Rewriting My Story

Article

Most of us never consciously sit down and write that story. Instead, it develops slowly through childhood experiences, relationships, successes, disappointments, mistakes, losses, rejection, and the thousands of conclusions we draw from what happens to us. Eventually those conclusions become so familiar that we stop recognizing them as interpretations and begin treating them as facts. I am not good enough. I always mess things up. I missed my opportunity. I should have done more with my life. I am too old to change. This is simply who I am. This is just my life.

Rewriting our story does not require us to deny reality, excuse our mistakes, or turn painful memories into something pleasant. Some chapters really were painful. Some choices we made had consequences. Some people hurt us, and sometimes we hurt other people. Rewriting means becoming willing to look at the whole story rather than allowing its darkest paragraphs to become its title.

But you still have influence over the person who walks into those circumstances.

Rewriting My Story

Worksheet

Now imagine that same man returning to the experience years later. He still does not pretend the business succeeded. He may acknowledge poor decisions, missed warning signs, or things he wishes he had done differently. But perhaps he can also see that he survived the financial fear, learned to ask for help, became less impulsive, discovered who remained beside him when life became difficult, and eventually learned skills that made him wiser. The business still failed. The facts did not change. The meaning did.

This is not positive thinking. It is fuller thinking. Sometimes the question that begins this process is simply, What else is true? • I was rejected. What else is true? • I made a terrible mistake. What else is true? • My marriage ended. What else is true?

Those things belong to your story. But they do not deserve authorship over everything that comes next.

Rewriting My Story

Podcast

Your story contains the mornings you got up when you wanted to remain in bed, the people you loved imperfectly but sincerely, the bills you paid, the meals you prepared, the fears you faced, the apologies you made, the boundaries you finally learned to set, the people you encouraged, the temptations you resisted, the responsibilities you carried, the losses you survived, and the countless ordinary decisions through which you quietly kept building a life. And your story contains something else. Pages that have not been written yet. You cannot decide everything that will happen on those pages. Life will continue to surprise you. People will disappoint you. There may be losses you cannot prevent and circumstances you never would have chosen.

Perhaps one day you will look backward at the season you are living through right now and realize that this, too, became one of your War Stories.

Go Deeper

To go deeper and learn about the underlying pattern, needs and recovery, look at this chapter from Dr. Slate's book: Self-Worth Transformation Course Workbook.