« We’re all prisonners of the story we tell to ourselves«
B. Werber
This quote resonated with a part of me that I was, am still and will always work on: the one that “screens” me, my brain, my way of thinking. The “me” that I create, the one that is the first to judge and the one that can build or break me. It’s a very rich subject and one of the main ideas behind this project which is my blog.
What we are and how WE help ourselves. The knowledge that we have of ourselves is the one we should rely on more than we rely on any other persons’ opinion of us. But for that…of course, we must know ourselves…and also not be influenced by other people’s opinions or, as I do, by what they MIGHT think
Writing on this subject can go in so many different ways, so I’ll just try to stick to the message that this quote sends: what we think we are can imprisons us, in a way.
I think that I can start by saying that who we are is a mix of what we built ourselves and the outside influences. We can argue that what we build ourselves is also made out of the outside influences, but there is always our own inner core, we are born with it. This makes me think of my first article on authenticity.
Depending on our course in life, the core of what we are is enriched by experiences that we go through. We’re all bits and pieces of stories that we lived, things that we’ve seen, places and people that we loved or hated, all of that generated feelings and emotions that shaped us in a certain way. All of it made us decide what to stick with and what to leave aside, what types of people we like to be around and what types of people we avoid. Our likes and dislikes say a lot about who we are. Principles are also built as time goes by, starting with the education that the parents give us first of all and then continuing with the education that we give ourselves through the choices that we make.
Getting back to the main subject: the image that we have of ourselves, the story that we tell ourselves about….ourselves.
We need to have a story. We need to be able to answer questions regarding our likes and dislikes, like during job interviews, so we create this story based on our life achievements, our principles, our ideas of what the world around us is, on everything that we experienced and how we got out of it: poorer or richer. Now, depending on our “cores” we can either create a showcase that is universally accepted and stick with during all our life, or we can keep it “work in progress” as long as we live. I like to think that I’m part of those who are “work in progress”, mainly because one of my strong beliefs is that we never stop changing as a person, there are our past versions, our present ones and there are our future ones. Again: the core remains the same and I also strongly believe that that one will never change.
The idea is: once we reached full maturity and we have a fairly amount of life experiences, do we choose to stick to that version of ourselves for the rest of our lives or do we choose to still “investigate” through doubts and by questioning our choices and the meaning behind them?
This quote made me think of the fact that if we choose a certain version of ourselves, we are “trapped” by it and we’ll refuse everything that will go against it. The question is: why?
That made me think about the capacity that a person has to review themselves, regularly, one that, for me, is indispensable if we want to be able to keep up with the world around us, because everything changes constantly. Change is constant, right?
And continuing with my reflections on the issue: not reviewing ourselves is a choice that is made out of fear. What if I’m not enough? What if I don’t fit in? What will the others think? This is the trap in itself: our fear of letting the picture that we have of ourselves, change and then face another one and accept it.
It’s a very sad thing to know that you’re your only limit (that in itself could be a quote but for me it’s more of a line that is part of a bigger picture). Keeping a version that is stuck in time cannot be mentally healthy, at one point a shift will occur, between us and the world around.
Continuing on the issue, I’m thinking of a concept that I’ve stumbled upon frequently, when analyzing people and drawing conclusions. The concept of “the doubt”. It’ seen as a negative thing and therefore matched with negative situations and a state of mind that is unstable, the incapacity to decide what is what, the incapacity to have a clear opinion on something and most of all, on ourselves. Not having any doubts about our opinions and ideas, thinking that they are the best ones and that no one can argue with them, is, in my opinion, the worst thing that we can do to our own brain. We deliberately stop its internal development by imposing what we thought that, at one time, as the ONLY version of the facts.
The quote is deeper than what I managed to express until now through my writing. It “touches” all the notions I’ve mentioned, but it still is not fully developed.
When I read it, I had a vivid image of someone looking in a mirror and thinking “this is me”. Then my thoughts went in different directions and I’m trying now to find the main one, which is difficult because it was linked to something I had realized at the time, a revelation of some sort.
We all know the line “keep telling yourself that”, we’ve heard it in movies and read it here and there.
It’s revealing even if cliché. And it is linked to what I thought at the time: we are telling ourselves a story, one that matches with all of our interior doubts and fears (because we all have them we just don’t admit it) so we can survive…and it might sound dramatic, but it’s a survival of the spirit that is inside every one of us and of the ego also (and that is one important part, the one that is so very difficult to manage that it can singlehandedly destroy us and the relationships we have with others around us)
This story we’re telling ourselves, shields us and at the same time…imprisons us. We stick with what we think is the best version of ourselves, the one that makes us say “I’m ok as a person” and that meets the society’s needs and expectations
I’m at an age where change, even if said to still be possible (the key words being “said to”), is a very scary thing for me, I know it and I’m not proud of it. But I have too many scars, and still opened wounds, and they’ve outran the successes, those things that would motivate me to go further and develop instead of holding on and saying “I’m done”. I’m holding on to my “patches” in a way, so they don’t fall and let the wounds opened, and I look at my scars and think twice. Twice being just a word that comes out of the expression “think twice”. I don’t think twice I think 10 times more than I should and that makes me an overthinker and makes this text no longer about the initial subject