Did someone hurt you? Have your dreams been crushed? Were you on the track to the perfect fairy tale life until your world fell apart?
Don’t let this “plot twist” become your new life story.
Maybe your husband ran off and left you with three children and an empty bank account.
Or your mother favored your sister while growing up, and you always felt unimportant, or unloved.
Perhaps the promotion at work went to someone less qualified than you, although you rightfully deserved it.
We have all been hurt, felt sorry for ourselves, and wallowed in our own misery.
Understandably.
But for some of us, these events turn into our life stories. They start to define us. Worse, they can debilitate us. Past stories become current realities and an excuse for unhappiness, unworthiness and suffering. These “victims” feel safe with their story because clinging to it is so much easier than having to rewrite a new one.
We all know people who find fault with everything; the ones who are rude to the waiter because there is too much dressing on their salad; or those get frustrated with the cashier for taking too long to bag their groceries. Whatever it may be, for these people, nothing in life ever seems to go right.
Why? Because the wounds of their past are still there, ready to come to the surface whenever the little things in life don’t go their way. And, in the blink of an eye, those negative feelings take over, blocking anything that can bring them joy today.
Something as simple as salad dressing gives them permission to open the floodgates to the real, unresolved issue.
These people are not alone. They are story fondlers. Their cocoon is their story, and to break out of it would be far too scary. What might they discover? Happiness? Maybe. But to them, the unknown is riskier than what is. It is safer to remain a caterpillar than to become a butterfly. So, their stories remain that by which all things, big and small, are defined. Negativity breeds negativity. Day in and day out.
They are what happened to them all those years ago.
Do you have a story? Is it keeping you “stuck?”
Perhaps its time to compose a different, happy ending.
