The Stories that keep you stuck.
Imagine your brain for a moment, that bossy, cute, walnut-shaped lump you carry around with you everywhere you go. Let’s take a moment to appreciate all that it does for us. It’s rather awe-inpiring.
Okay, I know you’re also annoyed with it. That’s fair, but before you swear the thing off, let’s look at it a little more closely.
The world is a complicated place, to put it lightly, and our brains have a lot to keep track of. So, they look for patterns and create pathways to make things easier and more efficient. This is good in that it leaves at least a little energy left for higher-level thinking.
We start making pathways as soon as we fall off the turnip truck. When I bend my lips this way, mom looks at me more! Eventually, that may develop into Smiling makes people happy, and I like when people around me are happy. Which may then turn into, I need to always smile no matter what, because negative emotions are never okay!
Yeah… you probably already see how pathways might develop into ruts. It’s useful to know how to deploy a smile to make it easier to meet people. It’s less useful to feel like you can’t show a negative emotion, even in situations when, for crying out loud, you need to cry out loud.
Coaches often call these pathways “limiting beliefs,” though the neutral term “Story” allows for the fact that some pathways are supportive. The point is that our pattern-making brains create narratives to make sense of the world, and we humans naturally latch onto them and repeat them to ourselves without even realizing it, believing in them without question.
Until we have an experience that doesn’t fit. (Let’s come back to that.)
“We’re wired for story.”
If we were to draw a map with a “You Are Here" arrow where you are right now and a big “X” where you’d like to be but can’t seem to get to, there’s probably a mountain or troll or something between the arrow and the X that represents an unhelpful Story you’re telling yourself without even realizing it. Let’s consider some common ones around creativity:
“Anything that doesn’t earn money is a waste of time.”
“Creative people are disorganized.”
“I’m not creative.”
Add your own.
“If I am fully creative, what will it mean? What will happen to me and to others? We have some pretty awful notions about what could happen. So, rather than find out, we decide to stay blocked. This is seldom a conscious decision. It is more often an unconscious response to internalized negative beliefs.”
It gets especially sticky when beliefs overlap. And that’s what a lot of people call it: “feeling stuck.” Unhelpful Stories render impossible conundrums. What are you to do if you believe that creativity is always unproductive and at the same time, that productivity is the path to worthiness, but you’re not really happy not being creative…
You stay stuck.
Stuck where your fears want you to to stay, where it’s familiar.
You don’t see a path to the other side of the mountain.
Until you have or remember an experience where…you see through the Story.
You can remember the experience by looking to your own past. If you’ve ever read anything about finding your passion and purpose, you’ve probably come across the question, “when you were a kid, what did you love doing the most? What could you lose track of a whole day doing, because you felt free and alive?” If you have that memory, it can be a good guide to who you are without the limiting belief. The knowledge that the mountain wasn’t always there might be enough to shrink it to a manageable size.
Another way to have that experience is to work with someone who can ask questions inside a nonjudgmental space—coaches are a good option for this. Coaches ask questions designed to shake up your Stories. It can actually feel like you just lurched over the rut onto soft ground, jolted into unfamiliar territory. It’s disorienting for a moment, but clients often say, “wow, I’d never thought of it like that before!” Holy wow, the fire-breathing dragon in my way has a weak spot!
You probably did not intend to make up these unhelpful Stories and carry them around like rocks in your backpack. What’s important to know is that you did, in fact, make them up. To be fair, you did this when you didn’t have the experience and perspective to make up more helpful Stories, you had no reason at the time to think they weren’t true, and they served you fine for a while. And some are probably still serving you.
“Negative beliefs are exactly that: beliefs, not facts.”
When they don’t serve you, remember that since you made them up in the first place, you have the power to unmake them. I’m not saying it’s easy—if you’re familiar with the Lord of the Rings, recall that scene when the Fellowship is formed because they realize that the only way to destroy the Ring of Power is to travel to where it was made, in Mount Doom. Which of course is as dangerous as it sounds. The point is, the thing was made, therefore it can be unmade. So can your Stories, though the most powerful ones may involve your own trip to Mount Doom.
There is no easy magic formula to unburden yourself from a limiting belief. The only way out is through. You are allowed support along the way, of course! A good coach knows how to listen for the unhelpful Stories that block your path…and they’ve faced enough of them to be able equip you with tools to face your own.
And make your own brave new ending.