Changing Your Story

Growth, Life, Story, Truth 0

Although we may be beginning to understand that our Story is just a Story and not the Truth, it still can feel a little risky to be tampering with it.  Adaptive beings that we are, we’ve figured out how to tolerate the limiting story.  We know our way around that territory, and we know what to expect from it.  When we open ourselves up to a new possibility, a new Story, we often fear we’re opening ourselves up to false hope.  What if nothing changes?  Then we will have to face disappointment which we could have avoided by sticking with the old Story.  I agree that it’s risky.  It takes courage to move toward what you want, to come out of the cultural trance and wholeheartedly go after what matters to you. . . .

When we orient our lives around what we most care about, we see new ways of being that we were blind to when we were focused on eradicating the problem.  I invite you to refrain from attending to something that needs to be fixed.  Instead, try looking at what you care about and what you really want.

The bottom line:  It’s All Story.  Abundance is a Story.  Scarcity is a Story.  Yes, there are facts supporting both of them, but remember that it isn’t the facts that shape our lives — it’s our Stories.

— Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 44-46

Transformation

Growth, Joy, Life 0

If you meet with selfishness, joyfully call it a chance to be unselfish yourself.  Practice the unselfish attitude which is so obviously lacking in some particular person or situation, and lovely, unselfish things will begin springing up all around you.  Instead of saying in thought, “what irritating, thoughtless neighbors,” begin calling them to yourself “delightful, potential friends and companions.”  Just as though you wave a magic wand over them, they will certainly become that if you persist long enough, or else they will move away and be replaced by delightful companions.  For you are waving a magic wand over yourself, remember, changing yourself into the nature of the name you give, so that people of the same nature will gravitate to you.

That, of course, is the whole secret and key.  What you think, you yourself become in spirit.  Spirits are continually attracted to, and gravitating towards, other spirits that think, desire, and feel the same kind of things as themselves.  To think only of good things continually attracts other good and loving spirits to you in the real world of spirit or thought as you strengthen and bless one another.  The reverse happens if you think and feel unkind or unloving things.

— Hannah Hurnard, Eagles Wings to the Higher Places, p. 66-67

Healthy Selfishness

Growth, Joy, Life 0

Some healthy selfishness now can rekindle the excitement and joy in your life — feelings that are nearer to the surface than you might imagine.  Best of all it can help you realize some of your most private and most precious dreams — now, while there’s still time.

— Dr. Rachael Heller and Dr. Richard Heller, Healthy Selfishness: Getting the Life You Deserve Without the Guilt, p. 53

Responsibility is Power.

Forgiveness, Growth, Life 0

When I talk about responsibility, I am really talking about having power.  Blame is about giving away one’s power.  Responsibility gives us the power to make changes in our lives.  If we play the victim role, then we are using our personal power to be helpless.  If we decide to accept responsibility, then we don’t waste time blaming somebody or something out there. . . .

If we can use our problems and illnesses as opportunities to think about how we can change our lives, we have power.

Louise L. Hay, The Power Is Within You, p. 5

Forgiveness, a Comprehensive Topic

Forgiveness, Growth 0

When I first turned my attention to forgiveness, it seemed a worthwhile, if unexciting, topic.  But as I immersed myself, I realized that forgiveness is as fundamental and important as any topic in psychology.  There are few places it can’t take you.  It embraces the meaning of love and hate, the nature of dependency, the torments of envy, the problems of narcissism and paranoia, as well as the tension between self-hatred and self-acceptance, between striving for maturity and refusing to grow up. . . .

In our capacity or failure to forgive we reveal our ability to recognize the humanity in someone who has hurt or disappointed us, as well as to see our own limitations and complicity.  It represents an ability to imagine what life is like on the other side of the fence, where another human being is engaged in his own struggle, to let go of the expectation that people exist to be just what we need them to be.  And this sensibility applies to our view of ourselves, too:  for forgiving others is nothing but the mirror image of forgiving oneself.  Significant acts of forgiveness also entail letting go of a precious story we tell about ourselves, risking the awareness of a larger, less self-justifying truth.

What we do in the realm of forgiveness . . . speaks to the magnitude of our self-centeredness and the extent to which we organize the world into a simple pattern of good versus bad, as opposed to a more mature ability to tolerate ambiguity and ambivalence.  In the capacity to forgive we see our largeness of heart.  And, in struggling to forgive what is most difficult for us to forgive, we reveal our courage, imagination, and potential for growth.  The development of forgiveness is, I now think, as clear a marker of general psychological development as there is.

— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 9-10