Yesterday I learned a powerful insight from Davie Fogarty that there are 4 kinds of stories in our lives:
- The Stories of our birth
- The Stories other people tells us
- The Stories we tell ourselves
- Reality - The truth.
1. The stories of our birth
This is the family and community we were born into. We cannot change this story.
2. The stories other people tells us
People's opinions about ourselves and our place in the world. They might be from family members, friends, colleagues, and bosses at work.
We should take these stories with a grain of salt as they are mostly wrong and limiting. But sometimes they might be right. So analyze them and either use them to make strategic and drastic changes in your life and work or disregard them totally.
3. The Stories we tell ourselves
These are the thoughts in our heads and our self-talk. These stories shape our reality. We cannot achieve greatness if we don't tell ourselves empowering stories.
These are our thoughts— questions we ask ourselves and the answers we give to those questions. These stories could be a product of our memories, evaluation of our lives and events, and then shaped by other people's opinions.
Jim Kwik, in his book "Limitless," said our lives and results are the product of our "Dominant Questions"- Thoughts.
We should always analyze these stories as they are most times false and disempowering. And replace them with empowering stories.
4. Reality - The truth
This is just the truth. You accept that and either work towards changing it or make it even better.
You see our lives are shaped by these stories. While we cannot control the first two stories, we have complete power over the third. Our thoughts and beliefs are the driving force behind our actions and, ultimately, our reality.
To improve your life:
- Acknowledge the story of your birth and understand its influence.
- Listen to others' opinions but don't let them define you. Use them as data points to inform your decisions.
- Pay attention to your internal dialogue. Are your thoughts empowering or limiting? Analyze them and use them to make constructive and data driven decisions to shape your reality. Replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
- Accept reality and take proactive steps to change it if necessary.
Take conscious efforts to pay attention to these stories, and analyze them. Use them as tools to measure and evaluate the direction of your life and then make decisions. These stories when analyzed, provides us with huge amount of data and insights that we can use to drive change and progress in our lives and works as developers and create a more fulfilling and purposeful life.
Have an amazing weekend DEVs.
Happy Coding! 🖤❤️
Cover Photo Credit: By Houcine Ncib on Unsplash
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