Access Point <What's The Story?>
"When we cling to our stories - we choose the past over the present."
- James K. McPartland
We talk to ourselves all day long, often building upon the stories that we have been telling ourselves for years. Since one of the key functions of our brain is to make sense of the world around us, we file our experiences into memory and call upon them when similar events unfold in our daily lives. These associations further strengthen the memories and often lead us to believe that we know how things work, how people will behave, and how life really is. We tend to value predictability and thus draw conclusions quickly as life tends to be quite busy for most people. What we seemingly fail to see is how we call on the past to relate to the present. Essentially, we recreate the past every day and engage with life in ways that we have memorized over time. This unconscious approach robs us of present moment living and the possibility of new experiences.
Awareness of this process allows for a new story to be developed, one where you ask yourself questions such as: "what else could this mean", "what might I miss from this conversation if I judge the topic or the person based on my past", "what is it that this experience, and these people, are in my life to teach me"?
By the time we are 35 years old, we have essentially locked our memorized way of being into place. For the most part, we have had the high and low experiences of life and feel we have figured how the game is played. We run on autopilot. To break this habit requires a willingness to want to, an open mind, accountability buddies, and an acceptance that you get to chose a more empowering future.
