We are story telling people. We gossip, we pass on family history, we make up stories about strangers and close friends all day long. We love books and movies and TV. We respond to the stories of others. We are story junkies!
These stories we tell our selves and others shape our lives. In relationship coaching we refer to this story telling as “dreaming up” our selves and others. With our stories we are dreaming or imagining our selves and others into being. Our stories can be green story lines that open us up and pull us forward, or red story lines that stop us and hold us back.
Just as we are dreaming our selves and others up, we are being dreamed up by our culture, our loved ones, our friends, our co-workers, and everyone we come into contact with each day.
In becoming aware of and building our power-from-within, we need to get conscious about the stories we tell and those being told to us. We need to get conscious so we can be in choice about the way we are interpreting or making meaning of our world. We are the ones who decide if we are going to tell green or red story lines. It’s not that we’re changing the truth, it’s how we are interpreting what occurred or what might be.
If I tell myself I’m a loser, I’ll spend the day finding my faults and short comings. If I tell myself stories of my capabilities and lovability, I’ll move with more confidence and ability to take some risks. Or as Henry Ford succinctly put it: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”
Often it’s the subtle, insidious stories that we aren’t even aware of that are impacting our ability to fully access and wield our power-from-within. Maybe we’re telling these stories to ourselves and maybe they’ve been told to us or about us by others. No matter the source of the stories, what’s critical is the impact they have on us.
I’m calling forceful negative story lines of malicious intent that carry power curses. Yes, I know, this is a provocative and highly charged word. That’s why I’m using it. These deeply limiting negative story lines box us in and hold us back – and we are usually quite unaware of their impact on us.
When it comes to women and power so very many forceful negative stories have been told to us and about us and by us. The air we breathe is saturated with stories about women and power, most of them red story lines that are judgmental or negative or tales of caution.
Red story lines, even persistent ones that seem like curses, can be un-done at the various levels of reality. The stronger the red story line, the more we need to bust them apart and create new green story lines at all three levels of reality. Sometimes when we are in the middle of big transitions, it’s not so much that we have to undo old story lines, it’s that we have to completely recreate new ones because the old ones are no more.
What are the stories you tell yourself about your personal power?
What do you think about your ability to use your talents, to make choices and see them through?
Think of time when you felt powerful. It doesn’t matter how anyone else might consider this power or not, so don’t compare yourself to anyone or any other situation. Remember, you don’t have to be a CEO or in a position of power-over to have personal power.
What stories did you tell yourself that made it possible for you to stand in your power?
How would you live your life if you completely ditched your disempowering stories?
In what area of your life are you yearning to be more powerful?
Sometimes it’s not so much the red story lines that are limiting us as much as it is our lack of ability to embrace just how magnificent and capable we really are. We think it audacious or arrogant to even begin to wildly imagine living our full brilliance. Could it be that our narrowed sense of our mega-wattage brilliance is itself a kind of curse?
One step in building our power-from-within is to reclaim our stories, to reclaim our power of words and dreaming, to reclaim our selves from our deep centers. We’ll be doing just that in these conversations and in my class starting the end of this month – Unraveling Curses, Reweaving Selves. There’s still time for you to join us…