“Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.” — Gandhi


A trusted mentor shared the following truth with us:

We all have stories or beliefs that we have created about ourselves which affect our lives and choices daily. Our stories are born of our experiences, and we take them to be true and accurate, but they may not be. Take, for example, our mentor said, two women. The first woman was raped. A traumatic experience, we'd agree. Now without realizing it, she creates a story about herself in relation to this experience. Her story is that she is strong; she is a survivor. This belief, or story, then affects the rest of her life and how she feels about herself. The second woman was continuously told by her mother to stand up straight. This may seem rather insignificant compared to the trauma of rape, yet this woman told herself the story that she was weak, unworthy, and unlovable. This belief daily affected her life. Both of these examples are true; the women and their created stories or beliefs really exist.

We each have a lifetime of experiences. Maybe we consider ours worse than others or maybe we deem ours not nearly as bad as others. The above example illustrates two things: it's not the severity of the experience that dictates the story, and we all create stories about ourselves based on our experiences.

You may have heard of a story that Stephen R. Covey tells of being on the subway on a quiet Sunday morning. It is an excellent illustration of the power of stories. Covey sat there on the subway that morning waiting to arrive at his stop. People were reading newspapers, sitting there quietly waiting for their stops. And a young father and his children came on board the subway.

Suddenly the atmosphere in the subway changed. The father had sat down next to Covey, but the children were running loose, being noisy and disruptive. They ran around pushing and yelling, causing a serious disturbance. After several minutes, this bothered Covey enough that he suggested to the man that he might consider controlling his children better, as they were disturbing everyone on the subway car. The man slowly looked up, as if coming out of a trance, and said, "I suppose I should. We just came from the hospital, and their mother died less than an hour ago. I don't think they know how to take it, and I'm not sure I know how to either" (summarized from Covey; 1989; The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People).

We all believe we see things as they really are. We ALL believe we see things as they really are. Do you get it? I believe I see reality, you believe you see reality. Covey says we don't really see the world as it is — we see the world as we are, through our colored glasses, so to speak. Each day as we go through life, we can be participating in the same thing as someone else but be having a totally different experience. We are constantly creating stories about ourselves and about others.

How does this apply to our relationships? How often do you think you know exactly what someone means, only to be completely mistaken? How often have you tried to get someone to understand you without success?
Yes, we all have stories. We may have a story about how smart we are based on how well we did in school. A story about how much money we can earn based on how we saw our parents handle money. A story about if we are lovable or not based on childhood or dating experiences. We may have stories about rich people or poor people, politicians, celebrities, those of different cultures or ethnicities... The possible number of stories is infinite.

Mindy writes, “For years I believed I was just plain dumb at math. No matter how many tutors or special classes my parents sent me to, I did not understand algebra. I believed I was incapable of doing algebra. I avoided it to the point I opted to take several foreign language classes in college so as to avoid any math classes. Until my senior year. By then I had begun to love learning and thoroughly enjoyed my major and actually had a great GPA. To graduate I had to complete one basic math course. Oh no, I was horrible at math right? Or so I believed. It turns out previously I hadn't actually cared to understand algebra, but now I did. I sat up front, asked questions and not only passed, but got an A!

So what changed? A few things, beginning with accountability. I admitted that although I “tried” in high school, I didn't really give it my best. I let my story about being bad at math be an excuse to not try. Rather than be a victim of my story that I was just not born with the brain cells to understand math, sigh, I chose to be the creator of myself and my abilities. Since I was motivated to keep my GPA good for my final semester at college despite a math class, I was willing to put in the work and figure out math. Presto, a math genius was born and, better yet, another false story was dispelled.

Unfortunately I didn't see it that way at the time; therefore, I didn't transfer the reality about stories to other areas of my life. That would come years later, through the aforementioned mentor. Sadly those years were filled with all sorts of other stories that nearly cost me my marriage and family. While we can create good stories, like the woman who was raped but chose strength, I had created too many painful stories and these brought ongoing heartache.

Although I don't know where this story came from, I had the belief that a good wife had a perfectly well-balanced meal on the table, all the kids happily playing and the house in order each night as her husband arrived home from work. Oh, she had to look beautiful too. Further I believed that if this was not done, she was a failure and that her husband must be so disappointed in her. And finally if he ever arrived home to her in a less than perfect mental or emotional state, he would surely believe she had been in that state all day. Oh, his poor children to have to endure that.
Okay, written out, it sounds ridiculous, and I assure you Eric never implied he expected or even believed this, but I sincerely, unknowingly believed this for the first 10 years of our marriage! I cannot begin to tell you the pressure, chaos and pain it caused me and everyone around me to try to live up to this erroneous story! As you can imagine, I could not consistently live up to this story. It turns out, an even deeper belief I had had was that I am unlovable. It worked out nicely that my belief about the perfect wife and the failure it created in my life conveniently reinforced my belief I was unlovable. We do that by the way — we are powerful creators, and we constantly create proof to back up our stories.

Don't believe me? Try it. What is your driving experience like? Are you surrounded by road rage, people speeding and are you always getting cut off? Or do you always hit green lights, people let you merge, and driving is very peaceful? Acknowledge which experience you usually have and then create the opposite next time you take a drive and see what happens.
The idea of stories can be found in many places. T. Harv Eker explains it this way. What we call “stories,” he calls “conditioning.”

“...Your subconscious conditioning determines your thinking. Your thinking determines your decisions, and your decisions determine your actions, which eventually determine your outcomes” (Eker; 2005; Secrets of the Millionaire Mind; Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth, p. 23).

STORIES FEEL TRUE! To us they seem like reality, but if we'll take a closer look, we can find the actual truth, and that opens our hearts and minds to healing, success and joy! Our stories can stand between ourselves and our spouses. They can distort reality. Those stories, fears, beliefs — whatever you want to call them — will stay there, affecting every part of your life, until you consciously root them out. Thus the saying “The truth will set you free!”

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