Thursday, March 20, 2014

What's your story?



What’s Your Story?
Tim Connor

We all have a story.  What’s yours?  Let me explain.

As the years pass we tend to develop our life story and I’m not referring here to the events, circumstances or outcomes during life, but the story we have come to believe about ourselves and what we tell others.

Think about it for a moment . . . what are some of the things you tell others about your life or experiences and lessons that is totally made up and contrived that you for whatever reason have come to believe as truth?

We all do it - not always to mislead others, but often to make ourselves look good or justify our mistakes, lessons or even our successes.
Let me give you a personal example.
Over forty years ago when I was in the Air Force I won the Guam track meet for the discuss and qualified to go to the Olympic trials in Japan. I came in 3rd and didn’t make the cut to go to the Olympics representing the Air Force.  But my story over the years became the following, “I qualified coming in second but the base commander on the base I was serving wouldn’t give me leave time to participate.”  A lie?  A misrepresentation?  Call it what you want, but over the years I came to believe the story I told others from time to time as true even though I knew it wasn’t.  A big deal? Not in my personal opinion but still – it wasn’t the truth. Did this story hurt anyone? No.  But, as time passed it became easier and easier to tell this false story as I had convinced myself that it was true.

Are there other stories in my life that I fudge?  Of course.  Do you do it? Well if you don’t think so you are in total denial.

Why do we all do this as we develop the stories of our life? Is it the need for acceptance? Is it some inner emotional lack or something simpler? I believe for each of us the reasons my vary, but in the end each of us have in some way adjusted our versions of truth for a personal agenda.

As a speaker giving presentations worldwide for many years I have developed many stories to illustrate some of the points in my message.  Are they all one hundred percent accurate? No.  Does it matter? Well, as long as they illustrate my points in a clear way and are insignificant when it comes to my life do they hurt me or others?  Before you answer that question I would ask you to consider the many variations of your life stories that you have come to believe and share and their ultimate impact on others.

I’m not talking here about pre-determined lies with the purpose of furthering a personal agenda, but simple insignificant examples, illustrations or lessons that you have come to use to help you make some sense of your life and its mistakes, failures or even successes.

We all fudge from time to time.  We all forget the details of our past life once in a while, but we all need our stories to make sense to us so we often fill in the gaps of our experiences, lessons or circumstances with made up information so the stories make sense if not to others at least to us.

Come on . . . if you are over forty even thirty do you think you remember all of the details of something that happened twenty years ago? Think about it – if you are forty that’s over 14,000 days you have lived and add to that the hours and that’s over 350,000 hours . . . get real . . .do you think you have an accurate memory when it comes to everything that you did or happened for over a quarter of a million hours of life?

Our stories are ours, we own them and often they shape our attitudes, mindsets, actions, decisions and choices.  The unimportant ones don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but the question remains – are some of your stories hurting others in some way or your success, happiness or continued personal development and growth?

“We do not choose our own parts in life, and have nothing to do with selecting those parts.  Our simple duty is confined to playing them well.”
Epictetus

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