How to rewrite your life story

10:15 PM belief , confidence , logging , negative story , new story , positive story , self , story editing , story transformation 0 Comments

We all have some area in our lives that we approach with fear or uncertainty, likely because something didn't go as well as planned. For example, a presentation given at work, a first date, or your last three tennis matches. If you continue to replay them in your mind, what can result is a disempowering story that usually starts with “I can’t”, “I don’t”, or “I’m not good at”. Continuous telling of the story internally and to others eventually results in a deeply-rooted belief that probably isn’t serving you.

Here’s the good news: any detrimental belief can be unraveled and replaced with a new, more positive one. Social psychologist Timothy Wilson writes in depth about story-editing or story transformation in his book Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By. I can't wait to read the book, but here I wanted to talk about my own personal experience with story-editing, uninformed by recent research.

In the past, I've found simply telling myself a new story that I’d like to believe has had mixed results – sometimes the belief takes hold, but other times I feel like a disingenuous cheerleader. My skeptical brain needs more than a mantra of “I can!” to start weakening the grip of a story I’ve probably told myself for years.

This is where cold, hard data can be extremely helpful. A couple years ago, I resolved to change my poor eating habits. Since I was up against years of the emotional eating and crash dieting, I needed a device to keep me honest and accountable. A friend suggested keeping a food log. After logging every meal and snack for a couple of weeks, I found myself increasingly motivated to eat more vegetables, fruit, and healthy fats because I did not want to have to “report” a list of unhealthy foods that day. I realized that over time, the food log was actually a very detailed story that supported my new belief: “I have a healthy diet.” I became confident in my ability to make good choices when I went out to eat because I had a strong track record to show for it.

This week, think of a negative story you tell yourself that does not serve you and therefore needs rewriting. Title your log with the new, positive story you want to replace it with, e.g. “Healthy Diet”, “Adventurous Person”, “Avid Reader”, “Eloquent Speaker”, “Great Tennis Player”.

Throughout the week, be very mindful of actions and moments that support your new story and write them in the log. Depending on your goal story, the log can be comprised of concrete events, or emotions and thoughts. As your log grows, do you notice any changes in your confidence? Are you finding it easy or difficult to log your data? Can you feel the new story take root?

Tell us about your experience logging in the comments!