This lesson will help you understand what narrative is and the role it plays in your life.

“Small shifts in mindset can trigger a cascade of changes so profound that they test the limits of what seems possible.” Carol Dweck

These shifts in mindset start by adjusting the story you tell.

You have a story that you believe about your life. Everyone does. We call this your narrative. 

What you believe about your life is actually more important than the circumstances of your life.

Your inner story and beliefs affect your health, your relationships, what you accomplish in your career, and how you experience everything that happens to you.

Image by Itai Aarons on Unsplash

Here’s a quick example of three different ways to experience the exact same thing; a roller coaster. 

What happens if you force a person, maybe a young child, who has never seen a roller coaster to ride one. You strap them in, don’t tell them what is happening, and just send them off. How do you think they will experience that ride?

There’s a good chance they’ll be terrified.

But, what if that child has seen roller coasters, watched roller coasters and said they want to try one, but they are little bit scared? What if, when you take them to ride the roller coaster, you ride it with them, you tell them it’s going to be fun, and encourage them to be brave and enjoy the ride? They might come off that ride ecstatic and feeling like a hero. They have a much better chance of experiencing it as fun, because...

...they believe it’s supposed to be fun.

What if this is their 100th roller coaster ride? When I was a certain age, my brother and I would jump right off the ride, get in line again, and do it all over again on a day when there were no lines. We rode the roller coaster at least 30 times in a row, before moving on to the drop of doom. By then, it was boring. It wasn’t an adventure anymore, it was something we were so experienced at that there wasn’t much thrill left. 

Our story had changed to one of experience.

Your whole life has a story attached to it. You aren’t looking at anything objectively. You are filtering everything you experience through the story you believe. You usually get a lot of this story from your family of origin. And most of it is completely unexamined. You just believe what you believe, and think what you think, about what is possible, and the role you play in your life. You don’t often question it.

The good news is, you can examine this story, and you can change it. And, you can consciously write a strong and empowering story for your children, one that is true, AND, helps them to be more resilient.

Resilience is shown in things like the ability to:

• bounce back from failure and try again
• try new things
• be brave
• be tough minded
• be less whiny and complain less
• and most of all, believe in themselves and their abilities