How to Tell a New Story

We all have a story. In fact, we have millions – experiences in our lives that we have woven into our identity and expectations of the world around us due to the meaning we have given to them. Our personal stories work like cultural stories do – they shape us, create our value systems, warn us about dangers, the same way myths and legends carve out our societal norms and boundaries.

I am fascinated by stories. It is a central theme – an obsession, almost – that acts as a compass and lens of my life. I love listening to stories, hearing other’s tales, trying to understand why people act and the stories behind those actions.

It is the cornerstone of my work, my relationships, the nagging chatter in my mind. What is the story that’s being told?

My life is undergoing a significant shift. It’s been in the works for years…forever, really. The Big Bang, perhaps. Some inciting incident, as Joseph Campbell would call it, that started it all, that shifted the landscape, that called something to action. I don’t know where stories really begin, but I know that my own story can be framed as of late with that profound transitional shift that occurred one morning in May, when my daughter lost consciousness and I lost my grip on my “world”.

The shift as of late has a murkier beginning. For the purpose of framing the narrative, let’s say it really started the day my husband decided to get sober. It’s a moment in time I can identify, and the energy shift in our lives was palpable. And I can say that because a decision was made, and that decision was to change. To transform. To stop a cycle of repetition. To begin that elemental Hero’s Journey.

It wasn’t my decision, but it made me realize how much of my life I put in the hands of other people’s decisions. Other people’s journeys.

Change is incredibly difficult. Why? Because as humans we are designed to operate on an internal program that makes action more efficient. Our brains, our wiring, takes in information and then integrates that information to form networks and systems that, in turn, help us to make decisions quickly and productively. These systems are our internal priority structures. They work like Cascading Style Sheets, making logical “if, then” choices based on a hierarchical system of what matters most to us, or, more accurately, what we believe to be true about ourselves and the world.

When we experience things in our lives that cause emotional reactions, these experiences are imprinted on our psyche. The bigger the emotion, the more our brains decide that the experience is important to remember on a systemic level. When we experience falling in love – that feeling of excitement and stimulation – we remember. This is even more true for pain, fear, loss, trauma. When we are shaken to the core, we remember, and internally our systems adapt to this new information to attempt to protect us in the future from the same experience.

These experiences become our stories, and they form our realities. Reality is hard to shake. It is what grounds us, makes sense of the chaos and infinite amounts of data around us. Our “reality” is who we are, what we expect, how we interpret energy, all these things. Each of our realities overlap, but they are never mirror images. We are not living in the same “world” as one another, because we have a million different experiences that have shaped our own unique lens and filter to this data.

To change is to adapt new stories about this reality.

Traumatic events cause an immediate shift in our programming. When you experience extreme pain or loss, your body responds and reassesses belief systems that no longer apply. We internalize a threat, our cells remember, and we become someone “new” – someone that now views the world and themselves in a new way.

But what if that trauma or experience “adapts” us to a new threat that isn’t there? What if the new story we tell ourselves is counterproductive?

And what about all those stories we have told ourselves since childhood that we aren’t even aware of? The ones that form the basis of how we treat others and ourselves?

And here’s the real kicker – what about all those beliefs that we are aware that we hold that we want to let go of and can’t seem to, no matter how illogical they may be?

I have an exhaustively self-reflective mind. I analyze everything to death. It can be a liability, but it serves me, as well. It allows me to evaluate my own perspective on things so that I can, in turn, understand more about the views of others, my own hypocrisies, and opportunities to change.

And yet, I can tell you that my psyche is a stubborn, unrelenting beast of a thing. I get it. I understand how it works. I am passionate about bettering myself, and yet all I seem to do is preach about it. Explain all the angles and stay in the exact same spot.

For me, it is an absolute repulsion to discomfort. Change is incredibly uncomfortable because our bodies – our cells – are working on a program to keep us making the same choices. They are protecting us from the dangers we have programmed into us previously that have hurt us before. They are trying to take the reins on our lives, assuming they know better than our analytical mind that is attempting to update the program.

Here's one – I want to lose weight. I’ve wanted to lose weight, for health reasons, for years. Since COVID, where I “became victim” to the nagging boredom of living in isolation and coped by rewarding myself with wine and cheese and chocolate (I deserved it, after all). Then there was about a year I spent in a hospital room with my daughter, again left with minimal options for pleasure and fulfillment than stimulating my tastebuds. And so, I’ve done the things – I’ve started program after program, ran hours a day, counted my calories, changed our meal plans, only to find myself slipping right back to square one every single time.

No commitment. Why? Because my program – the person I think I am at a cellular level – is overweight. She eats chocolate and drinks wine. She identifies as a “fit fat” person. She loves to exercise and loves even more to eat. She thinks she deserves rewards at the end of the day, and those rewards are dopamine fixes from food. It’s who she is. That’s her story.

It’s been my story for my entire life. Food is pleasure, and I deserve pleasure, and the consequences of that don’t come higher on that “Style Sheet” of prioritization than that immediate gratification.

Here’s another story. I am paralyzed by a fear of being disliked. It’s tribal instincts, but it’s also programming from my childhood. So is the need to validate my actions. I was raised to be respectful and kind and compassionate, which meant following the rules and earning the approval of others. But as an overly analytical person, I’ve worked on dissecting who exactly makes the rules for years - who has the “right” approach to things - and I think it’s safe to say in this day of information overload, that’s not exactly easy to figure out. And so, I play small and apologetic because, God forbid, I get it wrong, piss someone off, and alienate myself from the tribe.

In the end, I try to tell new stories, but I don’t take action. I don’t do the things. I don’t commit to a new story I just talk about the possibility of one. I plan. I imagine. I preach.

Our family has been going through change, but I have been holding back. I’m the one sermonizing, but I’m not the one actually living the difference. My husband’s done the hard work – he’s faced his demons, taken bold action, accepted the consequences, and his story is transforming.

Lately, my daughter, too, is going through the process. And it terrifies me, because her bold actions, her sense of agency, is shifting her landscape. What if she gets hurt? What if she alienates herself? What if I can’t control what happens to her?

And there it is – control.

Our stories are our sense of control on our world. Even old stories that no longer serve us at the very least give us a sense of regulation. We may not be happy, but at least we are comfortable. Safe.

Changing our stories means taking real risk. It means inevitably losing ground before you gain new footing. It means encountering what William Bridges calls “the Neutral Zone.” We have to dangle in the discomfort of not knowing the direction of the new narrative. The old has to die before the new can be born.

There is grief in letting go. But I can tell you, watching my family make the choices they have to boldly go where they haven’t before for the sake of their own well-being, willing to take the risk of telling a new story and not yet knowing where that will lead, is so inspiring. It shines a harsh, revealing light on my own hypocrisy – as a Coach, a Writer, a Mother. We are not here to lead the stories other have of us – we are here to live out our own. To write our own narrative. To let the right audience resonate, and the others be damned.

Our stories are our lives, but they don’t happen to us. We get to choose. We get material to work with and we get to write the rules and we get to mold it into any way we see fit. But if we aren’t deliberate and aware, we end up letting others tell our stories the way they choose to. We go along with it. We fall victim to the programs and a slave to the past.

Telling a new story begins by being willing to let go to the old one. For me, this has always been the challenge. Burning a bridge, closing a door, risking losing ground or a track record or a good reputation. Starting over. Being alone. It takes courage, but the alternative is staying stuck, cycling through the same patterns and never evolving into something better.

We must first leave home in our Hero’s Journey to metamorphosis. We must be willing to let the old self die and to take that first step into the unknown.