Most of our insecurities come from our childhood and it all boils down to the feeling of never being enough. You often find yourself questioning what people think about you. Who am I to tell people anything? Perhaps they are thinking does she really know what she is talking about? This feeling makes you want to hide behind a wall and not show up.
The question is, how do you show up in the world authentically? How do you stop living behind a fake facade and live up to your true potential?
The answer is simple, yet complicated, you just have to go right through fear and you have to be vulnerable. You have to show you, without thinking about others, and be what you want to be. You have to rewrite your story.
Remember you are on this planet for a reason, God gave you a gift and you are not utilizing it by hiding behind a wall.
4 Steps to Rewrite your Story
Your trauma is just a part of your story, not your story itself. But when you start thinking your life revolves around that one chapter of your life, things change. You start accepting horrible people in your life trying to find your self-worth. You never consider your own opinion about yourself. It’s always others who define you.
Here is the thing, you can rewrite your story and be your hero, not the victim. You just have to go back and look at it through another pair of eyes to heal and come back stronger.
The process of rewriting your story requires persistent effort. It’s important to know where to start and how. Therefore, I have broken it down into 5 simple steps to help you along your journey. Go easy on yourself. Here are 5 simple steps to rewrite your story:
1. Do Affirmations and Gratitude Journalling
If you haven’t taken advantage of affirmations, you probably don’t know what it’s like to remind yourself of all the beautiful things you can be. This step is very helpful in your journey to rewrite your story. If you are low on self-esteem and always feel like questioning your self-worth, you need affirmations in your life.
Simply, put reminders on your phone with apps like I am, available both on android and iphone. For me, initially, I had a reminder go off every 15 minutes to remind me of something good about myself. I then switched it to every 30 minutes. Today, I don’t need affirmations to feel worthy.
Sometimes just putting reminders on your phone is not enough. You need these affirmations everywhere around you. So grab a pack of sticky notes and put these affirmations on your mirrors, on your desk, on the kitchen counter, in your car, in your wardrobe. Let no time of your day go without affirmations.
Gratitude Journaling
You see your mind plays tricks on you. In order to keep you safe it, sometimes, doesn’t let you live. You need to reprogram your life. A good way of doing that is via affirmations where you create this atmosphere where positive signals live. Another great way is by deeply thinking about what you have, what you are, and what you are capable of. That is through journaling and specifically gratitude journaling.
Don’t just do the exercise of gratitude journaling daily. Go deeper. Go really into it. Feel the experience to make it as real as you can. Don’t just be thankful for your family, friends, kids, or things you have in life. Try to envisage the experience they bring to your life and how they add value. Be grateful for that.
For instance, if you are grateful for another day in your life, ask yourself why? Try to answer it. You are probably grateful because you get to share yourself with other people, you get to teach them, you get to make a difference, even if it is small.
So get up and go grab a fancy journal, something you would like to keep coming back to and fill it away.
2. Go for Meditation/Yoga/Reiki/Restorative Yin
Whatever happened, made you who you are today. You might feel there’s nothing good about what it made you but if you look deeper you will realize you are not entirely right. You need to release these energies to welcome new ones.
If you don’t already know, the amygdala is a part of your brain responsible for restricting you from doing something new. Any time it feels a risk in doing something new, it’s going to alert you. Probably send signals like if you do it you are going to die.
When you do it for the first time, you weaken that fear. When you repeat, you kill the fear bit by bit. Introduce yourself to new things like meditation where you calm your mind, yoga (especially, Restorative Yin) where you calm your body, and Reiki where you heal through energies.
Your story is also a form of protection at the end of that day but it prevents you from living your best life. To rewrite it you need to engage in new things, things you haven’t done before.
3. Forgive yourself
If you can’t forgive, you can’t move on. You have to force yourself to look at the positives that are aspiring because of your current story. Nothing ever happens out of the blue. Everything is a part of a grand plan. You have to go through pain to understand pain.
As Rumi says and I quote, the cure of pain is in the pain. You had to go through that experience to get out of it. When you come out, you are more you, more beautiful, and more precious. It wasn’t all that bad.
To rewrite your story, forgive, and visualize the kind of life you want. Not just the kind of luxuries you want because at the end of the day it all boils down to the experience. Visualize the feeling, the emotions, the experience you want out of your life.
As I always like to quote, you are what you consume. You are what you repeatedly see, read, write, and experience. You have control over that. Choose well.
4. Take care of the triggers
If you think following steps 1 to 3 will be alone enough to rewrite your story, you are a bit mistaken. You’ve lived a life where you had trust issues, you have people who remind you of other people, people who betrayed you, you’ve lived a life of a victim. It won’t change overnight. You will get better with time but please do expect triggers.
Every time triggers hit you, sit back and look through them. Remind your self, this is not you. You are more than that. You are better at handling this now. Go back to your affirmations, to your journal, keep your mind and body healthy and forgive time and time again. Be there for yourself because you are enough.
A few tips to help you along your journey:
- Always speak your voice, that is how you are most authentic to this world.
- Don’t carry the woman label. Just because you are a woman, doesn’t mean you are any less than your counterpart males.
- Start small but keep persistent. Feel your change and soon you will catch your pace.
- Give yourself permission to let go.
- Trust – we weren’t put on this earth to fail.
Watch the full Episode on Rewriting your story with Alyson Leinbach – a Reiki Coach on The Zainab Kanu Show
