innate wisdom and sense of self. They betray us on every level because they are factually untrue. We believe that every human life has to fit in this premolded box and if something lay outside of it then it has to be wrong. I’m here to tell you, “it’s not.”

We have challenges giving ourselves grace in life. We are not all the same and yet we are all connected because we are all souls having a human experience. We try to make sense of why people do what they do and how it affects us. Most have no clue how their thoughts, words or actions impact us, possibly for the rest of our lives. We gather information and we make agreements about such information. That doesn’t mean the information is true. It’s our perception that feels true to us.

Some people struggled with not having money growing up, so now they chase money and buy things they can’t afford to look rich when they feel bankrupt within. Others only received praise from their parents when they did well in school and accomplished successes so they continue to chase the validation and approval from people they place of more importance than them while not even enjoying what they do or how they live. From a personal sense, I felt unworthy of receiving love so I chased it as I didn’t know how to love myself.

Have you done the same? Did you feel a sense of lack and to this day continue to live from that lacking place? Has living from that place allowed you to live a full, peaceful, joyful, abundant and self-loving life?

What I recognize in my own experience is that living from any sort of lacking space has only brought more lack and more dis-ease in my mind, body and spirit. Chasing love never made me actually feel loved because I was always manipulating some sort of myself to fit the idea of what that other person wanted me to be. I understand that I started to betray and abandon myself for external love that never truly could love the real me because I never loved the real me. Heck, I didn’t even know who the real me was. Do you?

Giving yourself the time and space to reflect on what stories you continue to tell yourself that hinders your fullest expression and true self to live your desired, most beautiful life is a pause worth taking. Turning off autopilot and viewing yourself through the eyes of a most dear friend that would be compassionately honest about what they see from their perspective can really open your eyes and attune all senses to bring you back within your authentic being.

We aren’t meant to live by the stories of our past if they are not aiding in our advancement of growth for good in this world. We are meant to re-read and rewrite the narrative to what works for us now. We have the power to change our lives at any point from our teens and into our 90’s. Never stop re-writing for the greater good and betterment of your future.

So…what story are you still telling yourself today?