By Dina Aldabbagh

What story are you telling yourself about this situation? At all times, in all situations, we are telling ourselves a story. This person bumped into you because they’re ignorant. Your mom calls you every night because she loves you. Your dad is adamant about you changing your oil on time because he really cares about your safety. Your best friend has been ghosting you the last couple months because she’s boy crazy and just started seeing someone new. This is how we make sense of the world — we tell ourselves stories.

Let me tell you, they are actually nothing more than assumptions. They may be pretty accurate assumptions, so much so that we can safely regard them as the “truth,” but even the truth is something so malleable, fluid, and nuanced — constantly changing and layered it is. Your dad surely does care about your safety, but maybe another reason he’s so adamant about it is because when he was 17, his car broke down from not changing the oil on time and since then, he gets anxiety about changing the oil right as that light goes on. Thus, two things can be true at once. Your dad could care about your safety and also care about his own emotional safety — which he ensures when his daughter doesn’t risk causing a situation that triggers his anxiety. You see?

So numerous things can be regarded as an accurate perception of reality, but depending on what framework you’re seeing the world from, you affect how the world around you looks and feels. The story you tell yourself impacts every fiber of your self-concept, attitude, relationships, confidence, joy, and peace. 

So if these stories are nothing more than assumptions, how can we ground ourselves in reality? By making sense. But be careful, not every logical story is beneficial for you to believe. Choose to believe the story that makes sense and empowers you. This is a two part pie. You can make sense of so many stories, but not every story is going to empower you. You don’t want to delude yourself; you still want to live a life that is grounded and in touch with your internal compass. You can lie to yourself, but if it doesn’t actually make sense to you deep down, you won’t actually benefit from that positive belief. That’s where this “toxic positivity” comes from; it’s a positive story, but one that doesn’t feel rooted in reality and therefore brings dissonance to your spirit. You end up feeling more anxious because you’re not acknowledging what the actual story you’re telling yourself is, yet your body is still reacting to that one — the one that it deeply believes. 

You have to seek truth, and in God’s world, the truth empowers us. Even if it’s not what we wanted to believe, the acknowledgment of truth sets us free. So if you’re telling yourself a story that feels heavy, that weighs you down, even if it makes so much sense, that’s not the truth. It may represent aspects of the truth — thus why it seems so rooted in sense — but it is probably a skewed perspective on the truth that is actually a limiting belief. But Dina, I thought there were no truths and they’re all just assumptions?

There is not one single truth you can speak that negates all other possibilities. Many truths exist at once, and the “truth” as we recognize it, is just the predominant truth. It’s the one with the most sense, the most resonance, the most accuracy, and the most evidence. But ultimately, the truth is that things are nuanced and you have been given the freedom by God to think for yourself and define your own truth. In effect, the “truth” becomes synonymous with our beliefs, specifically our beliefs that make the most sense. As we will never truly know the 100% objective truth, our beliefs are what define what is true for us. Let me tell you, the truth is what God says about you, that’s why it’s freeing and feels light. In a world where something that is meant to be objective is instead so subjective — truth — we have to choose to believe in God’s words over our lives being the real truth. 

So, does your dad care more about you or his anxiety? Whatever belief you have will dictate how you function in the world, and ultimately influence the truth to begin with. This fluid truth is reinforced by our beliefs. If you believe your dad cares about your safety, and that’s the biggest “truth” in your eyes — even if you acknowledge that he’s also a bit anxious about his past — then when he gets on you to change your oil, you will feel loved. You will feel so protected and loved and watched over to have someone who always makes sure that everything there in your life to keep you safe is perfectly up to date. The gratitude and safety you feel will probably influence how your dad feels. He will witness the safety you feel in his presence, and that will make him feel safer because he trusts himself more to bring safety to life, which will in turn make him more passionate about keeping you safe. Therefore, the story that you claimed to be the predominant truth validated, fortified, and influenced actual reality. You shaped reality with your belief in what the truth of reality was. The story you tell yourself is important, because it shapes reality. 

But these stories can actually just be limiting beliefs we have that we have allowed to be confirmed and reiterated over and over again. If someone doesn’t choose me, it’s because I’m not enough. Friends only like me at a surface level, never love me deeply. I’ll never break into the field I want to. The love was never real. I’m always the one left behind. I imagined the whole thing. “Devil’s advocate” speaks to another aspect of the truth that we’re not giving the same predominance to. It’s the flipped perspective or a smaller truth within the story that contradicts the main story, but still holds truth. That’s why we can be so moved by a smaller, yet more destructive part of the story. If we end up focusing on the 1% with 100% of our attention, that will seem like everything. 

Understand this: things will happen that could contradict the stories we tell ourselves. But it’s in how you frame the circumstances that happen that determines what story it feeds, therefore how you feel about it and the impact it has on you. When something happens that seems out of alignment with the positive story you tell yourself, your mind looks for ways to make sense of it. That woman was mean to me not because I don’t deserve kindness, but because she’s probably having a bad week. That boy who I thought liked me didn’t text me back not because I made up the connection in my head, but because he wasn’t ready for such emotional intimacy. The job rejected me not because I’m not good enough for it, but because God has a better opportunity that I need to be available for. When you tell yourself a negative story, you turn a single bad happenstance into evidence. When you tell yourself a positive story, you turn a single bad happenstance into an anomaly — or, you make sense of it within a positive reframe and it only strengthens the positive belief you had. 

Things can happen and we can avoid making a judgment and telling ourselves a story about them. The pain point is nearly never in the actual circumstance, it is always in what we are making it mean — about ourselves, about life. If someone you felt hopeful about becoming friends with doesn’t respond to your message, you don’t have to feel bad about it. But if you tell yourself that it means that you “made up the connection,” “came off too desperate,” or “are the kind of person people don’t want to be friends with,” you’re sure to feel bad. That’s what causes pain — the interpretation, not the actual silence. Or, you can assume it has nothing to do with you. You will likely never know why they actually didn’t respond. Even if they gave you an answer explaining why, it may not be the real reason. So instead of making it mean something about yourself, you can recognize that there may be several reasons they didn’t respond that have absolutely nothing to do with you. Maybe their grandpa just died. Maybe they’re fighting with their boyfriend. Maybe they’re struggling with social anxiety at the moment. YOU DON”T KNOW. You don’t know. 

What are you making it mean? In all situations, ask yourself this. As many things can be true at once, you must decide which one to give the power to. The circumstance itself is neutral, but you  make it mean something about you, your life, and life in general with each story you tell about it. Why would you make something mean a negative thing about you when there are surely other ways to look at it that are empowering, and that you just may not be seeing?

Why are you assuming the worst? Because you believe things about yourself that are validated by those assumptions. Not one single thing has the power to emotionally move you unless you give it such power by being in agreement with it. Here’s the trick, the story that may naturally be associated with a circumstance, doesn’t have to be the story you give it. Even if the rest of the world would give a certain circumstance one meaning, you can look at it in a way that gives it a meaning that you want to get into agreement with. 

Changing The Narrative

Now that you know you do it, how do you change it?

Recognize limiting beliefs you have about yourself.

I don’t get what I want. People get tired of me. 

Work on self concept to be aligned with who you want to be.

I get everything that is meant for me. I am worthy of love and very easy to love on top of that. I deserve good things in life and goodness from others.

Recognize limiting beliefs you have about life.

It’s really hard to find and form fulfilling relationships. Everyone already has their set friendships. All the good partners are taken. 

Discard and reject other truths that may make sense but don’t empower you, and offer up potential reframes. Trick: you don’t actually need to land on one certain answer, you just need to open your mind up to other possibilities so as not to believe there is only this one possible truth about the situation, and it must mean something negative about you. In other words, “If A happens, it must mean B about me.”

Maybe my friend didn’t offer to help me because she doesn’t value me enough. Or, maybe she was overwhelmed by life at the moment and didn’t have the capacity to show up for me in an extra way since she’s struggling to show up for herself. While she has been distant lately and that could support the first story, it could also support the second. I’m going to choose to believe the best, and assume that it’s not personal, but rather something she’s dealing with in her own life that’s showing up in our relationship. I’ll reach out to her and check in, seeing if she needs support in any way, while maybe also communicating that I felt a bit neglected in our friendship. But I will lead with understanding, and not judgment; with honesty, and not passive aggressiveness; with vulnerability, and not pride. 

Realizing that you are constantly telling yourself stories about the neutral events that pass in life is a foundational aspect to understand in order to change the way you move through the world. You must first realize that things are just what they are, but that you give them meaning. Your judgments of things — i.e. the story you tell about things — is what gives them meaning. You are telling yourself stories about everything in your life, including yourself. You can’t necessarily change the circumstances so to speak, but you can change what they mean to you, thereby still changing how your life looks to your eyes and feels to your spirit. And ultimately, it will influence the circumstances to manifest in times to come.