The Stories We Tell Ourselves.

So I have come to the realization that I am a pretty good story teller, not really the type of stories you are probably thinking of, but the stories I tell myself.

 

You know what I mean? The BS stories we have told ourselves over and over again until they just feel like apart of who we are.

 

I have been telling myself a pretty repetitive story for majority of my life. It goes something like, you are a high achiever, you have to work, work, work and you have high expectations so you probably will work really hard and still feel like there is more to do.

 

As you can imagine that lead me down a path of extreme anxiety, panic attacks, an over all feeling of disappointment and un-fulfillment.

 

I knew I had high expectations for myself and others around me, but I really didn’t know how to lower them.

 

I started to just call them out and bring the high expectations into the light, that started to slowly help take the power they had over me away, but they were still there.

 

I then started to ask myself what were the things that absolutely needed to get done in my day. That way when I had finished the non negotiables I knew what needed to be done was done and anything else I accomplished was extra, which felt good.

 

With the non negotiables in my mind, I was still feeling guilty when I would slow down, I was pushing myself to the point of burn out and always felt tired. Even when I knew the expectations were there and not actually realistic I was still allowing them to have power over me.

 

That is when it hit me. I had done all the work to allow myself to break free of the high expectations and yet I still felt like they had a hold of me.

 

I was told to stop and asked myself “Is this still my story?”. I had a huge Aha moment, I was so use to the stories I had told myself of having high expectations, feeling burnt out, running on empty that I believed that still to be true. Even though I had done the work of calling them out and finding the space to let them go, I was still holding on to the old narrative in my mind.

 

All it was was my old stories holding me back and making it seem like high expectations were still apart of present story, when really I had kicked them to the curb a long time ago.

 

I challenge you to sit down and figure out what has really been weighing on your heart and your mind and ask, “Is this still apart of my story” and if it is old news. Say see you later and let that shit go. Delete it from your story, because it’s no longer serving you, it’s most likely holding you back.