Change Your Narrative, Change Your Life

Most of us, knowingly or not, think of our lives as a story. We have an idea of what we think might happen next, feelings about what we want to happen, and our own understanding of what has happened in the story so far. This narrative of what has happened so far in our stories is what I'm writing about today. Our narrative explains how things currently are and how we got to where we are. It justifies how we see ourselves and the world around us.

Our narrative helps us to prioritize and filter out information. It helps us to justify our hopes and desires. It's foundational to our worldview. We build a coherent narrative for our lives to make sense of a complex world, one which we actually have very little control over. The problem with this is that we sometimes build a narrative that justifies or ignores ideas and behaviours that actually hurt us or the people around us. We sometimes take a self satisfying position. We build a narrative of our lives that fortifies our self doubt and helplessness, that either skims over or magnifies our flaws rather than looking at ourselves realistically and challenging us to improve.   

While we may not have control over external factors in our lives, we do have a lot of influence over our selves and the people around us. 

When something contradicts our own beliefs, values, or sense of self (summed up in our narrative) we either disregard it, or we get defensive about it. It can be easy to dismiss a challenge to our narrative. 

But... sometimes we really need to listen to those challenges. Sometimes it's the difference between us moving forward or staying in a rut. Sometimes we let ourselves get away with failing ourselves and the people around us and explaining it all away because we've framed a situation in a certain way. It's easy to make excuses and invalidate the experiences of others to serve our needs and enhance our sense of self. It's easy because it requires no further thought or consideration and many of us have not trained our minds to think in that way. 

It takes work and practice and an ongoing commitment to really thinking about the context and relationships involved in a situation to get better at this. It's a process, it's a journey. It's not some quick fix thing, but it's worth it. 

Think of the last time you felt upset towards someone or something. How did you react to that? Did you lash out? Did you spend the afternoon sulking? How much of this reaction was tied to your ego, or sense of self? How much of it was tied to your own expectations of how the situation would go?

Our expectations of the world emerge from our narratives, and are parameters that we're able to choose. Sometimes the situation isn't the problem. Sometimes there isn't someone else to blame.  Sometimes the problem really is in our narratives. Sometimes the solution is in empowering ourselves to take ownership of the circumstances we can. The problem is often in our own explanation or expectation. It's our expectations not being met that usually unsettles us, we hate uncertainty. Sometimes our narratives are not helpful or useful, sometimes we frame the world around us in a way that hurts us and the people around us.

That's important to think about.

It's not always necessary to change the situation, sometimes we're just looking at it the wrong way. 

Value the constructive criticisms, value the challenges, value the opportunities to grow, and value the experiences and perspectives of others. Don't interpret everything as a personal attack or a reason to just lay down and give up. Remember, this is a process. We won't always be perfect, but if we're doing our best and open to learning we're going to go a lot further than if we're closed off.

One Simple Tool to Declutter Your Mind

I'm a huge scatterbrain.

I tend to have 100 things on the go and walk a fine line between getting a lot of stuff done and spreading myself too thin.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed when you have multiple projects with many people and variables involved.  

Sound familiar? 

Then it's time to get organized and get some of this work done! Something I've used for years to get my thoughts in order are mind maps. 

I know some of you might be hesitant to use these, but if what you're doing isn't working it's time to try something new. If you are a visual or abstract thinker, mind maps can be very helpful for organizing your thoughts.

I've used mind maps for years and coached others in using them to plan and focus. Here's a simple run down of how mine work:

1. Open up a blank page in a workbook or unroll some poster-board and jot down what you want to benefit from your planning in the center of the page. (For example: "My life", "My business", "School" etc...). We will call this your Primary Category. 

2. Next,  write down what you might call subgroups of the Primary Category you've written down. The things that make up that category (For example, if you wrote down "My Life" you might put down some of the things that you're currently working on or want to focus on going on in your life, such as work, diet, school etc...). Try to break it down into anything that seems important related to your first category. We will call these Secondary Categories.

   

3. From here, you want to further break down the Secondary Categories. For your mind map to be worthwhile to you, you will usually have to go at least this far. If your next steps haven't become clear, you have to keep going. If you've tried making a mind map before and stopped here, that is probably why it wasn't effective. If you still feel lost you need to keep breaking these categories down. 

It takes at least three levels of breaking down to get past the superficial thoughts that we tend to get hung up on. At the third level of breaking down categories, we start to see some new things. We might notice that it can become a little bit harder to think of what our secondary categories were made up of. At this point, the way you break down the Secondary Categories might become more abstract. This is okay, your mind map isn't for anybody else: it's for you, and what matters is that you understand it. 

It's usually our basic level of understanding of what we're doing and why we're doing it that makes it seem overwhelming. Mind mapping forces us to break down what we are doing and why we're doing it enough that we better understand not only what we need to do to accomplish what we must, but also so that we can assess, prioritize, and evaluate what we're working on or what we want.  

For example: 

It starts to look a little bit more complicated right? 

As you can see in the diagram above, the sub-categories beyond the Secondary Categories take on a bit of a different form depending on what the Secondary Categories mean to you and what you value or want to accomplish. 

I put vegetables under diet because, despite being an adult, I don't eat enough broccoli. 

That's a simple example because it's already at the level of being a specific goal. From there I might simply want to jot down a note on how I will accomplish that goal.

Example:

Diet -> Vegetables -> Make meals at home once a day (make it realistic for you)

 You don't want to waste too much time on the things that are already fairly clear to you, those aren't the reason why you're stressed or lost. It's the more complex things that require a deeper level of understanding, You'll notice at this stage that some of the subgroups are still categorical while some feel more like specific goals. In the example, "Marathon" may already be at the level of a specific goal to your understanding, whereas "Project 1" for "Work" may still be a looming, not well understood monster full of confusing variables and a variety of tasks. 

4. The less specific subcategories here need to be broken down further. As we were saying, if "Project 1" still seems daunting, it has to be broken down into tasks, goals and outcomes so that it can become manageable. Here is an example of what that could potentially look like:

As you can see, things start become much more clear and manageable by this point. This is where you might have an A-ha moment and can then go on to realize that some things can be delegated, maybe aren't necessary, and make some specific to-do lists. Once you've broken everything down to the level of some specific tasks or desired outcomes, you can use a highlighter or make a list to help prioritize these items and best use your time in the most productive way. Continue to break down the items until they are at an understandable and specific level. Put this up on your wall and review it or re do it until you are where you need to be. Check things off as you accomplish them. 

 You can apply this method to almost anything. Listing the pros and cons of a decision, planning a big project, mapping out your goals with your spouse and how you want to accomplish them, group projects... the list goes on. Mind maps can be a very useful tool, especially if you tend to be more of a 'visionary' or big picture type of thinker and it takes more effort for you to drill in on specifics to make your big dreams a reality.