360 of Story

Story is very powerful.

Your story can keep up stuck, limited, defined.

But your story can also inspire you, remind you of your power, the powerful truth of you, comfort you, help you self-correct when other’s projections and definitions of you are trying to control or limit you.

You are totally in charge of your story, but conventional wisdom says your story is your story and you can’t change it, or the past.

And yet…

Have you ever read a book or seen a movie, loved it, and then read or watched it again, years later, noticing how “it” had changed? You saw different things then the first time?

That’s because you’d changed over time.

We are supposed to, by the way. We are meant to grow and change, mature and evolve as we go and grow through life.

The other most common experience of this is the conclusions, definitions, and assumptions we make as children about our parents; their choices, style, ways of doing things, etc.

At the time they seem self-evident, clearly accurate, and true. So much so, we unconsciously write them in stone as absolutes.

Then the day comes when you are the parent, and your kid is looking at you, drawing conclusions, definitions, and assumptions about you, writing them in stone in that very moment.

Then your parent-self can see your little-kid-self in your actual kid out in front of you, and adult-you in the present can see the panorama through the decades and stages of life, and poof — the story of your past changes. Because now you have a broader perspective.

When you’re paying attention, participating in your own thinking, perceiving and living, your past changes all the time. That’s what living does with you — growing, changing, maturing, evolving all the time. And it’s all a lot more satisfying, fun, fulfilling, when you are consciously participating in this LIVE/Living thing.

Some things don’t change — the family left for vacation and forgot you at home — but what that meant, what that means to and about you, to you, does change. Or at least, it can change, with your participation.

Often in a case like this, the story conclusion, meaning, proof, will be deprivation or neglect or too many kids for instance, but it could also come to mean parents are people, too; things happen and they don’t necessarily mean anything mean about anyone, or show you what a scamp you were to have hidden from them as they were leaving, testing them to see if they’d miss you, proving your little story about how stupid or mean they were, or a hundred million other possibilities.

The point is, you have been making all these conclusions, decisions, assumptions through your life about your self, life, other people, codifying all of it into absolutes about what happens in life — as if that’s how life is and always will be till the end of time. Sticking yourself, life & others to a bunch of limitations and impressions, conclusions, assumptions — not truths, as if they were truths, forever — and that is more restrictive than helpful.

Luckily, once you’re aware of this habit, these patterns of codifying and limiting life, self and others, you don’t have to buy into them anymore.

You learned how to mentally find and stick conclusions, definitions, assumptions by connecting dots the same way over and over again, repetitively. Repetition is another word for Practice.

So you already have the trail blazed; it’s just a matter of flipping the direction.

What’s that mean?

For instance, school and society have geared and trained us to be problem solvers in every aspect of life; by extension — all of life is a series of problems to solve. (Even old lady Grantham says that in Downton Abbey) To be a good problem solver is like a #1 Thing you MUST BE as an employee, supervisor, business owner, marketer, teacher, student — every role you can think of values problem solving above almost everything else.

And yet — life is not by nature a series of problems to solve. That is a Point of View, a conclusion, definition, assumption and projection, not a truth.

The fastest, easiest, most conclusive way to switch from limiting to unlimiting your experience of life and living is to ask a different question.

Instead of asking what’s wrong every 10 seconds, start asking what’s right here? What’s right in this situation? What’s right about how they are acting/talking/being, what’s right about how you’re being/what you’re saying or doing — in this moment?

At this point a lot of examples of how bad it would be to turn away from problem-solving flood up, but I invite you to allow them to, and without believing, resisting or defending any of them, or defending against this idea, to just try it for a while.

During your day, when something uncomfortable is happening in your head or body, ask: what’s right about (fill in the blank)

At first there’ll be a flood of what’s wrong with it because that’s where all the training and practice has been.

Just let all that flood on past, wash over, move on, and stay curious.

Let all the “what’s wrong,” flow on past, and keep steady to the question of what’s right about this. I promise you, you will get surprising information, a sense of more spacious possibilities and a lot of relief.