The Stories We Tell Ourselves | Living Fully

Last week we explored character strengths, those natural qualities that show up when we are at our best. The things that come so easily we forget they are strengths at all.

This week I want to look at the other side. Not the qualities that lift us up, but the stories that hold us back.

The stories we tell ourselves shape everything: our beliefs, our feelings, even our lives. And most of them are buried deep where we rarely look. The most powerful stories lie beneath the surface, not easy to reach, yet shaping how we feel about ourselves and about life.

At some point, for some reason, we were programmed with these beliefs. And we keep repeating the same stories, even if they are no longer true, or maybe never were in the first place. Maybe they were simply passed on to us.

Stories like: I am not good enough. I am not worthy of love. I will never be as good as they are. I should be further along by now.

You might not say these things out loud. You might not even think them consciously. But if you slow down enough, you will notice them in the way you hesitate before speaking up, in the tension you carry when you receive a compliment, in the voice that tells you to keep pushing when your body is begging you to stop.

These are the stories we tell ourselves. And most of them were not even ours to begin with.

Biography becomes biology.

When Stories Rise to the Surface

This past weekend, I attended a birth as a doula. It lasted 38 hours.

Halfway through, I asked myself: why do I do this?

The answer came instantly: because it matters.

During the strongest contractions, something happened that I have witnessed before but that never stops being profound. The mama had old stories rise to the surface. Words she usually keeps hidden inside suddenly came out. The intensity of the moment brought them up from wherever they had been stored in her body, in her cells, in years of holding on.

I was able to help her release those stories during the birth. After speaking them out loud, she could let them go with the next contraction. She did not need those stories anymore, but they had been there so long they felt like part of her. And maybe, at some point in her life, they were even there to protect her.

After the release, something shifted. There was a feeling she described as new: empowerment, strength, and trust in herself as a mother. The old stories had been taking up space that was now free for something better.

I am so grateful I was there to support her in this deep work. And yes, I am exhausted. But it is worth it, because it matters.

The Body Holds the Story

Our stories do not just live in our heads. They live in our bodies. In the tightness of our shoulders, in the shallow breathing we do not notice, in the way our stomach clenches when we feel judged.

That mama's stories did not surface because she was thinking about them. They surfaced because her body brought them up under intensity, under vulnerability, in a moment where holding on was no longer possible. The body holds the story, even when the mind has moved on.

This is true for all of us, not only in birth. Many of our deepest stories were formed in childhood, absorbed from the people and environments around us. A parent who was always busy taught us that rest is laziness. A teacher who compared us to others taught us that we are only as good as our last achievement. A moment of rejection taught us that being seen is not safe.

These experiences settled into us as patterns. Ways of reacting, ways of protecting ourselves, ways of moving through the world that became so automatic we stopped questioning them.

What We Carry, Others Feel

I once came across experiments, originally inspired by Masaru Emoto, where people spoke kindly to one plant and negatively to another, observing how they grew. Whether or not the science fully supports it, it makes you think.

What we carry inside, our thoughts, our stories, our unprocessed tension, does not stay hidden. It shapes how we show up, how we interact, and how those around us feel. Our nervous systems are reading each other constantly. Subtle signals of tension, resentment, or judgment are felt even without words.

The mama in that birth released stories that were no longer hers to carry. That release did not just change her internally. It created a space in her presence for calm, trust, and love. A space her baby and everyone around her could feel.

This is why awareness matters. Not to force ourselves to be positive, but to honour what we carry inside. Because sooner or later, what is within us becomes something others experience.

Noticing, Not Fixing

I am not asking you to rewrite your entire inner narrative this week. That is not how real change works.

What I am inviting you to do is simply notice.

Notice the story that comes up when you look in the mirror. Notice the voice that speaks when you make a mistake. Notice the pattern that activates when someone gets close.

You do not have to argue with it. You do not have to fix it. Just see it. Name it, if you can. And recognise that it is a story, not a fact.

There is something powerful in that recognition alone. The moment you see a pattern as a pattern, it begins to loosen its grip. Not because you forced it to change, but because awareness creates space. And in that space, something new becomes possible.

Giving birth is one way stories can be released. Other intense physical experiences can bring them up too. Meditation is another path. Sometimes one moment is enough to let something go. Sometimes it is the beginning of seeing more clearly.

The invitation is the same for all of us: notice the stories you carry, honour them for the protection they once offered, and consider what might be waiting for you once you let them go.

What if the most healing thing you could do was not to think harder about your story, but to get quiet enough to feel what is underneath it?

What story do you tell yourself about why you are the way you are? Is it true, or is it just familiar?

If your body could speak, what story would it tell about your life?

What would become possible if you let go of just one belief that no longer fits who you are becoming?

Practice This

This week's meditation is for anyone whose mind creates loops, thoughts that circle back, stories that replay, patterns that feel impossible to escape. Finding Peace with Anxious Mind is the longest meditation in our library, and it is designed as a deep journey for when you have the time and space to truly go inward. It does not ask you to silence your mind. It helps you find peace within it.

You can listen to the meditation here:

95 MIN

Finding Peace with an Anxious Mind

A Meditation for OCD and Intrusive Thoughts

With love, Johanna