Stories are how we make sense of life !

Bear with me here, we're going philosophical. This has been on my mind a lot lately: Why in the world do we tell stories? Why in the heck do we write?
And then the other day it hit me: Telling stories isn't what we do in our spare hours, something just to pass the time. Telling stories is what we do period. Stories are how we make sense of life.
Our entire worldview and memories are created out of our stories. Two people can witness the same event, process and interpret it completely differently and reach completely different conclusions about what just happened. And that's before the fluid and corrosive effects of memory take hold. The reality of the actual event, even if it was recorded on film, blurs into the past. In its place: Stories, our way of interpreting what we have seen, which is all we have to make sense of what passes before our eyes.
We are so adept at distilling our lives into stories that we forget how tenuous a connection they really have to reality, how much we highlight some events while brushing over others, how much our biases come into play, how we will weave together disparate events, even random occurrences, into some sort of cohesive shorthand that can't possibly capture the enormity of a life. Heck, our stories can't even fully capture the smallest of moments.
And when it comes down to it, all of our divisions of politics, history, religion, and partisanship come down to different beliefs in different stories. We go to war over different stories, we silently despair over different stories. When our friendships and relationships dissolve they do so because we can't reconcile our competing narratives.
Life is too complicated to hold in your head and relationships are too immense and multi-faceted to easily comprehend. So we write and tell stories to make sense of our relationships and existence.
Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the dark abyss of uncertainty beyond the comfort of our stories.
So when faced with that paralyzing taste of uncertainty we retreat back to our narratives and the comforting cohesiveness of our fictions. Even if our stories are, inevitably, imperfect and incomplete!!
 

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOURSELF?

My guess is that most of us do not know ourselves nearly as well as we think we do.  We tend to see ourselves as a feature set, “I am generous, compassionate, driven, creative, impatient…” but the fact of the matter is, what we are is what we think; our personality traits don’t control us, our thoughts do. 

Nothing has more power over our destiny at home and in business than our thoughts. We need to go on a hunt to discover what they are and then reinforce what gives us strength and replace what depletes us.This will also have a profound affect on our ability to replace our unwanted habits and enable us to ignite the changes we seek.Some of what we discover will be easy to change but our deep rooted biases and false truths that originated years, sometimes generations before us, can be very challenging to replace.It helps to find yourself a truth coach, which is simply someone that you trust and that has the courage to tell you the kind truth about yourself and even help you navigate your narrative’s origins.

As we collectively continue on this journey inward, the changes we want to see in the world will become more and more accessible.We will emerge beyond the clash with the externally focused mindset and be empowered to drive more and more meaningful change.

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING..!

I was pondering further on how much our mind is living and working with thoughts that are not even our own thoughts. When I find myself with certain limiting thoughts or doubts, then I ask myself:  Whose thoughts are these? Are they really my own? Or is it something I “inherited” from my parents, my family? Or is it something that my teachers taught me, or did I see all this on television?Sometimes I feel like I need to get away from it all to clear my head and see what is really true for me. I stopped watching TV years ago, and due to this, I can see even more strikingly how much negativity and a limited (negative) reality is conditioned into people’s mind through the news and other programs. Has it been always like this, or is it the curse of today’s modern society?

What people believe or believe not is a huge topic in itself. Some people believe only what has been scientifically proven. Maybe our world today relies too much on science, and we forget to listen to our heart and common sense. Have you ever wondered why do we actually eat so many artificially made items of food? Have you ever wondered why there are so many cancer related health issues and what keeps them alive? Why do we have so many stress-related mental diseases? Why do people heal(?) themselves with chemicals? And why tribal nations living close to nature never have these problems?Don't take everything you hear granted, use your common sense and take the constant effort to clear your mind of unwanted thoughts! I do believe that returning to nature (literally) and to our true nature is the key to a long, happy, healthy life. 

FINDING YOURSELF....!

“Another new morning, another alarm snoozed, and another long day ahead. So??? What am I going to do today? Follow another day of same old routine? Do I really have to do this? Is this what I really want? Whey I don’t feel motivation? What the hell am I doing to myself? What the hell am I doing to my life? What’s my purpose? ”
I always thought, or better say I believed that once I make it to college, one day I will wake up to the answers of all these questions. I had believed that post school, in the process of 1 year of formal college education, I would evolve into a more successful, mature and confident person. Then, I will carve my own path of elusive happiness, for which I had craved since like –forever. I believed in it, or that’s what my parents had made me believe. I kept waiting for such a morning epiphany, but it never came.The whole school experience was one of the most stressful periods of my life. Throughout school, I wanted to learn, I wanted to achieve, I wanted to deliver, I wanted to create something. Yet I had nothing, but an ample amount of confusion and depression. My self confidence was shattered and I was lost, more than ever as i could see the faraway distance from my dream of NIFT..! Then the truth slowly and painfully begins to seep into me. I slowly began to realize that no one else was responsible for my life except me. I realized that I had been ignorant to myself. I had falsely assumed that everything was fine and soon everything would become better. I had been lying to myself all these years. I had denied acceptance of my problems.I realized that It was my nature to always ambiguously assume my future.I wanted not to wake up every morning in a self critical mode, surrounded by unanswered questions, to snooze an alarm being scared of another hollow day ahead. I wanted to get up all by myself in the morning, excited about what a new day has to offer. To rise, and to shine with sun, like I used to be in childhood.
Everybody has a dream. For some it is distinctively defined, for some it’s just a vague imagination, but most of us are so stuck in the vicious cycles of insecurities, anxieties and doubts created by others in our mind, that we are way too quick to dismiss it and call it foolish, unrealistic, or too hard to pursue.Our parents, teachers, traditions and society plans a so perfectly comfortable life for us that we feel stupid, scared and unsafe by a mere thought of risking it for a small hope of achieving something more fulfilling.
 It took me some time, many sleepless nights and lots of unwilling but necessary introspection. But in the depths of the darkness of my secluded room, I discovered creativity; I absorbed knowledge and I acknowledged a bright source of light within me.