How changing your story can change your life

We are all unreliable narrators of our lives at times, which can keep us prisoner within our own minds says American psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb. To break free, what we need to do is change the story we tell ourselves, about ourselves.

I watched a captivating TEDx talk by American psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb this week. Her talk is all about how we are wired to use stories to create meaning and make sense of our reality and the choices we make. Our brains do this to help us survive. 

Stories can be justifications that support our identity: “I have to stay in this job because I have loads of expenses to provide for, even though I’m miserable and hate going to work every day”. 

Stories can also provide answers to big questions that scare us to make us feel safe.  Religion is a form of story.  It tries to answer the questions of why we exist, what happens when we die and how do I live a good life now and afterlife when I die.  People choose to believe whatever story they feel comfortable with and helps them feel safe. And that’s okay. The reality is no one knows, but that doesn’t matter.

Gottlieb makes the point that we can all be unreliable narrators of our own lives at times. The temptation is to tell ourselves stories that we believe will help or protect us, but these aren't always accurate.

When we tell ourselves stories that are misleading, or incomplete or wrong, instead of providing clarity to our circumstances, they can really mess things up for us. They can make us see ourselves and our lives in a way that’s not helpful. 

“One of the most common stories we tell ourselves is how our freedom is being denied.”

Sometimes we tell ourselves that we are completely trapped, stuck in an impossible emotional jail cell by forces other than ourselves. It’s nasty, it’s not our fault and there’s nothing we can do about it.  And Lori reckons we do this a lot more than we think we do.

What we really want is freedom. But we justify not doing anything about it because we know there’s a catch. Pursuing freedom comes with responsibility and if we take responsibility for our role in the story, we might just have to change. And that takes effort and involves risk.  Our brain usually says no to this because its job is to help us conserve energy and avoid pain.  

We can overcome this problem by tricking our brains into taking action.  We do this by making the pain of standing still feel much worse than the perceived pain of taking action to change.

We do this consciously changing the narrative of the story we are telling ourselves and replacing it with one where we take responsibility and specify achievable actions.

Changing your story could sound like: “I’m feeling stuck in my role right now (responsibility). I’ll arrange to talk to my mate Pete about it this week. He’s good at seeing opportunities. I’ll ask him what he thinks and look to come up with some ideas of what to do next (doable actions)”. 

Taking responsibility and action to help alleviate ‘pain’ releases dopamine which fuels motivation. It’s how we begin to solve our problems. We all need a reason to do something that’s stronger than the choice of doing nothing. 

Our self-talk is one of the most powerful forces for motivating action or inaction. We are the editors of our story, and the cool thing is we can choose to have it play out any way we like.

But we need to pay attention to it. These stories often run in the background of our minds in the form of beliefs and can ‘feel’ right so we don’t challenge it. Don’t assume all the stories you tell yourself are helpful. Particularly where they cause you to feel stuck or trapped.  

Unlike a real jail cell, we all have the keys to unlock and escape the ones we create for ourselves.   And the key is to change our stories.

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Image courtesy of Lori Gottlieb TEDx talk, 2019