“Who would you be without your story?” (Byron Katie)
“It’s my nature to make up stories, to interpret everything I perceive. Without awareness, I give my personal power to the story, and the story writes itself. With awareness, I recover the control of my story. I see that I am the author, and if I don’t like my story, I change it”. (Don Miguel Ruiz)
Stories describe to us how we believe the world is. In effect, they create the world we perceive and inhabit. Whole countries and socio-economic groups share common stories, as do the various religious organisations and political parties. A very widespread global story right now is: “Economic growth is essential for the health of a nation“; it’s repeated constantly without being challenged by any political party, on radio, TV and in print media, despite a mountain of evidence that continuous economic growth actually brings nothing except misery to the vast majority of people and colossal damage to our planet. Families and neighbourhoods have their stories too: “You will be a failure in life unless you pass your exams“, or “Never trust a white man!” And as individuals we both inherit stories, pick them up on the way, and create our own variations. Our personal stories are coloured by our attitude to life – for example whether we are sceptics or idealists. We tell ourselves stories constantly because they simplify our reality and make sense of the chaos. Even our view of the physical universe is a story. “The Sun and all the other heavenly bodies revolve around the Earth, which is the centre of the universe” was a popular story for thousands of years. And there was plenty of evidence to point to in support of this story, until Copernicus and Galileo came along. If human beings can’t even trust their eyes about physical realities, how much less credibility should we give to stories about the moral realm, like “Refugees just come to Europe to claim benefits” or “Some people are so evil that hanging would be too good for them“? Such stories of our culture and our times guide our thinking, and thus our communications, at all times when we are not consciously connected with our selves.
Stories can of course be fun and inspirational too, but in the context of NVC/NbC work, when we talk about stories and scripts we are often thinking of the kind of negative templates for our behaviour which essentially frustrate our growth and make us miserable. The kernel of such stories is typically what we call a ‘core belief‘ such as “It’s my fault when other people are angry“, “My needs are not important” or “I’m not OK as I am“.
Since our stories run our lives, we might as well pay careful attention to them. But don’t let’s make the mistake of believing them! They are just stories. And when we see how they restrict our choices in life and inhibit us from living our truth – well, we may just want to write some new stories to tell ourselves! That indeed is one of the key elements of my process for transforming core beliefs.