Unfuck Yourself
As I was scrolling through youtube on New Year's Eve day, I noticed there were unsurprisingly a lot of videos with titles like "How to unfuck yourself in 2024", "How to find love in 2024" etc. In its essence, there is definitely something captivating about being able to change yourself. I myself am no different, especially in terms of s career change, a better emotional state and being able to have more freedom in self-expression. I recently came across the idea that true transformation actually requires one to change the stories one tells oneself.
I came across this idea in different places, firstly it was at a personal development course, secondly, it was at a Sunday service sermon, and thirdly it was from a podcast. The thing they all talked about was that in order to change oneself, sometimes action alone is not enough. Action can only take you so far if you keep telling yourself stories that limit you. For example, I am always guilty of telling myself that I am an introverted person or that I am not good in social settings. It is a story that I very much believe in and uphold. With this mindset, every time when I want to break out of my usual being, such as to strike up a conversation with someone and be "sociable", I go into the thought pattern of "Oh I am introverted and not good in social settings, so I should probably not do that". I would feel that striking up a conversation is "out-of-character". That is the effect of a story. It can imprison us from transformations. Sometimes, even if such thought patterns do not stop us from doing a certain "breakthrough" action, one can still feel inauthentic after doing such action, deprived of the accomplished sensation that one might be expecting.
I now realize that these are stories and not facts. To be honest, it is very easy to mix them up. To break these thought patterns, it would be useful to think about if the so-called "facts" that you believe in devotedly are true. In my case, we can break down the statements that I tell myself. For example, what even is "good" in social settings? There is definitely no objective measure of how one can define what is "being good in social settings", or "introverted person". These are most probably social constructs which we often use to put things into categories. But social constructs are not facts as well. We have to remember that the things that people say about us are not facts, the same goes for what you tell yourself. If someone says that you are pessimistic, it doesn't automatically mean you are a pessimistic person. It is almost stupid that we believe such stories as if they are facts. Such stories might be results of incidents that we have experienced in the past but they shouldn't limit us for the rest of our lives.
So, what stories have you been believing about yourself?
