The Art of Self-Authoring: Change Your Story to Change Your Life
How to re-author your story to redefine your reality and why this matters.
How to re-author your story to redefine your reality and why this matters.
I’ve lived a dozen lives at least.
Writer, musician, marketer, entrepreneur, copywriter, photographer, designer, lecturer, course creator, coach, speaker, investor — I’ve worn all these hats and more.
For many of these identities, I did what was comfortable and expected of me. For others, I pushed myself through the extra mile — just to find out what I was capable of.
And what I learned is something that I know will serve me for the rest of my days.
And that is:
The secret to achieving something you have been unable to do so far comes down to letting yourself be someone you have not given yourself permission to be.
You see, when most people face a scary and exciting new goal, they push themselves harder and go the extra mile to improve their chances.
But what I discovered, is that it does not matter how much harder you push yourself, or how many sleepless nights you put in…in fact, this can just tire you out for when your performance really matters.
In truth, the reason for my successes (and failures), in hindsight, came down to the fact that:
If your identity does not support your goal, you will not achieve it.
Growing up, I moved a lot. More than 25 times by the time I was 18. And much more after that. So, the process of re-invention was something I never questioned or thought consciously about. It’s easy to go to a new school and become a new kid, and simply change who you are in that moment.
My mistake was, I thought that process of re-invention and allowing yourself to become someone new stopped after school. But the truth is, it becomes more and more important the older you get, and the more ambitious your goals are.
If you embody this process of re-invention consciously, you gain control over your fate. Instead of simply following the conditioning, that you’ve had since birth, and living within the confines of what is comfortable — you gain the power to choose and direct your life.
To surpass previous limitations and experience what has eluded you.
Maybe you don’t feel like you’re worthy of your new goals. Like you don’t deserve it, or you’re not enough.
In my case, each of these turned out to be untrue, as they likely will for you, too. And knowing how these limitations are formed, is the key to eliminating them and changing your story while you’re still alive.
Where Most Limits Come From
Limitations feel like impassable obstacles, fear, and resistance that invisibly guides and directs our lives by controlling what feels good and what feels terrifying. In this way, limitations become invisible guidelines, like the bumpers on a bowling alley, which direct your life path, until you learn how to break through them or remove them entirely.
The good news is, discovering your limits is the easy part. All you need is a burning desire to grow and inevitably you’ll bump up against one. Maybe a few.
For me, it looked like fear, burnout, reactivity, and treating others worse than they deserved. That’s how I knew I was out of my depth, and if I really wanted to enter a new chapter of my life with grace, I would have to go beneath the surface and explore what was really going on.
What I discovered is that stories don’t just exist in fairy tales and fiction.
Stories do not just influence our psychology, stories are our psychology. And the science of stories is the science of meaning.
Stories determine what we allow, and what we won’t. They determine how difficult we believe something will be before we even try it. And stories are the source of most limitations you experience.
So, in the spirit of overcoming your limitations, in this article, I’m going to reveal the true source of most of the limitations people experience…
Stories.
In this article, you will discover why, at the end of the day, it’s all story. From the story, you tell yourself, to the story you tell other people. A story that started being told at your birth and has not stopped since.
Through story, we create our own and our collective culture, and that dictates more of our lives than more realize.
Once I realized that I needed to change my story, I learned that first, I had to learn how the story gets written in the first place. Which revealed, how stories limit growth, and how consciously re-authoring your story is the secret to re-defining your reality and taking control over your own fate.
Because even though it’s all story, the story is not set in stone.
Let’s get into it.
Waking Up to the Story in Your Subconscious
My story, like everyone else’s, was centered on me — the main character in my life. And around me, all my experiences are contextualized.
The story I tell is about this main character, but I am not him.
This is an important distinction, because even though you are limited by your story — you are not your story, nor are you this character.
The story that limits you is their story.
In my case, most of the stories that limited me were not even written by me as an adult. Turns out, that most of the stories we use to dictate the flow of our lives were created when we were children. In many cases, before we can even remember them.
My character’s story started then and went on to grow and change based on every experience I had, and every impression I had at the time, and what those events meant to me.
The trouble with this was of course, that the stories I created and the beliefs that supported them, were written by me as a child — with a child’s logic. That also meant those stories were unnecessary self-damaging, limiting, and just plain naive. Had I shed those stories like baby teeth or extra fat, all would have been fine, but that was not the case for me, nor is it the case for most people.
What ended up happening, is these stories written by me as a child, with the logic of a child, were never re-written, but instead adapted, and evolved over time, but maintained the same rules, logic, and conditions of what I could, and what couldn’t do.
The deeper I went in my personal journey of self-discovery through therapy, psychedelics, and good friends, the more of the story I began to see for the very first time.
Just so you get a sense of how ridiculous, yet limiting these stories are, I’ll open my heart here and tell you one that I discovered, during a session of psychedelic psychotherapy:
I sat on his tatami mat and traced the ivy’s growth path along the wall, with my eyes, as it made its way towards the kitchen. I sat waiting, nervously, and seeking distraction while I waited for it to kick in. I’ve taken psychedelics before, but something tells me that set-and-setting matters and this was not going to be a party. He started me with a low, therapeutic dose, but I didn’t want to go lightly down this path. I thought, if I’m going to go through all of this ceremony, I want to do this fully. I even asked for another dose, but wisely he cautioned me not to, even though as a friend, he was looking forward to seeing how that would turn out.
Within 9 minutes I was crying. It was as if the spotlight in my mind had been searching every corner of my consciousness, looking for the flaw I attributed my problems to. As soon as the dose kicked in, I recognized that this process was going on, apparently, for every waking moment of my life, or perhaps it was just because I intended to get healing out of this experience. But immediately, it felt like the spotlight in my mind stopped scanning and instead fixated upon one point — beneath the surface, and its limelight became a burning fixated gaze.
At that moment, I knew. This wasn’t a slow process of hashing it out and deciphering the meaning. Instead, it was like someone told me the question and the answer at the same exact time. I cried some more. My best friend cried, who came along because this was his suggestion in the first place. And I began to write down the answer one age at a time.
To know one’s surprise at all, my story revolved around daddy issues. I’ll save you the background story, but the gist of it was that as a child my dad did not have the means to raise me. He did the best he could and I loved him for that. And it was that love that led to my limiting belief. I believed that if I did something amazing, and he saw, it would hurt him. I believed that if I made him proud, he would think that he did not contribute to it and that he would feel shame so heavy he would die.
Of course, I love my dad and don’t want him to die, so I spared him the shame by avoiding anything that could cause pride. Instead, I focused on being quiet and playing small. Something, I recognized that many people do in similar positions.
It was then the rule of my belief and story emerged:
Do not make noise, or he will see, and die of shame.
It was ridiculous, but being 25 at the time, I could see how I had wrestled with this unconscious belief and rule for my entire life. And just how much energy and effort it took to overcome—so much so that I expatriated from the country in order to escape it.
It was hilarious in retrospect because at the age of 21 I left America and moved to Malaysia. And it was only then that I began to experience success. Interpreted another way, it was only when I was literally on the other side of the planet that I could ‘make noise.’
I tried new things without fear for the first time in my entire life. Or more accurately, I tried new things and it didn’t take an enormous amount of willpower to do them. Instead, it was easy to make noise, become the center of attention, and achieve the successes that would spark my career.
Knowing this freed me. Immediately, upon realization, I forgive myself and I forgave him. I didn’t hold any resentment, I just had no awareness this concept existed within me. And within half an hour it was done.
In the end, I had 10 pages of notes, and the realization of this belief met with forgiveness led to a somatic body-level release I have never experienced before or after. I was so wet. Sweaty, tears pouring, drool falling, snot running — and I was shaking. But I was happy. Becuase I knew then I was done with the hard part. But what I didn’t expect is that this belief system was so fundamental, that when I realized it was not true, and let it go, my entire identity collapsed like a house of cards, or like someone had ripped the rug out from under my entire existence.
Which lead to perhaps the most bizarre part of the experience, where I was no longer crying, but instead now simple tasks like talking or chewing food, felt new and like I had to re-learn them. All in all, it took me over 24 hours to return to normal — though the psychedelic effect wore off after only a couple of hours.
It’s been two years or more since then, and the personality changes from that day have lasted. Along with these changes, I developed new beliefs, which changed the way I talked, expressed myself, and funnily enough ‘how much noise’ I allow myself to make.
In fact, my entire personality changed to be something I chose, as opposed to something I simply dealt with or learned to cope with. This came with much more life-reorganizing that I won’t share here. But when people ask what it takes, I try to tell them this story and be as honest as possible
I know this story isn’t pretty, and probably a lot of detail for most, but it’s true and if you really want to know how stories can control your life — it’s the best example I know. And it’s my truth.
Now, I happily live 30-minutes away from my dad and the rest of my family. And I can make as much noise as I please.
But it strikes me that if this happened to me, it can happen to someone else. And I’ve learned since then, that these types of subconscious beliefs affect every single person.
Now I know, thanks to this experience, just how buried beneath the surface and outside of conscious awareness, these beliefs can be. And how cruel and self-damaging child logic can be, when we try to live our entire lives according to our very first stories about ourselves, the world, and where we fit into it — or not.
This is the case for most subconscious stories that influence our lives. They are not usually rational, well-thought-out, or even aligned with your most meaningful goals. Often, they put your well-being as the lowest priority and limit your potential in dramatic ways.
They are the stories of a child, trying to survive and make meaning of the world for the first time.
And if they go uncorrected, will dictate everything in your life from:
- What you believe about yourself.
- What you believe about the world.
- What you believe others believe about you.
- What you believe you are capable of.
- What you believe it will take for you to achieve more.
And everything in between.
The truth is, your experiences don’t inherently hold meaning. You create and interpret meaning from them, which become the stories you tell yourself and the stories you tell others.¹
On one hand, this is incredibly disempowering, because it means your stories don’t have to be true and can disconnect you from reality and your ability to change things to be the way you prefer.
But on the other hand, it can be incredibly empowering, because it means that many of your limitations are not inherent, but rather just stories, which you believe to be true.
And you can re-write them.
Change Your Story, Change Your Life
Obviously, this doesn’t mean changing your stories or going against them is going to be easy. But it is possible, and that is what is important. And I don’t think you have to do it the way I did, but certainly, it is a path that works.
And more importantly than that, it is necessary to do, if you want to achieve your full potential.
What I learned since this experience, is that you will only be able to grow within the limitations of your story. Any opportunity, or behavior, which goes outside of the limits of your story will either be rejected, denied, or be outright ignored by you — until you change your story to be more consistent with what you want.
Because from the lens of your character, the only things that matter are those which help you continue or live according to your story. And everything else, even objectively better solutions will be disregarded until you consciously change your story to include new possibilities.
You see, your story is not always a conscious influence, that is: it is not always something you will have self-awareness of.
Stories are a pervasive subconscious influence, being told at all times, in the background, and beneath the surface of your normal, everyday waking state consciousness. And from there, behind the scenes, it is always affecting your perception of yourself, others and reality.
In my case, my story was my true foundation. It was several layers deeper beneath the surface than I ever knew to look, let alone how.
Later I learned that this concept of self, which consists of all the stories you believe and tell yourself is called your narrative self and it’s the version of you that only exists as a story. With rules, it has to follow to fit. Hopefully, your rules are not as bizarre as mine!
The important thing to get from all of this is that your sense of narrative self ² will dictate your life and experience of reality from outside of your awareness. It will limit your behavior based on these stories, beliefs, and identities you take on. It creates blind spots here and there in your awareness, repelling you from certain opportunities while magnetizing you to others, which are more consistent with your story and assumptions about yourself.
This is how your story dictates the outcomes of your life on a subconscious level — beyond the level of self-perception.
This also means that while you experience your life consciously, in reality, your subconscious is dictating your life to fit this story. And because this story is both formed and operates subconsciously, it often goes unrecognized and unquestioned.
On the surface, talk of stories limiting your behavior and re-writing your story to re-shape your destiny can sound like magical thinking, but it is actually just the deepest of depth psychology — pioneered by psychologists Carl Jung, who put it best when he said:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.”
He also said…
“The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.”
Indeed, if you knew what your story was — you would want to change it, and doing so would spare a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering.
Now, quick check-in as this may all sound absolutely crazy.
The idea is that you have a story self, which is actively sabotaging you at every level. That it can be buried so beneath the surface, you would never know where to look. And that when you change it, you change the invisible rules dictating your life.
And you’re probably wondering, if this story self, this narrative self, is a part of you, shouldn’t it want what is best for you?
Well, that’s the heart of the problem.
Your story self does want what’s best for you — the problem is that, in many cases, you will disagree with what it believes is best for you. Because you are an adult, who has experienced life and, to a degree, discovered yourself.
But if you’ve never consciously re-authored your own story, then you’re still operating from a story made by you as a child, somewhere before the age of seven.
And if you aren’t getting what you want, if you aren’t operating at the level you want to or know you could be, the issue is that there is a core disagreement going on between what you want for yourself.
You see, your story is a tool to help you get what you want, but for much of your life, especially your earliest years — what you needed the most was survival. And so many of your stories were created with the sole purpose of keeping you alive.
Of course, the people most responsible for keeping you alive as a child are your parents. Thus, the daddy issues.
But as you continue to grow, eventually you realize, that being happy, fulfilled, and free is not a requirement for staying alive. And in many cases, your state of consciousness and well-being is the first thing being sacrificed to help you ensure your own survival.
Especially when you take into account as a child, your sense of happiness and well-being isn’t the most important thing in the family. Or at least it often isn’t during the years that these beliefs and stories are being formed for the first time.
For instance, let’s say you want to be happy, but your story self believes it is better to guarantee safety and survival, then anytime that your happiness comes at the cost of upsetting others or rocking the boat–you will face tremendous resistance to standing up for yourself and being happy, even though that is what you consciously desire.
That is until you consciously re-write your story to prioritize your own mental health now.
In most cases, the limitations and trade-offs that come with antiquated stories cause you to end up playing a smaller game than you are capable of and operating below your full potential. In my case, it was literally loudness and how much noise I made… but in yours, it may simply be attention, or something else.
The important thing is to know that, unless you have consciously sat down to re-author your story as an adult, then your narrative self has been editing and redacting this same first draft of your life story and your character in it since you were born. Allowing for small changes, while primarily focusing on keeping the same story going. Dooming you to repeating the same patterns and getting the ending you get, without realizing you even have a choice in the matter.
Change that story and you will change your life.
And learning how to not only perceive your own stories but re-write them is the ultimate key to becoming the master of your own fate once again.
There’s a famous Confucius quote which says:
“You have two lives. The second one begins when you realize you have one.”
Similarly, you have two lives. The first is life on autopilot following the story you wrote before you can even remember creating it. And your second life begins, when you realize you can change your story, while you’re still alive.
So, that’s where stories come from, but how exactly do they limit you?
Primarily, your story limits you by manipulating your perception of yourself, others, and ultimately, disconnecting you from reality.
How Your Story Alters Your Perception
Many people will doubt they have limiting stories coming from their narrative self because they aren’t obvious in the moment of introspection. But that’s why it’s called the subconscious because your stories exist many layers beneath your conscious mind.
To better understand the relationship between the two, it’s easier to know what your subconscious mind is, by better understanding what it isn’t.
You see, the idea of you, your awareness, the voice in your head, and all of the thoughts you’ve ever had in your entire life occur in what is called your conscious mind. Which only accounts for 5% of your mind.
The rest, that is the other 95%, is your subconscious mind. And it controls everything from maintaining the homeostasis of your bodily processes like breathing, digesting, and sleeping–to almost all of your psychology. And you can’t directly control your subconscious mind, because if you did, you could adversely affect the ongoing processes which keep you alive.
So, your subconscious, like a dominating parent, controls almost everything and basically gives you the illusion of being in control.
Seen this way though, you can get an idea how rather than being something like a layer of topsoil or the basement foundation of your mind, your subconscious is more like a vast, dark ocean, that is almost impossible for you to directly interact with.
But the good news is, even though your conscious and subconscious minds have totally unequal ownership over you, they do influence one another.
Your subconscious mind can influence your conscious and vice-versa. But if you aren’t consciously influencing your subconscious by doing things like consciously re-authoring your story, then rather than influencing you, your subconscious is going to dictate your entire life.
Worse yet, your conscious mind is the version of you that perceives and interacts with reality and other people. And when you are operating based on unconscious beliefs and stories, you can end up becoming disconnected from reality, resulting in a form of what is called depersonalization or derealization disorder, which is becoming more and more common.³
Said another way, the challenge with stories is that what you believe is true, for you. Because what you believe alters your perception and interpretation of reality and what actually is. Then, your mind will look for evidence in reality to support your story, instead of trying to make a story that best aligns with reality.
This is called confirmation bias and it disconnects you from reality.⁴
Worse yet, what I’ve discovered is that if you have a story that is negative or disempowering, instead of this throwing up red flags, your subconscious mind will actually trick your conscious mind into looking for evidence to back up the story you already believe, to make it more true. And simultaneously, you will ignore or deny evidence to the contrary — even if there is overall more evidence for a new, more empowering and positive story than the one you currently believe.
This is why two people can experience the same situation and circumstance and derive very different meanings and even outcomes from it. Whether something empowers you or holds you back, depends on your story.
You see, a story’s true purpose is to make life make sense, even if that sense of meaning is achieved through falsehoods. Truth doesn’t matter in stories, only believability and what is true, for you. Likewise unlike the conscious mind which operates based on logic and inference — your subconscious mind operates based on emotion.
Just like a child.
Your subconscious mind will use stories as its primary tool for influencing the conscious mind. Stories are the unconscious mind’s primary means of communication. Just like how it communicates through symbols, metaphors, and allegories in dreams.
The reason why is actually really interesting. Your subconscious mind uses symbols and stories to convey large amounts of complex information that can otherwise be overwhelming for your conscious mind.
Your subconscious mind can process 20,000,000 bits of information per second. Meanwhile, your conscious mind can only process around 40 bits per second. Your conscious mind is literally incapable of processing most of the information you take in from your senses in each moment.⁸
The human brain is incredible, but not unlimited. So, to make matters simpler, our brains have evolved for millions of years to have certain reliable methods of reducing reality down into workable pieces.
So, to make matters simpler for you, your subconscious mind processes this information instantaneously, by running it through a filter of beliefs, generations, stereotypes, and of course — your story.
Seen this way, the purpose of a story is to create limitations, so that you can better connect with reality. Without a story, life is simply happening but holds no meaning. And not just that, but without story reality, itself would be overwhelming.
Your story is a tool story exists to help you make sense of the world and your place in it, so anything that doesn’t fit that narrative is going to get tossed out or ignored and, in the end, that’s going to be most of your potential experience of life.
Otherwise, it’s simply overwhelming and we lose all sense of meaning. And along with it, drive, imagination, and purpose. So, we evolved to willingly limit our perception of reality, to become more effective at doing something with it.
Talk about creative restraints!
And the main method we have for making sense of reality, especially as it pertains to our place in it, is telling stories.
So, if you want to control your experience of life, that is the 40 bits you get per second — control your story.
A change in the story is a change in perception and that changes everything.
This is something that all humans share, it’s not unique to me or you.
So, what is it about stories, their structure, and methods of meaning-making that resonate with us at our core? Why are they our subconscious preference, and why has storytelling become an innate instinct itself?
The answer lies in our ancestral history. And is best explained by a short story itself.
A Storytelling Species
To understand the importance of stories and the sway they hold over your daily life and your very potential, you need to know that there is fundamentally no significant difference biologically between a human being who lives in the depth of the Amazon and one who lives in New York City.
At least at birth.
After someone is born, a process of storytelling and meaning-making starts at that moment that does not stop until their death.
A baby born in either environment will come out of the womb and immediately start to adapt to its direct environment. Immediately, their environment will begin to influence the expression of specific genes, traits, and of course, condition their behavior.
The child will adapt to its surroundings and begin learning from the people around it. And as that baby develops, they will eventually adapt to their cultural landscape as well, in addition to their physical, mental, and emotional landscapes.⁵
This is when every person begins forming their first stories — they adopt them from their culture, their parents, siblings, friends, family, and any authoritative influences that come into their lives.
They do this because their ability to succeed in life comes down to how well they can adapt to their cultural landscape.
Storytelling is the ultimate human superpower and it is essentially what has separated humanity from other species, more than opposable thumbs, and allowed us to create civilization. A horse is born with the instinct of knowing how to run. Not so with a human child. Human children are among the most fragile creatures on Earth. But what they lack in tenacity, they make up for by being a hyper-impressionable sponge to their environments and the people around them. Usually involving their cultures, where each new person gets the opportunity to become educated and inherit the collective knowledge of those who have come before them. To adapt to society as it is now, and adapt to the times to continue collective evolution and take their place in it.
For the Amazonian, this may involve passing specific coming-of-age rites, becoming a better hunter, or taking on another essential role in the tribe. For the New Yorker, that will involve doing well in school, getting along well with others in their ‘tribe’ or local community.
Both will adapt, but what they adapt to holds significant sway over the shape their lives are going to take. You could essentially swap the children at birth and see a similar event happen. Neither child chose which to adapt to. And therefore did not consciously choose who they were going to become. At least not as children. And as we know, it can be hard as an adult to realize consciously that this has even happened, and that the way it happened matters.
But much of what they are adapting to, and what will dictate who they become, was never their choice. They were born into it. Born into a collective cultural story, that they then shape their lives to. Many times, on one side of a grand story, pitted against others.
For hundreds of thousands of years, we have evolved alongside stories as our primary tool for understanding ourselves and the world, but this is not their sole purpose. Eventually, stories became our primary means of recording and remembering information, too. At first, through oral tradition, playing a dangerous, but better than nothing, game of telephone through the generations. And then, we started to write down our stories.
The first evidence of the written word ages back to 5,500 years ago, found in ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). But human beings, biologically similar to the ones that exist today, have been around for 200,000 years.⁶
For all of that time, up until the first evidence for the written word, knowledge was only shared orally, through stories — as a means of remembering facts and making sense of the complex phenomena of the earth and human lives. Before, something was only remembered when it was deemed crucial enough to survive to be relevant to everybody. Like how to cook a potato, or what to expect from each season.
This resulted in people evolving alongside stories and stories becoming our primary tools for capturing and sharing lessons from generation to generation. Without them, there would be no progress, no civilization, and each person would be essentially on their own. Back to figuring out which foods are edible all over again — along with everything else.
That would be bad for the species, and so our brains evolved to use stories to do everything from make meaning, navigate the world, and connect with others.
This means we had a perfect system in place so that once the written word was invented, we could suddenly learn not just from those who are around us, or alive during the same time we are. But suddenly, we could learn from those whose time came long before ours, or from the mistakes of others without having to make those mistakes ourselves. And suddenly, knowledge could compound into wisdom, and civilization emerged as a result.
These collective stories follow the same priorities as individual ones — starting with survival, and then working their way up to collective identities and values. Embedded into a culture, which imprints each new person born into it in one way or another — cultural stories keep all people on the same page and able to essentially innovate on the edge of progress.
But if you took away our culture, un-wired electricity, censored the internet, and burned all books you would send the human race effectively back to the starting line — and within one generation doom humanity to bootstrapping with only what they can remember.
Which these days, isn’t much.
We dramatically underestimate how much we rely on cultural knowledge, wisdom, and the stories encoded in our collective and individual unconscious. Same as we inherently underestimate the effect stories have over our daily lives. We underestimate the stories we have evolved alongside with. As well as the characters, or archetypes as Jung would call them, which each play their part. And how, in many cases, these stories are inherited, and developed unconsciously as a reaction to your lived experience.
But despite the important role stories play in our lives, we rarely recognize them, let alone question them. And this is no accident, but rather by design.
In fact, the truth is that we are often better at fulfilling our stories and accomplishing our hidden motives if we are not aware of them.⁷ The better we can deceive ourselves about what our stories actually are, the more effective we are at living according to them and the less we question them.
This is why stories play such a tremendous role in our lives. Why their rules once made are so strictly enforced by the subconscious mind.
We fit our lives into stories, at the most fundamental level to stay alive and survive, but at a grander level to achieve more in our lifetime than those that came before us. Basing what we believe we are capable of, and basing our decisions, off of those stories and most importantly: the character we think we play.
If we don’t question our stories, then we essentially hand the reigns of our lives, and destinies, up to anyone but ourselves. Perhaps ghosts from the past, perhaps to our parents, or perhaps to culture itself. And in the end, we end up living out stories that don’t serve us, and simply continuing a collective narrative and perpetuating a cycle we never chose to be a part of.
But when you question your stories, you reclaim the power to stop them and better yet: write new ones.
Creating new identities, new characters, putting yourself in new settings with better, more meaningful plots. And most importantly, instead of experiencing the ending that was written for you at birth, and unconsciously along the way, you can write a new ending before its time.
This is a power that is always within your control. And just because this is how something has been done does not mean it is the way it needs to be.
Accept Your Story to Change Your Future
Re-writing your story doesn’t have to be hard, and for many, the process itself is quite fun. Starting with your life story, and going through each meaningful experience, and looking at what that experience meant to you then, and most importantly… what it means to you now.
You’ve grown since then. You’ve evolved. So, reflect that in the story you continue to tell.
The key to re-writing a story is becoming aware of it — exactly as it is, and illuminating it with the awareness of your full, conscious, adult mind to tell a new story.⁹ A story that is more accurate effectively, and authentically reflects the truth of who you choose to be.
Just because your conscious mind is limited, and much, much smaller than your subconscious mind, does not mean you cannot be aware of your story. In fact, all greatness accomplished by human beings has been done with this 5% and the 40 bits per second. If they can do it, and especially if I can do it, so can you.
Let re-authoring your story be a fun experience. Take a day to do it. Visit the formative experiences of your past and keep doing this for your whole lifestyle, from start to finish, stopping at every meaningful experience along the way.
You can even just as easily hone in and re-author your story for the individual elements of your life. You can re-author your health story. Your love story — you name it, you can bring awareness to it and you can re-write it.
As it turns out, re-writing your story is not the hard part. And I don’t feel as though I’d be truly helping you do this unless I also told you that the real reason most people don’t consciously re-author their stories once they become aware of them is actually that most people have a hard time accepting their stories.
When I had my therapy experience, I obviously went in intending to uncover my stories and accept whatever I found, because I knew it had been holding me back for my entire life. This anger and feeling of being fed up with it was an amazing catalyst for me to change.
But for most people, this is not the case. In most cases, when someone becomes aware of their stories, they reject them.
Especially, when they begin to get the sense that their stories don’t really make sense, don’t operate based on logic, and appear to be made with the logic of a child’s mind. And of course, the more you sit with that the more it feels awful to realize that much of the suffering you put yourself, and others, through was unnecessary.
And realizing that you could have changed that story and the outcomes you have been getting at any point along the way feels like hell.
This level of humility can be too much for most, and for this reason, many are more willing to keep the story going than they are willing to accept that they were wrong. Or that the story they told themselves and told others was not the most authentic, or even accurate story possible.
This is known as the sunk-cost fallacy and demonstrates how people can oftentimes be more willing to sacrifice their potential than be willing to admit that they never had to suffer so much in the first place.¹⁰
Indeed, what holds most people back is not a lack of awareness or a lack of knowledge. In most cases, what holds people back from their true potential is actually: denial.
It doesn’t do you any good to become aware of your stories if you’re going to deny them once you realize how ridiculous they are. Yet, most people do.
Likewise, most people will deny where their level of personal growth is actually at. Most people believe their developmental edge to be further than it is, in almost all cases. And therefore they rob themselves of being able to work where they are at and gain true progress.
The way around this problem is simply acceptance. Accepting your limitations helps you grow where you are. In fact, it is required. And in the end, saves you the lost time of working from somewhere other than your real starting point — while trying to get where you want to be and become who you want to be.
If I had my therapy experience but did not accept what I found, no doubt I would have lost myself to several hours of a famously bad trip. But luckily I faced what I found and was willing to change as a result.
Of course, this leads to several hours of rebuilding myself, but I doubt it will be quite so messy as for others. And if I knew then, what I know now, and what I’ve tried to share here, I’m confident the process could have been much easier and possible without the aid of external tools.
As unsexy as it is, awareness, humility, and acceptance are the keys you need to break through your limitations and unlock your full potential and your true self.
But what exactly is your true self, if there is such a thing?
Unlocking Your True Self
One of the questions I get asked the most when teaching others how to re-author their subconscious stories is,
“If your story is made up by you as a child and so is the character you play, then who is the real you?”
Or more to the heart of the matter…
“Is there such a thing as the real, true self?”
Here’s what I know: the purpose of your stories is to create limits.
No matter who you are, your story is going to limit you. But limits can be good, even though they aren’t always. The difference between a life you love, and one that sucks, is what those limits are.
Think about it like this… everyone has something they want. And for you to get what you want, you’re going to have to choose it. Maybe it’s the kind of donut you want out of the box. Or is the identity you want to express yourself as. In any case, for you to get what you want you’re going to have to choose one option amongst all your perceived choices.
Depending on your level of awareness, you may perceive a few options, or you may perceive a hundred. Depending on how comfortable with chaos you are, you may perceive infinitely many more options for every decision you make.
There are more options and more possibilities in every moment than you could ever be aware of — in fact, the options you perceive are limited by your awareness. But just because you don’t see all your options, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
But regardless of your level of awareness, or how many options you believe you have, you still have to make a choice. And having more options doesn’t make this process any easier. In fact, it can be harder to choose what you want when you realize how truly infinite your choices are. But that’s why destruction is the other half of creation.
For one possibility to be chosen, all others must be rejected.
This is why re-authoring your story takes courage.
Do you have the heart to reject all other possibilities and choose what you want most?
Do you have the courage to stop the story you’ve been telling since birth, and re-author your own destiny? The courage to be wrong, to live a life more aligned with what you desire?
This is why I believe your true self, is simply your chosen self.
Any story you tell and live by that you did not create yourself, or that you tell as a reaction and not a choice, is going to create a false self. A self that is functional, probably good at keeping you alive, but more often than not has many rules and stories, which will willingly sacrifice your happiness and well-being for better chances at survival.
But with a higher level of awareness, you can perceive more of your options and with a courageous heart, you can choose one amongst your infinite options and step fully into it.
This choice is your chosen and true self.
It’s easy to take what is given to you, but what is given to you, like the story you made as a child, is seldom going to be what’s actually best for you. Because only you, as you are now, knowing more of what you like and dislike, will be fully capable of knowing what is truly in your best interest.
That’s a responsibility that will always be yours and never adequately fulfilled by another, even someone who knows you and loves you because they can’t do the work for you. They can’t pierce beneath the surface for you.
And even if a story was given to you out of love, if that story wasn’t your choice, it will inevitably limit you. Because taking on what others have given you, robs you of the chance to choose for yourself.
When you choose for yourself, you have to be strong, because you do that knowing that by making a choice you are rejecting every other possibility. Even possibilities and options you aren’t even aware of.
But paradoxically, whatever you choose you will enjoy the most. And it is my belief, your choice will give you the best results possible. Because it’s your choice and you get to make it consciously. And knowing you chose something can help you bring far more consciousness to it, and every moment of your life — reveling in it, experiencing it, and appreciating it.
And because it was your choice, even if it doesn’t turn out for the best, you can learn from it and grow from it, because you know why you made that decision, and you may find more creative or effective solutions to getting what you want later one.
So, don’t rob yourself of the joy of choosing.
In my opinion, it’s at that point that whoever you choose to be — knowing full well that you could be anyone — is your true self.
Every choice and every story has consequences, you just have to choose the one you’re willing to live with.
In the end, your chosen self is your true self. And that’s the person you can be most confident being, knowing it was your decision and no one else’s. Your true self is not even a product of your environment or the reaction of your experiences. But rather a person you want so badly to be, that you are willing to reject all other possibilities to become them.
You have to tell and live a story, so it may as well be a good one.
This is the art of self-authoring. There is no objective, right decision. You will make mistakes, you will adapt, and you will continue to create new stories for each new chapter of your life. Because it’s better to be the messy creator of your own story and accept that than to live a destiny that was never yours in the first place.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope this helps you bring more awareness to your own stories, how they were formed, and how you create your true, chosen self now in this ongoing process we call life.
Want Help Re-Authoring Your Story?
You can use the link below to watch Colton’s new Masterclass, on re-authoring your story, Unlocking Hidden Power — available for a limited time.
>> Watch Unlocking Hidden Power now
Sources: Inline
¹ “Telling Stories to Create Meaning in Life.” University of Arizona News, 21 Aug. 2020, news.arizona.edu/blog/telling-stories-create-meaning-life.
² “Apa Psycnet.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, psycnet.apa.org/record/2011–21882–005.
³ Margarita Tartakovsky, MS. “Symptoms of Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder.” Psych Central, Psych Central, 24 May 2021, psychcentral.com/disorders/depersonalization-derealization-disorder-symptoms#what-is-it.
⁴ Nickerson, Raymond S. “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1998, pp. 175–220., doi:10.1037/1089–2680.2.2.175.
⁵ Pagel, Mark. “Adapted to Culture.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 15 Feb. 2012, www.nature.com/articles/482297a.
⁶ British Library, www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin.
⁷ Hutson, Matthew. “Living a Lie: We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 4 Apr. 2017, www.scientificamerican.com/article/living-a-lie-we-deceive-ourselves-to-better-deceive-others/.
⁸ Reader, Speed. “Conscious vs Subconscious Processing Power.” Speed Reading Courses London UK, 10 Sept. 2015, spdrdng.com/posts/conscious-vs-subconscious-processing.
⁹ “The Paradox of Acceptance and Change.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/healthy-change/201403/the-paradox-acceptance-and-change.