What To Do With A Story

Last week I asked you to catch one of your stories by the tail.

This week, I’ll tell you what you can do with a story that isn’t working for you, one that is creating struggles or issues in your life.

One way to start to shift a story is to flip it 180 degrees.

For instance, if one of your stories is, “I’m too fat” you can flip it to “I am the perfect weight for me.”

Now this is where you need to get more sophisticated because that’s too big of a leap for believability. If it’s not believable, you’ll have a hard time manifesting it.

You need to build a Ladder of Believability, which are steps along the path that you move along as you build the beliefs and the reality you want to experience.

Your Ladder of Believability could look like this

I’m too fat

I have a body

I have a body that responds to kindness

I can be kind to my body

I can feed my body what makes it feel good

I can begin to appreciate my body – its strength, agility, vitality

When I appreciate my body, I can begin to love all of me

Appreciating my body can become a habit

Appreciating, caring for and moving my body is good for all of me

I am the perfect weight for me

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As you move from self-criticism to self-appreciation you begin to dismantle the stories about your body that you absorbed unconsciously as a child and from the media (which is another powerful source of unconscious programming).

Over the past few years, I have used this Ladder of Believability practice to change my relationship to money.

I had to take it step-by-step because I had a lot of shame around money. And guess what? I didn’t create that shame - I was taught it!

In my family we didn’t talk about money, I was never taught a thing about personal finance, and I was expected to absorb my parents’ approach to money by osmosis.

What a recipe for disaster!

My parents were good, smart, hard-working people, but they brought their stories and their family’s stories into our home.

Their stories basically taught,

“If you work hard, you’ll be respectable and secure.” (Yes, there are Puritans back in the family tree.)

“Beware of spending for pleasure because you need to save for a rainy day.”

“Restrict yourself and your dreams because you never know what is going to happen tomorrow.”

Every story has layers, and money and sex are the most complex topics for us human beings to deal with and resolve. So many emotions are involved!

But the thing about your personal stories is that you can change them. The movie of your life isn’t over until it is over.

You can build your own Ladder of Believability to gain the success and satisfaction you deserve.

Would you like to give it a go? Try this:

Take the story you are telling yourself,

Flip it 180 degrees,

Create small, believable steps from the current story you are telling yourself to what you desire instead,

Climb to the next step on the ladder, hang out there (you can meditate, journal, offer it to Higher Wisdom, ask for help, receive healing) until it is part of you,

Then climb to the next rung and repeat the process.

You can do this.

And you will be very pleasantly surprised with the changes you see and experience over time!

PS Next time, I’ll share my personal Money Ladder of Believability with you.