Do you have stories about yourself or the world that define your life? Are there certain patterns that keep on repeating throughout your life?
“When you hold onto a script that doesn’t serve you, you leave no space to write a new one that does.” – Jennifer Ho-Dougatz
Many of us have old stories or beliefs about ourselves and the world that rule our reactions and how we perceive things. We develop these beliefs in order to make sense of our circumstances, or in response to what others tell us. These beliefs or stories often enable us to overcome, or at least explain, difficult situations.
For example, a client who grew up in a war-torn country developed the belief that the world was a cruel place and that she could only depend on herself. This gave her the strength she needed to leave when she was 17, despite being terrified and alone. Decades later and living in very different conditions, however, this belief led her to fear and try to control the unknown, and was holding her back from thriving. Another client, who grew up in a large family with a mother who was overwrought with meeting the physical needs of her many children and couldn’t tend to their emotional needs, learned that his needs didn’t matter. Decades later, he would lose his sense of self in the face of his family’s demands, and was struggling to find his own identity.
The following are five tips for understanding and letting go of your old stories, so you can make space for new possibilities in your life:
# 1: Track recurrent patterns and internal conflicts
Whenever we experience patterns that keep on repeating themselves – be they in our relationships, work environments, or living situations – there is likely to be an old wound that’s wanting healing.
Start writing down conflicts or difficult situations you are currently dealing with or have in the past. Is there something familiar about this situation? Once you have listed some of your struggles, see if you can identify similar patterns that keep coming up for you. Track those patterns to determine if they occur most often in one type of situation (for example, at work or in your personal relationships) or if they are present across the board.
# 2: Make a list of your beliefs
Now that you’ve started identifying recurrent patterns in your life, I invite you to explore the beliefs about yourself that may be at the root of those patterns. One way to do that is to notice the stories and feelings that come up for you around the situations you listed in # 1. How do you feel? Invisible, like your needs don’t matter? Like others can’t handle you, that people are manipulative, that you are less than others? Next to the list of your patterns, start making a list of the beliefs about yourself and the world that you have identified.
# 3: Trace the beliefs back in time
Now that you have identified your beliefs, track them back in time to when you first started feeling something similar. What was happening at the time for you? How were you learning that your needs didn’t matter, or that the world is cruel, or that you would always be abandoned? They may have developed as a result of one traumatic incident, or of multiple similar incidents over time.
# 4: Acknowledge your story for its intention
We develop our beliefs and coping strategies for good reasons. And oftentimes, our automatic responses and ways of understanding the world were generated at a very young age. Send empathy to your younger self for the circumstances that led them to create the narrative they did at the time. If appropriate, also send acknowledgment to your story for having served you in some way. For example, it pushed you to try to be the best, or stay under the radar, or to put others first. And let your younger self know that your circumstances have changed, and that if you let go of the old story, they will be able to get what they most wanted back then but couldn’t have. For example, love, validation, the ability to be completely themselves.
# 5: Start writing your new narrative
Look at your list of beliefs and patterns. These are the unconscious blueprints with which you are running your life. It’s like a computer that’s still running on a very old operating system. And begin to write the new beliefs and new narrative you would like to have about yourself and the world.
When you feel the old story and feelings comping up again, I invite you to pause. Send your younger self love. Remind yourself that just because the old belief feels true (since you’ve been replaying this track over and over again for a long time) doesn’t mean it is true. And look over your list of new beliefs, picking one or two you want to focus on anchoring. Repeat this new belief to yourself whenever you notice yourself running the old program — until someday, this new belief becomes your new baseline.
“Don’t spend your life believing a story about yourself that you didn’t write that’s been fed to you – that simply you’ve accepted, embedded and added to. Let the story go and there beneath is the real you…and your unique gifts, heart and path that await you.”
– Rasheed Ogunlaru
Unraveling Old Stories
I unravel the old stories
Reified into my veins as truth.
As I untangle gnarled knots
Of “I can’t” and “not enough,”
Of overwhelm and anxiety,
They stream out
In colorful garlands
Of ease, trust, and adventure,
Paving the way
To new horizons —
Free from the fetters
Of my past.
© Jenny Brav
