Are you living the wrong story?

There are all kinds of problems that can happen when we are living what I’ll call “false narratives.” These can include problems like:

• Chronic depression
• Low motivation
• Poor self-image
• Career dissatisfaction
• Compulsive behavior including drug and alcohol use, gambling, and compulsive sexual behavior
• Anxiety
• Feelings of emptiness and lack of meaning in life
• Involvement in abusive relationships

How can you tell if you’re living a false narrative? I’m not suggesting that there’s only one way to live, but there are stories that are inauthentic for you. If you look at your life story and feel you are mindfully choosing your path in general, then odds are that you are living a genuine and authentic life narrative. That doesn’t mean everything is going perfectly, but you are in some control of your path.

Too many of us are living life stories that have been dictated to us by someone else. We maybe living a narrative with the theme of “I’ll never have enough,” related to societal pressures. We may be living a narrative of “I’ll never be good enough,” dictated by an emotionally abusive parent. We may be living a life that says “My value derives from being a sexual object,” if we’ve been victims of sexual abuse. There are endless possible sources of false and forced narrative themes, but they often come from these primary sources.

Why do cultural pressures have so much impact on us? It may well be in part that we live in an age when there is tremendous pressure to do more and have more. There is so much information coming at us, and little time to assimilate it. We suffer from information overload and time insufficiency, a bad combination.

When we allow others to dictate our narratives, we create situations in which racism, sexism, and prejudice impact us in negative ways.

There is no simple path to an authetnic narrative, but I would suggest that as part of your attempt that you seek a life for yourself that is simple, but also deep and significant. This is in contrast to most of our lives, which tend to be compicated, but very shallow.

I strongly suggest looking  carefully at your life, asking yourself questions like ”What type of story am I living?,” and ”What is the theme of my life?” Compare the answers to those questions to themes that are of important and consistent with your underlying values. Ask yourself “What themes do I want to live; what’s important to me?” Allow the answers to these questions to guide you, and you will see an increase in your motivation and sense of yourself.

There are a number of themes that I believe are universally important to living healthy, productive and meaningful lives, and I’ll be discussing them in depth in future articles.

Here’s a closing thought from Joseph Campbell:

As Schopenhauer says, when you look back at your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it’s a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect. So, I have a theory that if your are on your own path, things are going to come to you.

- In D.K. Osborn, Ed. A Joseph Campbell Companion

May you begin your journey on a peaceful path

Barry