The manipulations of our story are numerous, often impossible to recognize or calibrate, and by no means always or wholly destructive. But because outside influences have the capacity to exercise profound, at times paralyzing, sway over us and how we live our days, it is imperative – at least for the vast majority of us who have ever felt a ‘misalignment’ in our lives, a gnawing lack of engagement and joy – that we work out figuring out how we ended up doing what we do and being who we are.

We wake up one morning and feel rotten, not knowing it because we have become so dogmatic and our story so inflexible, that we are impervious to change and even fresh input.  Unaware that every important decision in our life has been triggered by one goal: the avoidance of pain and risk, professionally and personally.

Is there someone out there to call you out on the phony, self – sabotaging parts of your story? Do you have someone who cares enough to do that, and is himself or herself unentangled? Who sees you and the world with some measure of objectivity? Whom you trust and respect? If you have such a person or persons, that is good. Great, in fact. But een if you do, you don’t want to rely on others to police yourself.

Tragedies happen when we don’t examine our story to see if it is really ours anymore, when we don’t look hard to see if perhaps someone or something else has infiltrated it without our conscious knowledge or consent. If you don’t activate your build in storyteller if you don’t start listening to your intuition, ou make your evolving story vulnerable to hijacking, to rerouting, to programming.

That is why it is vital to waken ourselves to the brilliant, subtle methods that individuals and institutions use to indoctrinate us.

Of course, doing what I am suggesting – unerringly knowing what is good for you versus what is bad for you – is anything but easy. The answer ‘it is my story and I’m sticking to it’  speaks to this difficulty. It suggests two things simultaneously. First:  my story is an unchangeable story, and second, my story may well be wrong but I will never abandon it so long as it is mine.  There is honor simply in clinging to the ‘mine -ness’ of it; better to propagate a false illusion one can call one’s own than rent out a truth beloning to someone else.