Oh the stories we hang on to....
My client and I have been talking a lot about stories lately. She recognized she is holding on to an old life story that just simply does not serve her, but she's finding it really hard to shake.
I found these words of wisdom from Buddhist teacher angel Kyodo williams and shared them with my client.
They are so powerful I want to share them here too so that you can know it's just not worth being held back by old limiting stories that no longer serve.
Rev. Angel describes how clinging to harmful stories may increase our suffering:
"The movies we replay in our heads—held on to from lives past—cause us to recycle stories that no longer serve us, if they ever did.
We run these stories over and over again and like hamsters on a wheel; we go nowhere in our inner life development, and as a result we suffer as adults from the wounds of our childhood.
Slowly these toxic stories crowd out the potential for joy and ease that is the birthright of every human being…. If we simply give ourselves over to this narrative, to the storyline of “Uns and Nots”—unloved, unseen, unappreciated, unwanted, uncared for, not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough, not powerful, not rich enough, not the right color or gender or position or class—then we abdicate the one thing that can reposition our relationship to the entire experience of our life: responsibility.
I often say, “It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility.” It is quite true that there are many conditions in life that confer a less-than-desirable experience.
But it is also true that at the end of your days on this planet, your life will have been lived only by you. How you experience whatever conditions life hands you correlates directly to how much responsibility you choose to take.
None of us can control all (if any) of the conditions, but we can choose how we experience the conditions we find ourselves in.
If we do not begin to debunk the deep inner myth that many of us carry that we do not deserve greater joy, love, or ease in our lives because we are _______ (fill in the blank with your choice of Uns or Nots), then we condemn ourselves to the role of victims in our own movies. [1] "
If you, or someone you know, just needs some encouragement and a few specific tools to start debunking those old stories, I can help.
Click on the Book Now link to set up a time to chat with me.
🧡 I'd love that.
[1] angel Kyodo williams, foreword to Valerie Mason-John, Detox Your Heart: Meditations for Healing Emotional Trauma, rev. ed. (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2017), ix, x.
Comments