Highlights
- Do you feel like something’s missing? (0:10)
- Two stories about stories (0:35)
- About the stories we tell ourselves (3:25)
- The facts about facts (4:30)
- Your turn… (5:10)
Do you feel like something’s missing?
Do you have everything you want in life? Do you feel like something’s missing?
A career? A relationship? A home? A family? More money? Love for your body?
If the answer is no, you don’t have everything you want, then my next question is: What’s holding you back?
Do you even know?
Two stories about stories
I remember when I was single, and I wanted so badly to be in a great relationship. I mistakenly believed that I didn’t have what I wanted because I wasn’t good enough – and by “good enough,” I mean thin enough.
I based the reason that I wasn’t in a love-of-a-lifetime relationship on the story in my head that I needed to be thin in order to be loved. Oh, was I wrong!
Recently, I posted on Facebook that I’ve had my Blue Yeti microphone for 18 months now, and I’ve looked at it every day. Every single day. It sat on my desk staring at me. I put a cute little note on it, reminding me what I bought it for – to blog and share funny stories. But did I use it…? Nope!
And I’m just launching my podcast now. Why is that?
Because I thought I had to do it all by myself, and I had no idea where to start. The belief that I had to do it all by myself was very overwhelming to me. I kept telling myself that if I bought a mic, then I could learn how to do it and – shazam! – it would be magically done … if only I could figure it out!
The truth is that launching a podcast is WAY beyond my technical abilities and what I’m capable of doing … and frankly, I’m just not interested in figuring it out. It’s not my area of expertise, but I still beat myself up for not getting it done.
I was always telling myself, “I’m smart, I SHOULD be able to figure it out. I already know how to edit a recording, and it might take me 6 hours to edit one 15-minute recording, but I CAN do it.”
Every time I would even think about recording a podcast, it felt so heavy and hard, like I had a heavy, smelly, wet blanket thrown on top of me. GROSS!!!! No wonder I couldn’t get anything done.
I should have clued in to the heavy feeling and pivoted in a different direction, but NOOOOOO! I was committed to my story, and the only way for me to launch this podcast was to FORCE myself to learn every single aspect of podcasting – UGH!
I wanted to throw myself on the ground like a little kid and throw the biggest tantrum anyone has ever seen.
And the result is that I stared at a microphone for 18 months, and you’ve had to wait to hear all my stories. That’s not doing either of us any good.
About the stories we tell ourselves
The truth is that we all create stories in our minds, and we believe these stories to be absolutely 100% true – and they’re not.
I’m going to let that sink in for a minute.
…
The stories we construct in our minds are not true.
The belief that they are true is what keeps us stuck and not getting what we want in life.
My belief that I HAD to be thin in order to find love … lie! Total lie! Big lie! Huge lie! All a lie!
The only facts in that story were that I do have a body, I was not in a relationship, and I believed something that was not serving me. Once I started to see my own greatness and believe in myself, I met my husband.
In my story about the podcast, the only fact is that I owned a podcasting microphone. All the rest of it was a story and not a fact.
The facts about facts
Facts are things that every single person on the planet will agree with.
EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON.
If everyone doesn’t agree, then it’s not a fact.
We see this all the time when multiple people describe the same conversation, and they all heard or remembered different things – one person thinks someone was being nasty, while another person thinks they were being strong, while a third person thinks they were being direct. The only fact is that a person said words.
Sometimes we have to distill it down into its simplest form and strip away all of the story.
Your turn…
So, what are your stories that are not serving you or are keeping you stuck? Try this:
- Ask yourself what you want.
- Then ask yourself why you don’t have what you want.
- Listen for the stories and pull out the facts.
The answers might surprise you. But the results can be total freedom!
Get The “What’s Holding You Back?” Handout (pdf)
Thanks for reading today, and let’s continue the conversation in my Find Your Feisty Podcast Community on Facebook.
xoxo,
Shawna
p.s. If you’ve ever wondered how gratitude can change your life, I’m offering a FREE 4-week program starting on November 5 called The Month of Gratitude. Each week, we focus on a different aspect of how practicing gratitude can change our lives. Click here for the details.
