Stories
I’m just popping in with this week’s Mental Sunshine - a short email designed to help you to bring more mental sunshine into your life.
This week I want to talk about the stories we tell ourselves.
I bet you don’t even notice the amount of stories you tell yourself every single day - but we all do it.
If we trip over in the street we might tell ourselves that everyone is staring and laughing at us as we quickly hurry away.
Stumbling over our words in a presentation might create a story that everyone thinks we are incompetent and stupid.
If a friend is late to meet us we might tell ourselves it’s because they don’t really value our friendship or care about us.
The thing is, as far as I am aware you are not a mind reader.
None of us are.
When we do this - and we all do it - we’re just making up a story in our heads.
And if you’re making up a story, why not make it a better one?
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Seeing you trip over in the street may have alerted the elderly person behind you to the uneven surface, and saved them a fall.
The people who saw your presentation might have been really interested and inspired by the content, and barely even noticed that you mixed up a few words.
Maybe your friend is late to meet you because the traffic is really bad or they’ve had problems getting the children off to school.
We all tell ourselves stories - and usually they are negative.
My challenge to you this week is to tell yourself a different story.
Try to catch your brain when it goes into “making up a negative story” mode - and try to think of a better story instead.
Let me know how you get on!