In my previous blog on turning points I raised the issue of stories. In this blog I would like to share my views on stories as a phenomenon that robs one of true inner happiness. I’ll start with a technical description and then illustrate this description from my own experiences with stories.
Stories for me are the mental narratives that one builds around seemingly important issues or ideas about “who I am” or “what others are”. It is rather easy to see a story because it often has the “I” in it, for example, I’m too tired to gym, I deserve that chocolate, I need a better job. Who is this I and why does it seem to fuel all my thinking? What does this “I” want from me and why does it seem to be associated with failures in my life? Sounds confusing but is actually rather simple when one sees this “I” and its stories in action.
For a story in action I like using the example of my “cycling is not for me” story to illustrate my understanding of stories.
My local Woolies food store is next to a House of Coffees which on Sundays is a favourite breakfast stop for cyclists. I would pass these fit, thin and well equipped cyclists and say to myself, “I would never do that, I would not risk life and limb on these Gauteng roads on a grossly expensive bike”. However at the same time while looking at them I felt intensely unhappy. Again I would think to myself, “I might be overweight, but I’m ok, this obsession with being that thin is ridiculous”. On these Sundays I would never walk out of Woolies without a lot of feel better food to maximise my recovery from what they reflected as being absent in my life.
The reality was that these cyclists did not belong to a group of people which excluded me, I excluded myself through my thinking. However, there was also another dimension; why did these stories and feelings trigger me to distance myself further from these cyclists by eating? At the time I did not understand the relationship my thinking, ego and pain-body had in terms of my stories nor would that understanding come easily to me.
At the time of this cyclist story I was reading Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth, but I at that time had not got the message of what stories and my thinking was doing to my life. This especially since it was literally destroying my body and any happiness I could experience. However, the universe acts in interesting ways and soon the first brick was sent my way to learn the story lesson.
My first brick came three weeks after starting my new eating and exercising plan when circumstances brought into my life a man who a few months earlier I had labelled as being someone who would not be very interested in me or for that matter that I did not have a lot in common with- my story, we had little reason to interact. But events had conspired in a way that forced him to make contact with me. One thing led to another and we started to chat regularly. He would frequently and rather rudely challenge my many stories, which while it created a lot of enlightening moments was also creating an emotional ride of a lifetime.
Despite the turmoil this man introduced into my life, as we interacted over the following two months I came to the realisation that I had become a prisoner of my own stories and that the reality often bore little resemblance to my stories. This gave me the understanding that change was not about turning a new page or of starting a new chapter in my life. The true awakening for me around change was when I essentially realised that I have, in fact, always had within me a new book one in which I could write anything to create the life I wanted. This new book could be, should be, unhindered by my past experiences or expectations of the future, thereby making my life a now voyage. This voyage of the present was awash with opportunity and fulfilment so long as I was still enough to let go of all that noise introduced by my thinking.
This realisation may seem rather sequential but in fact it was not. It took a lot of reflection on the role my stories had in my life and perhaps more importantly identifying the underlying driver of my thinking, my pain-body. Over the three weeks or so that I actively reflected on my pain-body I came to the understanding that what was happening at the surface was driven by a deeper truth. For me this truth only revealed itself if I did not try to use my thinking to explore it, hence I believe it simply came when the time is right and that that time was when I let go of my expectations.
During this reflection I found Tolle’s advice on using nature to create space in my thinking very useful. Some of my greatest insights into myself came from simple things like the flowers in my garden or the beauty of Eastern Cape coastal forest flora. As an illustration; after a difficult night in which I had a rough time coming to terms with my thinking around what I wanted in my life, I walked outside my house with a cup of coffee as I had done so many times before. For me viewing the sun rising in the east and taking in the early morning smells of the sea gave me a deep sense of peace. As I passed my long suffering Hibiscus, I noted it was in full bloom with its characteristically large flowers, which seemed so disproportional given the bushes small size. I looked at the beautiful blooms and as I did my mind became quiet.
Standing looking at these flowers I realised that despite not getting enough water, fertiliser and standing in dune sand this bush flowered with an almost palpable sense of living. I realised that I, like this bush, did not need every thing in my life perfect to bloom. Moreover, that that which was in my past truly did not matter, nor for that count anything I expected for tomorrow. Like that bush I could live my life to the full, right now, with abundance. It was a profound moment for me in my life and it came thanks to a simple flower.
A month later the antagonist of my thinking quiet simply exited my life as suddenly as he had entered. In this to was a lesson for me, many people one will interact with can be a teacher in your life, if you are open to the lesson. Hence, despite his rude and self-centred nature, I remain deeply grateful that he came into my life like a wrecking ball, one that took down the barriers which stopped my growth as a person.
Stories for me are the mental narratives that one builds around seemingly important issues or ideas about “who I am” or “what others are”. It is rather easy to see a story because it often has the “I” in it, for example, I’m too tired to gym, I deserve that chocolate, I need a better job. Who is this I and why does it seem to fuel all my thinking? What does this “I” want from me and why does it seem to be associated with failures in my life? Sounds confusing but is actually rather simple when one sees this “I” and its stories in action.
For a story in action I like using the example of my “cycling is not for me” story to illustrate my understanding of stories.
My local Woolies food store is next to a House of Coffees which on Sundays is a favourite breakfast stop for cyclists. I would pass these fit, thin and well equipped cyclists and say to myself, “I would never do that, I would not risk life and limb on these Gauteng roads on a grossly expensive bike”. However at the same time while looking at them I felt intensely unhappy. Again I would think to myself, “I might be overweight, but I’m ok, this obsession with being that thin is ridiculous”. On these Sundays I would never walk out of Woolies without a lot of feel better food to maximise my recovery from what they reflected as being absent in my life.
The reality was that these cyclists did not belong to a group of people which excluded me, I excluded myself through my thinking. However, there was also another dimension; why did these stories and feelings trigger me to distance myself further from these cyclists by eating? At the time I did not understand the relationship my thinking, ego and pain-body had in terms of my stories nor would that understanding come easily to me.
At the time of this cyclist story I was reading Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth, but I at that time had not got the message of what stories and my thinking was doing to my life. This especially since it was literally destroying my body and any happiness I could experience. However, the universe acts in interesting ways and soon the first brick was sent my way to learn the story lesson.
My first brick came three weeks after starting my new eating and exercising plan when circumstances brought into my life a man who a few months earlier I had labelled as being someone who would not be very interested in me or for that matter that I did not have a lot in common with- my story, we had little reason to interact. But events had conspired in a way that forced him to make contact with me. One thing led to another and we started to chat regularly. He would frequently and rather rudely challenge my many stories, which while it created a lot of enlightening moments was also creating an emotional ride of a lifetime.
Despite the turmoil this man introduced into my life, as we interacted over the following two months I came to the realisation that I had become a prisoner of my own stories and that the reality often bore little resemblance to my stories. This gave me the understanding that change was not about turning a new page or of starting a new chapter in my life. The true awakening for me around change was when I essentially realised that I have, in fact, always had within me a new book one in which I could write anything to create the life I wanted. This new book could be, should be, unhindered by my past experiences or expectations of the future, thereby making my life a now voyage. This voyage of the present was awash with opportunity and fulfilment so long as I was still enough to let go of all that noise introduced by my thinking.
This realisation may seem rather sequential but in fact it was not. It took a lot of reflection on the role my stories had in my life and perhaps more importantly identifying the underlying driver of my thinking, my pain-body. Over the three weeks or so that I actively reflected on my pain-body I came to the understanding that what was happening at the surface was driven by a deeper truth. For me this truth only revealed itself if I did not try to use my thinking to explore it, hence I believe it simply came when the time is right and that that time was when I let go of my expectations.
During this reflection I found Tolle’s advice on using nature to create space in my thinking very useful. Some of my greatest insights into myself came from simple things like the flowers in my garden or the beauty of Eastern Cape coastal forest flora. As an illustration; after a difficult night in which I had a rough time coming to terms with my thinking around what I wanted in my life, I walked outside my house with a cup of coffee as I had done so many times before. For me viewing the sun rising in the east and taking in the early morning smells of the sea gave me a deep sense of peace. As I passed my long suffering Hibiscus, I noted it was in full bloom with its characteristically large flowers, which seemed so disproportional given the bushes small size. I looked at the beautiful blooms and as I did my mind became quiet.
Standing looking at these flowers I realised that despite not getting enough water, fertiliser and standing in dune sand this bush flowered with an almost palpable sense of living. I realised that I, like this bush, did not need every thing in my life perfect to bloom. Moreover, that that which was in my past truly did not matter, nor for that count anything I expected for tomorrow. Like that bush I could live my life to the full, right now, with abundance. It was a profound moment for me in my life and it came thanks to a simple flower.
A month later the antagonist of my thinking quiet simply exited my life as suddenly as he had entered. In this to was a lesson for me, many people one will interact with can be a teacher in your life, if you are open to the lesson. Hence, despite his rude and self-centred nature, I remain deeply grateful that he came into my life like a wrecking ball, one that took down the barriers which stopped my growth as a person.
Today nearly four months later from first challenging my stories, my life is very different. I now own a grossly expensive mountain bike on which I spend many very enjoyable hours. Every Saturday after my club ride, I to am now one of those cyclists sitting at a House of Coffees having breakfast.So what is the bottom line for stories and loosing weight? In my mind it is a simple truth. Something makes you reach for the food- your pain-body; and something makes it ok for you to be fat or justifies being fat; the ego driven fat stories. Therefore if you want to truly loose weight and become happy you must address your stories head-on. I also realised that I have been told this truth numerous times by people like Bob Green and Oprah Winfrey, but that I did not truly hear what they were saying. Perhaps I was not ready to hear like the many people who ask me to share my “how I did it” story.
