Change your story. What does that even mean?
Have you ever noticed how each of us builds our reality out of judgments and preconceptions, all of them shaped by what we’ve lived through? And have you wondered how those judgments might quietly be co-creating the reality we then experience? If so — can we change our thoughts, our judgments, and with them, our reality?
I believe we can. We can learn to observe our physical and emotional states as life unfolds, and notice — if we choose to — where our preconceived ideas, and sometimes our plain misconceptions, are living.
Let It Go
How many times have we said this to ourselves, or offered it gently to someone else? I’ve said it many times over the years, and received the same three words back. We reach for them in response to disappointment, loss, anger, or sadness. We know that if we could just let it go, we could carry on, leaving the heaviness behind. And yet — letting go is almost never that simple.
Why do we form such strong attachments to ideas, opinions, relationships, and people? What is that thread, conscious or not, that pulls at our emotions and shapes our actions? When the attachment is to a person, love is usually woven through it — romantic, parental, sibling, the love for a dear friend or a cherished animal. Even the thought of losing someone can stir up a stress that lives in both body and mind, all the more so when the loss becomes real.
This week I brought my youngest, my son, to begin his first year of college. Watching a child turn eighteen and leave home is one of those quintessential family milestones — but until I actually arrived here, I didn’t fully understand how it would feel. Now I do.
Even though I know he’s healthy, happy, and more than ready to live on his own, it’s still a loss for both of us — a loss of what was. My children’s childhoods and our family memories had been flooding my heart for months as I counted down the days.
Each time my stomach flipped at the thought of him leaving, every motherly worst-case scenario my imagination could conjure, I noticed the physical responses that followed: my heart quickening, my chest tightening, my belly aching, my hands going damp, my lips beginning to quiver as the tears arrived. My baby is leaving. Something close to a small wave of panic — until my steadier self stepped in.
More than once this past summer I caught myself thinking, thank goodness for yoga. It steadies me, every time. I remember to pause and take a deep breath. And then a few more — slower, fuller, softer. I honour the feeling, notice where it lives in my body, and step back far enough to see the bigger picture. In the language of the nervous system, that long exhale is a small signal of safety, a way of telling the body that it’s all right to settle. Yoga reminds me that life is dynamic and ever-changing, that I already carry the tools to meet both the big things and the small, and to know the difference.
And finally, it reminds me to release what no longer serves my own higher good, or the good of those around me.