The Stories We Tell Others and Ourselves

For the hundreds of thousands of years before books and computers, we had stories. Stories linked us to the past, organized the present, created religions and paved the way for our future. Stories allowed us to connect with each other’s experience and humanity as we met on long journeys around and out of Africa, and as we populated new worlds. The anatomy and physiology of our brain grew as a byproduct of both our need and our zest to share our experiences. As we trial-and-errored our way to new skills, we told our stories about those efforts and results with feelings of seriousness, passion, heartbreak or hilarity, and the new brain developed. This “new brain,” the neo-cortex, is the part of the brain that separates us from other animals.

So it is here, on walks, in work, over meals in caves and palaces, through stories that the new brain grew. We dream. We developed judgement, vision. And it was our stories that informed, instructed, organized, governed, and to this day, inspire. And the best part is that we can still use our storytelling to activate our brains and create new results for ourselves and our world.
Storytelling is in our DNA. Telling and listening creates the production of the endorphin serotonin, the brain neurotransmitter that creates bonds of trust between people. Stories are the most powerful way humans communicate. They give birth to possibility. In stories, we connect with others, interpret our events, and create a road map to our unique and collective futures. The stories we construct give direction to our lives. The stories teach and model compassion and action, leaders and leadership, producers and production. The great story tellers have a vision or idea, share that vision in order to find others who will make it their own, and help bring the idea to fruition. 

The best way of dealing with loneliness, depression, make more sales, create friendships worth nurturing, enjoy life is to listen and talk. Talk to friends, share stories. Talk to your spheres of influence. Ask a better question. Focus your listening. We all have a psychological and a biological need to be heard and to speak.

Numbers of suicides, physical violence, depression are all off the charts. Much of it has to do with not being heard and not having relationships where the personal stories can be told. Often people go to therapy only when they are stuck in old stories and can’t figure out how to escape or create themselves anew.Yet, if they seriously want to replace the ferris wheel of ups-and-downs arriving at the same gate, they can benefit at anytime by using a professional coach, therapist or trusted friend, someone who can help them change their story. Fresh stories and fresh perspectives create possibilities with plans for a bigger and more fulfilling future.

Through telling our own stories, we can choose and facilitate our own change. We each have the ability to write a new story for ourselves. In each moment, regardless of the source of any feeling, we write that moment’s story in our head. We are the auteur of the story as we will remember and as we will share it. It’s NEVER what happens that matters, it’s HOW WE VIEW IT, the STORY we tell, that empowers us or separates us from our power. We can decide what part of our stories to change and thereby establish new beliefs about ourselves and our place in the world. We transform our identities according to our chosen new stories, to make ourselves more enlightened, skilled, thoughtful, strong or confident. And we can make these new, elevated possibilities of ourselves the go-to, default mode.

If you can remember a pivotal point where you started experiencing a self defeating belief, do this:Relax for at least a few minutes. Focus on your breath. Then imagine the negative experience you feel is holding you back. Get that picture into clear focus. Then slowly and gradually make that picture smaller and smaller, until you can no longer see it. Repeat 9-10 times. Then replace that picture with you making the better choice or action. Repeat 9-10 times. This picture will become more clear and more dominant. You are creating different and more positive neural pathways. You will act as directed by your new visions.Instead of focusing on what you don’t want, this exercise is about telling yourself what you do want. This approach uses the neuroscience basic premise of neuro-plasticity. The brain is constantly changing. 

Memories aren’t of what happened. Memories are of how you remember those activities. Change your thinking, change your life.Hypnosis uses this idea of plasticity to selectively reinforce the sound, the sight and the feel of success. The more specific and clear the goal to be achieved or habit to be changed is, the more effective the session is. Repetition once or twice daily is enough to create new neural pathways changing almost any habit or behavior within 1-3 weeks. Bottom line is that hypnosis will make change happen easier and faster.
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