Metaphor-phosis: Transform Your Stories from Pain to Power

THE POWER OF YOUR STORIES Stories are powerful indeed. They hook you, keep you in pathological relationships, shape your perceptions, inform your future, and determine your health. However, we can change our stories, for you are the source and power of the change you desire. THE POWER OF YOUR STORIES Stories Hypnotize You Stories work by hypnotizing you. When you tell yourself the same stories over and over, you eventually believe in them. You think that’s how life is and nothing else is possible. This is what happened to me before, this is how people treated me in the past and so this is what will happen to me in the future. Now a story is born. It has become a creed, your ultimate Truth and Reality. This is the process of how you hypnotize yourself. We allow into our worlds the suggestions we accept or already believe and we generally don’t allow the suggestions we don’t accept or don’t believe. As children we accept suggestions from our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, race, culture and religion. We believe what they say and do as Truth about the world and ourselves. With maturity we begin to not accept some of these stories and choose our own. However, most of us stay hypnotized with the original suggestions and believe there is no other possible way. Even more, when we encounter beliefs foreign to our own, we think they are wrong and we are right. Wars are fought on this basis alone. The suggestions you don’t accept or allow are just as important and powerful as the ones you do. You might exclude the suggestions that you are successful, partnered, wealthy, powerful, lovable, smart or respected. Such limiting suggestions don’t allow you to experience the things you do desire. For example, most of us have entranced ourselves into believing that we are victims to our genes, that we inherit certain genes but not others and that there’s nothing that can be done about it. However, science is now determining that your environment is what influences your genes and determines if genes are read or not. This new science, called epigenetics, has far-reaching implications on our lives. But to work with these fascinating possibilities it’s first necessary to awake from the hypnotic belief that you can’t influence your genes. Stories Hook You Stories are neither good nor bad. This is important: Stories are neither good nor bad. Good things happen. Bad things happen. Indifferent things happen. Life dishes out tragedies, invasions, and holocausts. It brings survival, birth, pain, love, and death. We all experience events that cause joy or suffering. But do you have to suffer to grow? Do you have to suffer your whole life? And should you expect to keep suffering in your future? Your beliefs determine whether or not you suffer. This means that how you respond to what happens is what matters, not what happens itself. And how your respond is due to the story, pattern or limiting core belief you hold, consciously or subconsciously. When you react to something, then you are “hooked” by it. When you blame others for your feelings, you are hooked. When you react negatively, you are hooked. When you react violently, you are hooked. It is the emotional charge you hold behind a limiting story or belief that hooks you. Hooks are anything with a charge that evoke strong emotion or grab and hold your attention and energy. The stronger you feel or react to an experience, the more energy it has and the more it hooks you. For example, if you drop a book on your toe, you could pick it up and realize it opened to the passage you were looking for or else read something inspiring and helpful. You could also shrug, rub your toe and walk away. Or you could get angry and throw the book at something, yell at your kid or get increasingly irritable throughout the day. The story is the same – the book hit your toe – but how you respond to it reveals if you’re hooked or not. Stories Keep You in Pathological Relationships We love to play starring roles in our stories. Even if we tell a story about someone else, we insert ourselves in the story through implication. Most stories have three main roles: hero, victim and villain. Each of us tends to play one of these roles more than the other two, but in actuality, we play all three of the roles at different times and in different areas of our lives. We can even switch between them in a moment or play all three in rapid succession. The hero rescues, helps or saves someone or a situation. The victim blames everyone else for his problems and says, ”They did this to me,” “Poor me,” “I’m left out,” or “Everything bad always happens to me.” The villain perpetuates a situation or acts on other people and things and so is often called a perpetrator (a term more easily adopted by many, for who likes to admit they are a villain?). Playing any one of these roles means you also need the other two roles to occur in order to act yours out. For instance, what would stories be without a hero or heroine? We idolize them along with the obstacles they overcome and goals they achieve. Yet, how can you be a heroine without a villain, or something to overcome? And a hero needs someone or something to rescue, so this creates the role of the victim, too. The hero looks out for, or tries to overcome, the perpetrator and seeks to help or rescue the victim. The hero could be an activist group, a politician, or even your aunt who brings over desserts to cheer you up. The victim blames the perpetrator and seeks to be rescued or saved. The victim could be a culture, a racial group, or your coworker who feels his boss repeatedly berates him. The perpetrator seeks a victim