The Stories We Tell Ourselves

// The Wandering Thought

I would say I was a fairly confident person but there’s a story I sometimes tell myself:

“You’re not ready yet.”

It doesn’t arrive with fireworks and there isn't a big announcement because it creeps in quietly, like a leaky tap that you don’t notice at first - just this low drip of doubt in the background and as I get closer to trying to do the thing I'm trying to do, it hits.

I can be sat at my desk, minding my own business with a cuppa, and I’ll feel it before I hear it - it happened again last week - my shoulders tighten, my hand hovers over the keyboard, and then suddenly I’m scrolling instead of starting. I was supposed to record some short form videos last week so I can begin posting on my Instagram again and both Will (my good friend Will St James) and I didn't record a thing, we just sat and chatted for three hours in a coffee shop.

Admittedly, I had written some scripts - the leap of faith to actually record these videos wasn't going to take much but it never happened because, well, I just thought I wasn't ready yet.

The whole idea of being on camera and starting to record these videos isn't daunting - I've done it a million times before but there was a niggling sense that actually, I wasn't ready so we didn't.

// The Script

We all carry these private thoughts - lets call it our very own movie script.

It's not written in pen because it's forever changing but they’re scribbled on scraps of memory - passed down in offhand comments, reinforced every time we replay the same moments and last week, I was thrown back to my moments of burnout and facing up to the fact that I was again going to enter the arena on a social media platform which caused me to shut down most of my work and that's hard to face up to.

Some of our own scripts are heroic - "I’m the one who never gives up" or "I’m the outsider who proves everyone wrong" and the movie scripts do serve us well - they give us a sense of purpose and a direction of travel - again, all of these thoughts are completely self written because no-one is out there screaming at us that we're the hero of the story - it's all in our heads.

But sometimes, these self-thought scripts go the other way - "I’m the one who always messes it up" or "I’m the one who never finishes" and it's as equally as powerful.

These self prophesising scripts are never read out loud to someone else (because you'd immediately see how crazy they sound) but they’re there, running under the surface, shaping how we show up, how much space you take, how easily you give yourself permission to start.

Think of them as background noise and sometime you don’t realise you’ve been listening until you notice you’re humming the tune - it's what happened last week, one minute I was raring to go, planning scripts (instead of writing case studies on my website) and getting everything ready and then suddenly, I'm in a coffee shop with my friend talking about anything other than actually recording some footage.

Self sabotaged.

// The Catch

Of course - most of these stories aren’t true.

They’re stitched together from fragments of thoughts, even now, I've reiterated the fact that I think that we didn't start because of the 'burnout' during the 'Instagram' years and somehow, those single points get inflated until they feel like whole identities and they have begun to hold us back - in all honesty, the fact that I burned out 3-4 years ago and I completely lost all motivation to post anything wasn't the reason that I was sat in a coffee shop not recording videos but it feels like a good a reason as any to talk about - and over the years I've caught myself carrying stories that belong to old versions of me.

It's difficult isn't it because we all have moments where we think to ourselves “Maybe I’m not cut out for this.” and of course those moments are real, but the stories we make up about them, we'll they're just excuses - the biggest 'lie' I seem to keep telling myself is that I'd never be able to run a business - but the actual evidence proves otherwise.

And yet, when we keep telling ourself something enough times, our body believes it and we begin to act it out, we don't record the videos and we keep finding evidence to back it up - a self fulfilling prophecy, a confirmation bias in our own heads.

It becomes less of a memory and more of a cage.

// The Rewrite

The thing about stories - they can change.

That’s what makes them stories, not sentences carved in stone or behaviours that we can't 'unlearn'.

Of course, this didn't help me last week when I set aside time in the coffee shop to record some videos because, well, I haven't recorded any videos but the fact that I’ve noticed that moment, I'm taking ownership of it and I know, i know.. I'm waffling on a little again because I could just have got on with it last week and ignored those thoughts but I think I'm using this blog as a way to overcome the fact that if I tell you, it loses some of it's (completely useless but equally dibilitating power) - this isn't just the ‘you’re not ready yet’ story again - it's a way to make those thoughts lose some of its weight.

Telling you means it becomes a line I can choose to cut rather than a destiny I’m bound to - and I think that's important for me.

Sometimes rewriting the story is subtle.

A tweak to the ending - instead of “I always quit,” it becomes “I’ve stopped before, but I’m learning to stay longer this time.” Instead of “I’m not creative,” we could add, “But today I’m going to make something anyway.”

Other times, it’s a full rewrite.

When I launched Let Them Create, the old script was screaming at me - "You’re not established enough, you’re not big enough, you’re not ready" and if I’d listened, I’d probably still be polishing the idea in a notebook.

The rewrite I made was simple - not everything is ready.

Once you make a shift, it changes how you move forwards because you’re not waiting for the perfect moment anymore - you’re writing it as you go and you realise that it's only you holding you back.

Of course - I still haven't recorded those videos.

// The Reminder

This isn’t about pretending everything is positive - some stories are hard because the experiences behind them were hard.

But even those can be carried differently becasue they don’t have to be anchors, they can be markers or learning points - reminders of where you’ve been, not definitions of who you are.

You could always share your thoughts to a lot of people and try to understand them yourself - but maybe that’s the deeper work - noticing when the story in your head is too small for the life you want to live and you could start catching yourself mid-sentence and asking, “Do I still believe this? Or is it just old story which I can't seem to shake off?”

So - what’s the story you’re telling yourself today?

And if you read it back like a draft, what edits would you make?

Because you get to choose.

And that choice might be the start of a very different ending.