Choosing the Narrative
Elegir la narrativa
A reflection on how we unconsciously choose limiting stories about ourselves, not because we are victims, but because those stories help us avoid the discomfort of facing life's inherent insecurity.
Choosing the Narrative
A reflection on how we unconsciously choose limiting stories about ourselves, not because we are victims, but because those stories help us avoid the discomfort of facing life's inherent insecurity.
You are not a victim of it. You are choosing it. At a deeper level, you are choosing it. Now, you can go back into a narrative: "Well, I'm choosing it because of some innate self-sabotaging tendency." But again, that is part of the same narrative of being a victim of some quality you supposedly possess.
What is the narrative protecting you from?
Beneath that, below that, beyond that, the real approach is to ask: why am I choosing this narrative? What is it helping me with? The short answer is that it is helping you avoid discomfort. It is helping you avoid pain. It is helping you avoid fear. The deeper question then becomes: what kind of fear and pain is it helping you avoid? That is something you can look into and find in yourself.
The insecurity of life itself
Generally speaking, it will be a certain fear and insecurity about the world. In any particular situation, there will always be candidates who are better in different ways than you, than any of us. Very few people are at the absolute top, and even if they are, it is still going to be temporary, and it is not going to be in every way. So there is a certain risk and insecurity built into life in that sense. You are competing.
The question then becomes: how do I face that fear and insecurity? I mean the insecurity of life itself, not just my own personal insecurity. The sense that there are no guarantees. How do I face that? Do I choose narratives that keep me constrained, or do I face it directly and ask, for example, how can I develop my potential more fully?
The comfort of limiting our potential
What is far more common is that we do not develop our potential fully. There is a certain comfort in limiting and constraining our sense of what we are capable of. This is why so many movies and stories are so attractive. Think of a story like Rocky. There is something true in it: he pushed and pushed and pushed, and he made it. There is an aspect of life that is genuinely like that.