Ever wondered how your personal narratives impact your everyday actions and decisions?
The stories we tell ourselves can help us or hold us back. During my recent travels, I found that my own stories - the ones about my abilities, my insecurities, my past - had a significant impact on my thoughts and actions. These tales, often sculpted by past experiences and upbringing, can either give us the push we need or trap us in a cage of self-limitation.
Let's talk about consciousness, about self-awareness, and the power it yields. It's about owning our stories, questioning them, stripping them down and recognizing that the truth from your past may not be the truth of your present and the old stories are no longer useful.
This is the path to releasing ourselves from those self-imposed limitations—those negative narratives holding us back.
As this episode wraps up, I urge you to carry this conversation forward, share it with others, and join us next week as we continue to explore this incredible journey of human growth. Remember, every story has the potential for change, and that change starts with awareness. Let's challenge our stories, together.
What is up? Hello there, my name is Jessica Paching Bunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more. Hello and good day to you. This is episode number 159 of the Brain Body Resilience podcast, and I am your host, jpb.
Speaker 1:
I want to discuss another reflection that I had from my recent travel adventures, and this was noticing the stories that I tell myself, that I rehearse. I noticed on this trip that the stories I told myself, the ones that I kept repeating about my abilities, what I was not good at, what I was too nervous to do or try or do well, these kept coming up over and over again and I noticed that I would just repeat them aloud or to myself so many times, and I noticed that it wasn't my strengths or things that I'm good at or confident in or familiar with. These were not the things that I repeated over and over again that I insured were in the front of my mind as I kept repeating them. The stories that we tell ourselves can either help us or keep us stuck, and I wanted to explore that a little bit more here with you today. For me, I have had stories of struggle, stories of lack and scarcity, because at one time that was absolutely real for me For a large part of my life. Those were things I knew and the things that I prepared for. But those are not the things that are my baseline in my life right now, even though I'm in a place in my life where I don't have to struggle. In the same way, I am not wondering how I will pay my bills or if I can afford groceries.
Speaker 1:
This was true for the early part of my adult life, and these were stories that I heard growing up about how everything is a struggle as I drink powdered milk for anyone who remembers or knew what that was and heard the same story over and over again from my mom about how she didn't eat while she was away. She was a long haul truck driver and was gone, sometimes for months at a time, and she was also a single mom, so that also adds to. She would tell these stories of how she didn't eat, except at this one truck stop that offered a free breakfast when you filled up your tank so that she could pay the bills. So we had a place to live, or she would tell these stories of anywhere. She went anywhere, anytime. She went anywhere and couldn't afford to be there, but would spend money on a stuffed animal for us. And while these stories come from a mom who would do anything and did everything she knew how to provide for us, these stories also communicated to young children a threat of constant hunger, never having enough to be safe and secure, and even that it was because of us that she went hungry or didn't have the things she needed.
Speaker 1:
So all of that to say that the stories we learn from our developmental years are a roadmap to how we see the world, how we understand the world around us, and when that's a lasting experience, our nervous system adapts and that becomes our baseline. Our system will continue to protect us from things long after they are no longer a threat, because that is the pattern that has been established and practiced for so long. The body holds on to those emotions and unprocessed stresses and fears. Those things don't just go away on their own, which is why bringing awareness to ourselves, the thoughts that are going through our heads and the stories that we rehearse about what we are capable of, who we are and what we deserve, along with how we feel in our body as we recall these stories that continue to shape us. Bringing awareness to what our story is gives us the chance to move on to a different chapter, or maybe a whole new book. When we focus on the past, we are stuck there. When we focus on the present, it allows us to do the work to create a future that we actually want. Until we can differentiate between the truth of the past from the truth of the present, we will be stuck. And I've said it a million times, I will continue to say it awareness has to come first. Until we know something is there, we can't choose what we want to do with it. So, as I noticed the stories I was telling myself while I was away on this adventure, I started to ask myself is this true right now? Is this who I am, or just something I experience? Sometimes?
Speaker 1:
Your nervous system is always seeking balance and regulation and looking for something familiar to soothe and do what it needs to do, to protect and regulate in a way that it knows how. And old, familiar stories, even though they aren't true anymore, aren't helpful to what you want. Now they are familiar, and when we have stories about how we are not capable, we're not good at that, we don't have enough. All of this is to keep us safe, to keep us from getting hurt, to keep us from jumping into the unknown where there might be danger. When we take responsibility for ourselves as grown people who have agency, this means owning our wins, owning the losses, the insecurities, fears, hopes, dreams, joy, strengths and the self-imposed limitations. It means taking responsibility for the stories of where we come from, how it has always been or what our family is like. And no, you can't change the things that shape you, and that's not the goal. When we recognize what the stories are, we get to choose how much we believe them, how much we let them lead and ask the questions are these stories helping me or holding me back?
Speaker 1:
We live and we do learn, even if that learning is subconscious and lives only in the body. Every single experience we have is an opportunity for us to learn. Either consciously or unconsciously, we are always learning. Our system is always learning, taking in the information, adapting, trying to keep us safe. And so when we're paying attention and bringing awareness to the thoughts we're having, the feelings and sensations that that brings up the stories that we're rehearsing. We can choose to add information to the story. We can learn to believe in our ability to take the driver's seat in our own life, and then when we hear that voice asking what if I can't, we can answer back with the question of what if I can? Our view is always going to be limited by past experience, so the ideas we have about what is possible for us is based on past experiences and lived reality that has already passed. So we can challenge that and remember that being able to self soothe, self self soothe and regulate the stress and anxiety that are necessary to be able to step back and recognize the stories that we are telling and then to challenge the ones that don't fit anymore, that is our superpower. We have to be able to create this space to see what the story is and then challenge it.
Speaker 1:
This was a shorty, but something I really wanted to address. This is all I have for today. Thank you for being here. If you found this episode useful, please do share it with somebody else who might also find it useful. We will do this again next week. Until then, I am wishing you a beautiful week, jpb out.