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We often don’t see or recognize the fundamental role our personal narratives are playing in our lives.

Our stories are layered into the way we think, feel, interact, and make choices.

To break these unhealthy cycles, we must recognize that what feels like truth may be a constructed narrative.

Do you ever feel like no matter what you do or say, how you behave, the choices you make, the results are the same? No matter how hard you try, you can’t move the dial forward—can’t experience new things, new people, and new opportunities—can’t change your life. Does it feel like you’re stuck in the same loop you’ve always been in?

If that feels true for you, it may be time to shift your attention—away from your circumstances and from trying to change outcomes, and toward something more fundamental: the stories you’re telling yourself—about your life, your possibilities, and yourself.

Ask yourself, what are the background narratives running in your head that you’re accepting as true? What is the reality your mind is constructing that you’re accepting as what is?

My friend Francesca was furious. She’d been invited to be a bridesmaid at her friend’s destination wedding in the Bahamas. In the story she told me, the bride had only asked her to be a bridesmaid because she assumed that Francesca would never get married herself. And, because she couldn’t possibly have other plans and therefore could just slip off for a four-day trip to the Bahamas at the drop of a hat—with only nine months’ notice! In my friend’s narrative, the invitation to be a bridesmaid in the Bahamas was insulting; the bride obviously thought she was pathetic and was just “throwing her a bone.”

Just this morning, I was late to meet a colleague because I unexpectedly had to take my daughter to the doctor. My colleague made a comment about not being able to rely on anyone and always having to take care of herself. When I asked her what she meant, she brought up the fact that I’d been late despite our having twice confirmed the time.

I had been late, that part was true, but she’d also never asked why or inquired about what happened on my end. And ironically, she’d told me many times that I was someone she could count on, and how much she appreciated that aspect of our relationship. In the nine minutes she’d been waiting for me to arrive that day, she’d written a comprehensive story that used my tardiness as an endorsement for her preexisting storyline.

Anne (not her real name) hated being single; she was desperate to find a lasting relationship. A woman in her early 30s, she’d been in two important relationships in her life, both with men she wanted to marry. In the first, the man broke up with her after two years of dating, and then immediately paired up with her closest friend. Later, he told her that he’d only dated her to “get to her friend.” In the second relationship, something similar happened; that boyfriend also ended up with one of her friends, whom he also married.

On the outside, Anne presented as confident and outgoing. She described herself as flirty and fun—“the life of the party.” But her inner storyteller had her cast in a different role, namely the woman men “got their ya-yas out with,” but not the one they ultimately chose. What men really wanted was a more demure and mysterious woman, a woman with the magic fairy dust she didn’t have. The story hiding behind her claims of being fun and sexy was that no matter how fun and sexy she was, she would never be the one men picked for a wife or as the mother of their children. And that was because, as her story explained, she was too big of a presence, too loud, too opinionated, too…something.

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As a result, Anne ended up acting in ways that were out of sync with how she actually felt. In social situations, she became that big presence—loud, brash, and wild. Fun at all costs. But even as she was performing this part she’d self-scripted, she was also resenting the men for whom she was performing it. Having already decided they didn’t really want her and would eventually choose someone else, she would go so far as to suggest quieter women to her boyfriends, women who were what she insisted they really wanted. Her self-sabotaging campaign, in the end, succeeded at convincing her partners to break up with her, which then re-created the same painful rejection she’d already decided would happen. And so she would be single and alone, once again, alone with her story—proven to her own satisfaction—and despair. She was not the woman men chose, and she had the track record to prove it.

Stories Creating Our Reality

The difficulty with our personal narratives is not just that they exist but that we don’t see them or recognize the fundamental role they’re playing in our lives. We don’t see that the story we’re injecting into reality is creating our reality, and that the reality we’re accepting as truth is of our own making. We don’t consider that the stories playing in our head are just that—stories playing in our head. We lose perspective, disappear into the story, and become its main character.

We bring our stories with us everywhere. They dictate how we fill in the gaps in our life, make meaning, and determine potential outcomes. Our stories are layered into the way we think, feel, interact, and make choices. Ultimately, we see what our story is willing to show us and then behave as if what it’s telling us were true. The story becomes our life, and our life becomes the story. If our stories were a backpack, we would drop it. But we don’t see the backpack, and we don’t see our stories—that’s the problem.

Breaking Free From the Unhealthy Cycle

What allows you to break free from these unhealthy cycles, to step out of your stories, is first to realize that you’re telling yourself stories, to recognize that what feels like truth may actually be a constructed narrative. Before anything new can happen, you have to be able to notice what you’re adding to and doing with reality, the overlay you’re placing on top of it.

But to get there, you have to ask yourself hard questions.

What assumptions did I bring into this situation?

Where did I make the leap from what actually happened to what I’ve decided is the meaning behind it?

Where have I constructed a bridge from fact to fiction?

Where did I shift from the bones of reality to my story?

And finally, how is my story shaping what happens next—locking me into an outcome I’ve already written, and situation that, ultimately, I don’t want.

More to come… and in my upcoming book: Narratives: Let Go of the Stories That Keep You Stuck (November 1).

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