What story are you telling yourself...?

We make up stories in our heads all the time and the brain will reward you for any story be it valid or not. 

Brené Brown's book Rising Strong is all about challenging those stories and ensuring that they serve you well. 

You can have a really straightforward interaction with someone and they may sigh at the end of the chat.  You then tell yourself a story in your head that they did not like you as they were clearly bored talking to you.  This triggers the emotion of anxiety.  Most of us don't take time to investigate what that emotion is and why have we hooked onto it.

In the book the Rising Strong method, is to start with the "Reckoning" begin by recognising what the emotion means.  Start by being super aware of how you are thinking & feeling and even your own physiology.  How did you react to the sigh what was going on?

The next step is to get really curious about what happened and how the story you are saying to yourself needs to be validated:-

• Was the sigh connected to you?
• Was the person fatigued in general?
• Why would I think they did not like me, I did not say anything controversial?
• My chats in the past have always gone well?

This weekend I found several times I was saying "The story I am telling myself" even by thinking it in my head I got curious around how it had started and what emotion it had triggered.  On a couple of occasions I actually said it out loud to my husband and he validated in real time that the narrative I had made up was not serving me well. 

This very simple statement "What story am I telling myself?" will be life changing in actually acknowledging what emotion is being triggered.