Last week, we talked about the stories we tell ourselves, What’s Your Story, and how those stories influence how we move in the world. We talked about a client of ours who didn’t believe that he could participate fully in his business because he was “a creative” and he held the belief that as “a creative” he didn’t have the capacity to understand the business aspects of his company.
As allies, our role is to help our clients expose their long-held stories and explore the ways that those stories impact their lives. In the case of our client, he was raised to believe that his creativity would prevent him from ever being a serious businessperson. He was a non-linear thinker, which was labeled problematic in the school system, so he learned to believe that he couldn’t succeed in the world of facts and figures. Despite being in an academic system that didn’t see him as a success, he graduated from both high school and college; clearly, he was resilient and had the ability to learn that which didn’t come naturally to him but this wasn’t the story he held about himself, the only story he held was that he was a creative and not a businessperson.
So, we worked with our client over time and much to his surprise he started to claim his ability to learn what he needed to learn to succeed. It’s true that business skills didn’t come instinctively to him, and that looking at spreadsheets was never going to be his favorite pastime, but he was able to learn enough about them to be a more successful business owner. We have seen over and over that the more our clients can hold stories about themselves of resilience, the ability to learn, and the experience to overcome, the more they can effectively tackle the challenges that life inevitably brings.
As humans, our stories influence how we see ourselves in the world and how we take action in a range of situations. Self-limiting beliefs are born out of the stories we tell ourselves and are reinforced every time we think about or tell that story. So, what’s the story that you tell yourself that keeps you from creating a full life?
This week, we invite you to begin to discover your stories. Click on the link below to download an exercise sheet that you can use to begin to discover the stories that you are telling yourself and how they are keeping you from a more exciting life.