The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I’ve often wondered why some people are able to make significant and lasting changes in their lives while others struggle to make the changes they want to see. For a long time, I had a fairly simple theory about change: sometimes it takes something greater than the cost of changing. Eventually, the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of doing something different. That has certainly been true for me at different points in my life. But lately, as I’ve been learning more about how people change, I’m realizing that explanation may be too simplistic. Because change doesn’t only involve our behaviors or circumstances. Sometimes it reaches much deeper, into our identities and the stories we believe about ourselves.

Much of our identity is built from stories. Stories we’ve created from our experiences, stories influenced by feedback we’ve received from other people, and conclusions we’ve drawn about what all of it means.

I’m capable.

I’m not good enough.

I’m confident.

I’m awkward.

I’m successful.

I’m someone who always screws things up.

Over time, these stories can begin to feel less like interpretations and more like facts about who we are. And something I’ve been reflecting on recently is what happens when the evidence in front of us doesn’t match the story we already believe. How many times have I accomplished something and, rather than really taking it in and allowing it to become part of how I see myself, immediately explained it away?

I just got lucky.

They were just being nice.

I did okay, but I should have done X, Y or Z better.

Looking back, I can see that I haven’t always allowed the good to shape my story. When my identity was tied to a feeling of not being enough, evidence that suggested otherwise was surprisingly easy to dismiss. The negative evidence counted. The positive evidence came with an explanation. And that has me wondering how often we do this without even realizing it.

We may think we need more confidence, more accomplishments, more validation or more proof before we can see ourselves differently. But what if some of that evidence is already there? What if the problem is that the story we already believe determines which evidence we're willing to accept? That question feels especially important to me right now because I’ve been intentionally rebuilding my own identity. I’m allowing myself to choose what I want to keep from previous versions of myself, what still fits, and what no longer serves me. Part of that process has been experimenting.

What do I truly want now?

What lights me up?

What happens if I try this?

Does this still feel like me?

Instead of trying to think my way into an answer about who I am supposed to become, I’m giving myself opportunities to experience things and see what I discover. But I’m realizing there may be another important part of that process. I have to let the results of those experiments count. If I do something brave but immediately tell myself it wasn’t really brave, I lose a piece of evidence. If I accomplish something and call it luck, I lose another. If someone sees something valuable in me and I decide they were only being nice, there goes another one.

Maybe rebuilding our identities isn't only about creating new experiences. Maybe it's also about noticing when an old story tries to explain those experiences away. For me, that doesn't mean replacing every negative belief with an exaggerated positive one. I don't have to turn one successful experience into, See! I'm amazing at everything! Maybe the question can simply become:

What if this counts?

What if this accomplishment wasn't only luck?

What if they weren't just being nice?

What did I do that contributed to this outcome?

What might this experience suggest is also true about me?

And when I hear that familiar voice saying, Yeah, but..., maybe I can become curious about that too. Is that an accurate assessment of what happened? Or is it an old story trying to stay intact?

Perhaps identity change happens, at least in part, when we become willing to hold onto evidence that contradicts the person we thought we were. Not as proof that our old story was completely wrong. But as evidence that it might not have been the whole story. So as I continue experimenting with who I am now and who I want to become, I want to practice something that hasn't always come naturally to me. Accept the compliment. Celebrate the win. Notice when I did something difficult, brave or meaningful. And instead of immediately explaining it away, allow myself to consider:

Maybe this is part of who I am, too.