Life hack #25: Rewrite your story and set yourself free
Life hack #25: Rewrite your story and set yourself free
[00:00:00] Life hack #25. Rewrite your story and set yourself free. One of the hardest things that I learned in therapy was that I actually was responsible for a lot of my own pain in emotional relationships over the years, because I would hold on to the story of what happened to me. For example, if I was cheated on, if I was left for someone else, if I was betrayed in multiple ways, or, you know, even if just the love of my life broke up with me and then moved on and found someone else and married them.
Like these are all things that have happened, right, in the story of my life. And I would walk around in this, in therapy in my life and I would tell my story and then I'd meet new people and I would tell my story like, yeah, I've been cheated on. Yeah. I, you know, this is what happened to me. And one of the things that I realized through therapy was
the importance of the fact that we write our story, we write our own story in our own heads, right? We are not just an accumulation of the [00:01:00] things that happened to us. We also put a spin on it. Right. And so our default spin might be to absorb the victimhood might be to wear it almost like a badge of experience in life of, I went through this, right.
And I remember about a couple of years ago, I had a really hard time getting over a friendship betrayal of a friends with benefits. It wasn't even a romantic partner, but it was a severe betrayal for my emotional friendship. And I remember I was just walking around, you know, ruminating about it for months.
And I just couldn't accept the fact that this betrayal had happened. Like I was like, I can't believe he did this. I just, I can't believe he did this like every single day. And my therapist talked to me about how I need to rewrite my story and instead of just making it that what is another alternative explanation of events.
And so this is a person I don't talk to anymore, a person I haven't talked to in years, but. Instead of walking around owning that [00:02:00] betrayal like I earned it in a sense of I would feel like I was justified in carrying that wound and telling people about it because it was just something so serious that I went through.
But the power for me came when I realized that I could technically acknowledge that that's what happened, yes. But I could revisit and rewrite my story in a different way that technically does nothing for anyone else. The only thing it does is that sets me free. It sets me free from the victimhood, from the pain that is connected to that experience, that story. At first I was really reluctant to give up my story. You know, like, no, I was betrayed. I was treated terribly and I'm going to walk around and feel like, holy shit, I can't believe that just happened to me. But my life changes, my life gets less sad, less bitter, less angry, when I rewrite the story differently.
The reason rewriting your story is useful is because [00:03:00] it can actually move you away from stuck, negative, and blaming positions in life into one where you move forward to reach your dreams and goals.
So it can help you let go of negativity and allow you to take responsibility for your own life, which frees you from the anger and bitterness. So when I decided to rewrite my story back then, it was more about deciding that I am a resilient person and that I can withstand friendship betrayal and live to see another day.
So if you have just had a terrible break up, and I mean, this is across the spectrum, what could have happened to you, right. But if you were cheated on, if you were left for somebody else, if you were treated terribly, abused, used and then they just completely, completely replaced you with a whole new supply.
Were you emotionally discarded by somebody? Like there's so many ways you can get your heart broken and have betrayal and carry that around with you. And so instead of, for example, in my life, instead of walking around saying, here I am, you know, this guy freaking cheated on me. This [00:04:00] guy, you know, betrayed me like left, right, and center.
You know, I could walk around and own that. And I could take that story with me, but then I become constantly connected to the pain of that story. And if the story is instead, hey I survived a really brutal experience with somebody, and I'm feeling like I'm gonna be able to live and learn, I'm gonna be resilient.
So instead, the story isn't, oh, this happened to me. This happened to me. It's. Look what I survived. Look how I am able to thrive after experiencing something so serious, something so terrible. And so eventually after you tell yourself this story and remind yourself that you're actually just a resilient person, a resilient survivor, and that maybe you'll just be a little more clear eyed in the relationships you choose going forward, that's, that's not a terrible story at all.
And yet it's based on the same experience, right. And so when you realize that you are the one that's [00:05:00] taking the consequence of walking around with the negative, blaming, stuck stories, even if you've earned them, even if you feel like you should never have to let it go because that's what happened to you and you had what I get it, but you're the only one carrying that fucking baggage.
So when you decide that you want to live life instead of the principle of carrying the baggage, how about you just live with less baggage? How about you just let it go? How about you stop getting stuck in the story and rewrite it and give yourself a position of power and see how your world changes.
