The Most Important Story is Your Own!
Every moment that passes is an addition to the story of your life. This is such a fascinating thought process that it moved me to do some research into how we think. Once a person understands how we all think, they can utilize it to move their life in the direction they want it to go. Everything we remember about the past is in the form of a story. As the present occurs, we lock in what’s happening in the form of a story. When we project into the future, we utilize our imagination to create potential stories. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
The use of stories is an important form of communication and has been throughout the history of the world. Prior to the written word, stories were utilized to pass information from generation to generation. In our current world, more information is passed through the use of stories than all the written words combined. So much of the success of the companies that can track your family history is based on the fact that we may have missed the chance of having the related stories passed down to us. While I asked both of my parents a gazillion questions about their life, their relationships with their parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, and as many ancestors as they could remember, I still have questions that would fill in some of the blanks of the stories they shared. Both have passed on, and I love revisiting the stories they DID share with me, and I attempt to share them all, whenever possible, with our kids and other loved ones.
So, the past is filed in our brain by our memory in the form of stories. Go ahead and pause for a second and think of anything that has happened previously in your life. You just formed a story in your mind. If I asked you to share your thoughts with me, you’d communicate what you were thinking about in the form of a story. You have the ability to add parts, as well as leave out portions of the story creating your own personal perspective, but you can’t change anything that actually occurred. This is why and how people remember the same things differently.
If two or more people witness an individual happening, they immediately form a story in the present moment to capture what they believe just occurred. Law enforcement officers at an accident scene may need to hear each witness’ individual story to be able to form their own story of what they believe may have actually happened. In the process of remembering, our brains have the ability to first capture the major theme (joy, concern, knowledge acquisition, fear, success, happiness, and more) and then use the details in forming a story around that theme that can be remembered for future use.
Throughout each day, all of us are constantly creating stories through the use of logic. Just like a computer, logic helps us process our thoughts, created by what we’re seeing, hearing, and experiencing quickly into a story. We form images in our brain, and these images are assembled, through computation, into a story. In the present, we’re constantly creating story after story, each of which gets filed in our brain’s memory vault. And intuitively, we edit and modify each story as it’s occurring in a way that will best serve our choices and decision-making in the current moment we are living in, and for all future decisions.
My favorite part of the story process is our ability to imagine, project, create, modify, and amplify the different stories that will make up our future and help us pursue our chosen destiny. And there’s a unique future story for every important area of our life. Here’s what may be the very best part of all this “our future stories” thought process: Each of us has complete control over what we want our story to look like. We can develop a major theme for each story and then utilize what our past stories have taught us to manage the details, so our future story comes as close to the story we’ve imagined. We also have the ability over time to change the story before it occurs, giving us the ability to adapt to changes occurring in the present that may directly impact the stories of our future.
While I’ve thrown a lot at you to think about, It’s imperative that you embrace the fact the most important story in your life is your own. YOUR story has an impact of some kind on every person you encounter. Doesn’t matter if it’s on a video chat, phone call, social media, in-person, through a letter, or any other form of communication. Every story leaves an impression of some sort on those that experience it. YOUR STORY MATTERS! It matters because of the impact, be it good or bad, that your story has on the world we live in. Regardless of the stories that make up your past, I encourage you to fully embrace the story that’s being created right now in the present, and the many stories you can create for yourself in the future. Dream. Dream Big. Imagine Big. Be kind to yourself and devote an appropriate amount of time and thought into imagining your future. After all, your life story is yours, and yours alone. So, create the story of your destiny and get busy pursuing it while adapting to the inevitable changes that will come into your path. Like I said…YOUR STORY MATTERS! Hey…I Believe In YOU! GiddyUp!