The stories we tell ourselves determines our quality of life
A while ago I attended a webinar by Tony Robbins, he said something that really stuck with me…Tony says “the only thing keeping you from what you want in the world is the story you keep telling yourself. In order to change your life, you need to change your story.”
He states that “our limiting beliefs keep us suffering. Our beliefs create and our beliefs destroy the quality of life we want.” Our beliefs about ourselves have so much power over us.
Tony suggests, in order for us to create lasting change we need to understand the principle of identity. He believes that our “identity” is the strongest force in the human personality which is needed to stay consistent with how we define ourselves.
We often define ourselves by what we are not - if this is negative then we strive to keep that belief because that is our identity. We want more for ourselves but believe this identity we have created is “who I am” so you stay comfortable. In other words we sabotage anything we subconsciously believe does not fit the identity, beliefs and stories we have created about ourselves. Consequently, our beliefs and thoughts become self fulfilling.
A way in which we keep hold of these beliefs is through the language we use and how we speak about ourselves. We all engage in emotions, behaviours or activities we are not proud of but we begin to take ownership of them. For example we say “I am a procrastinator” as opposed to “I procrastinated” and “I am angry” rather than “I feel angry”. We constantly repeat these beliefs, weaving it into our story of who we are, we make it part of our identity and as we have already established, there’s no more powerful force than identity.
I have been trying to become more aware of how I speak to myself and about myself, listening out to the narrative I am creating. The story I was frequently telling myself was that I have no self control when it comes to my eating habits or binge watching tv series and that I lacked consistency in life. I noticed the actions or inaction I was taking to prove this and reaffirm this identity I had formed.
I wanted to change this and in order to do this, I needed to disprove the beliefs about myself I created. I did this by thinking of examples when I have shown consistency and commitment to disprove this inaccurate and distorted view of myself I had.
I thought back upon when I had a daily commitment to go for a walk and to read 10 pages of a self development book a day. Whilst I have periods or days where I haven’t done it consistently (like right now), I have in the past committed to being consistent for 75 days in a row whilst doing the mental resilience challenge, 75hard. This is the longest streak I can remember. This commitment to myself demonstrated self control and determination, the opposite of the story I have been telling myself. I currently have a weekly commitment to write a blog post once a week, as of yet, I have not broken this commitment. This is reaffirming the new identity of being a consistent person and proving to myself that I do not break commitments to myself. This is my new story.
As I mentioned above, of course there have been times when I have fallen off track with these habits. I used to believe this meant failure, affirming I have no self control and that I am inconsistent, but I see it differently now. I recognise I am committed to get back on track even when I don’t want to. I recognize that I’ve fallen off track, but this is not who I want to be and I persevere to get back on track. This commitment to continue realign to my goals demonstrates my true character. It’s the renewing of the commitment time and time again. It’s choosing not to allow this “failure” to be final.
What is the story you have been telling yourself? What beliefs about yourself do you have? Do they align with who you want to be?
I want to invite you to examine the stories you have been telling yourself and to rewrite them.
Change your story, change your life.
With love,