For years, I’d been doing the strangest thing. I would get up early, sometimes as early as five or six in the morning, to drive to half marathons or triathlons where I was only ever a spectator. Athletes fascinated me, particularly those who took on long distances. How did they do that? How did they put their bodies through such taxing circumstances? I was fascinated by what they could do, but I believed that there was no way that I could do that. Instead, I read books about endurance sports and subscribed to magazines like Triathlete and Runner’s World.
I only watched from afar and read books about endurance racing because, in my estimation, I was too physically weak to race. After all, I reminded myself, it wasn’t like I was an “athlete,” and I certainly wasn’t a triathlete who could swim, bike, and run. I was, at best, a “can keep myself afloat” swimmer, an easily tired cyclist, and while I liked running, I seemed to have a penchant for injuries.
But, secretly I wanted to be a triathlete. No, I yearned to be a triathlete. When I watched Ironman replays on YouTube, my heart would quicken. That’s why I kept reading about racing, showing up at races, and buying actual DVD documentaries about endurance events. In the back of my mind, every time I saw something about mega-endurance triathlon training, a small inner voice would whisper, “Ooooooh! I want to do that!” But, for years, just as quickly as that voice came up, I’d sigh and think, “Would be nice, but I couldn’t do it. I’m not an athlete.”
This thought wasn’t the harsh, condescending voice of the Critic. If it had been, I’d have paid more attention to it. Instead, this thought was simple, matter-of-fact: The sky was blue, the grass was green, and Kate was not an athlete. Nevertheless, one day I got it in my head that I wanted to go to a sporting-goods store and try on a triathlon wet suit just to see what it was like. I had no idea that putting on a wet suit was an aerobic endeavor unto itself until I was grunting and sweating to pull the neoprene over my hips in a changing room. I was shaped more like Kate Winslet than like the narrow, muscular bodies of the women I saw in Triathlete magazine. I looked at myself in the mirror, the wet suit only halfway on, while the salesperson outside asked if I needed anything because I’d been in the changing room for so long. I thought to myself, “Kate, what are you doing trying to pull this thing on? You’re not an athlete.”
But then, that inner voice, the voice that I think of as my most courageous self, quietly mentioned: “Even if you aren’t an athlete right now, maybe you could become one.” This idea, while obvious when printed here in black and white, felt strange to consider. Then my most courageous self continued to speak to me: “Even if you feel ridiculous putting on a wet suit right now, by the time you do a few triathlons, putting on a wet suit would just be normal. Anything that you do often enough, after all, becomes a ‘normal’ kind of thing.”
In that moment, I started to see the limiting “capital-S Story” that had been undermining me for so long. This Story had not been the voice of the Critic tearing me down. Rather, it had been a simple assumption: I was not an athlete, and, thus, I could not do triathlons, and that was the way it was. Without questioning this Story, it hadn’t even occurred to me that—duh—no one was born an athlete. Every athlete who has ever existed became one because they put time into training.
This shift in my thinking is exactly what it looks like to examine your limiting Stories and “reframe” them. Even when we start accessing the body and questioning the power of the Critic, there’s still work to be done when we haven’t yet uncovered our limiting assumptions about ourselves or when we assume that we can’t do something because that’s just “the way it is.”
Remember Alexis from the Introduction, a project manager who wanted to bring some heart into corporate America? She told me that if she tried to bring heart-based communication into the workplace, she’d “be laughed out of the boardroom.” What was her Story? Corporate America isn’t interested in heart-based communication. That’s just the way corporate America is, right? Shay, a badass yoga instructor in a moto jacket redefined what her most courageous self was capable of when she questioned her Story that yoga teachers were supposed to only offer a gentle, breathy “Namaste.” That’s just the way yoga teachers operate, right? Janelle, mother of three, had to unhook from her Story that good moms did things a certain way—the endlessly self-sacrificing way. Eliana, MBA candidate who checked and double-checked her work to the point of being overwhelmed, had to unhook from the Story that she couldn’t make mistakes. Taylor had to unhook from the Story that she wasn’t good enough or talented enough to make self-employment happen.
If we assume our limiting Stories are true, we will continue to limit what we believe we are capable of. Unhooking from limiting Stories doesn’t happen by reciting uber-positive “affirmations” that are out of touch with reality, and hoping for the best. Instead, reframing limiting Stories happens when we question assumed beliefs about “the way it is,” and then choose a different Story, one that expands and builds resilience.
Often, we forget that it takes just as much effort to believe that your dreams aren’t possible as it does to believe that what you want can be created. It’s absolutely possible to consciously choose your Stories. Choosing Stories such as I’m capable of recovering from a setback, I’m willing to meet this challenge, or I refuse to give up hope will build resilience as you encounter fear, setbacks, self-doubt, or challenges.
It’s time for step three of the Courage Habit: reframing limiting Stories. To do this, you’ll first learn what Stories are and uncover any limiting Stories that you currently hold, bringing to light any assumptions about what you’re capable of creating. After that, you’ll learn how to reframe limiting Stories and instead choose Stories that expand your view of what’s possible.
Stories are internal narratives and assumptions that we make about how the world operates. But, here’s the important part: Stories might not be objectively true. They are your lens on life and, like a pair of sunglasses, can change how you see the world. The Story you put on your experience has everything to do with whether you see yourself as a victim or a survivor, whether an experience is dangerous or an opportunity, and whether you have the capacity to develop more courage or if you are just not very courageous.
It’s not wrong to adopt Stories. Everyone’s got internal assumptions that we use to orient ourselves in the world, but some Stories are more helpful than others. For instance, we’ve probably all met people who carry a Story that everyone is selfish and only out for themselves. Because these people carry that Story, they are suspicious of other people’s motives, inclined to tally up other people’s wrongs, and have a “gotta look out for myself” attitude. When it comes to living a happy life, that Story probably isn’t very helpful.
We’ve also all probably all met people who carry a Story that everyone is kind and doing the best they can. Because these people carry that Story, they probably give others the benefit of the doubt, take things less personally, and see other people as interdependent. That Story is much more helpful.
These two Stories color the entire outlook of people who carry them, and affect how they view the world and interact with other human beings. A person can certainly function in life with both Stories. However, if you were the person who felt stuck in believing that everyone’s selfish and out for themselves, wouldn’t you be grateful if someone could help you unhook from that story and believe that the world is full of people who are kind and do the best they can?
That’s exactly why it’s important to examine the Stories that we inherently assume to be true. We might carry some that are limiting, just as I did when I was dismissing the idea of becoming a triathlete, or as Shay did when she taught yoga classes like she was “supposed to,” or as Janelle did when she assumed a pre-determined role of “how mothers behave” and acted accordingly.
Sometimes people ask me if it’s possible to change their Stories. My answer? I’ve seen time and again that it is possible to consciously choose your Stories. Consciously choosing your Stories is a matter of where you put your attention and what you decide to make things mean.
Carolyn, tall and willowy like a model, was the very definition of a quintessential California free spirit. She and I met at a yoga workshop where our mats ended up side by side. We hit it off, talking during breaks and downward dog when the teacher wasn’t looking, giving the backstory behind each of our tattoos, and making plans to see Ani DiFranco live. Carolyn didn’t live nearby. When I asked where she was from, she replied with a shrug, “everywhere,” and proceeded to tell me about the nomadic lifestyle that she had set up for herself.
“I couch surf. I do some trade. Freedom. I go wherever I’m called to go,” she said. “I came to the San Francisco area a few months ago when I met this guy named Paris. He is a metal worker, and is into aerial arts. He was doing this festival thing down in Oakland, so I stayed with him for a while. His roommate Keri was heading up here for this yoga workshop. She’s friends with the teacher and could get me a free spot. So, I came up here.”
I couldn’t help but feel a bit envious of Carolyn’s freedom, and at the same time I couldn’t help but think of the logistics. “How do you make money moving around so much?” I asked.
Carolyn smiled and her fingers played with a crystal around her neck. “It just always works out,” she said. “I know how to code websites. You can do it from anywhere, you know? What I’d really love to do is what you do—coaching people. That sounds so rad. Maybe you should be my coach. I could use some more courage.”
I laughed. I rarely heard anyone describe coaching as “rad.” Carolyn seemed pretty courageous to me, exactly like someone who was living fully from the place of her most courageous self. What would she even want to work on? But, after talking for a bit and hearing that I might need some website work, Carolyn had a proposal for me. “How about we trade hours of coaching for hours of website work?” I was game to try it, especially since my website needed an upgrade.
A few weeks later, we were set up for our first session. Carolyn called in from Oregon where she was staying with a childhood friend who lived there. She had sent me some presession questions prior to our session. In the section where I had asked what it was that she wanted to gain from coaching, she wrote, simply: “Get out of debt.”
On the phone, after we exchanged a few hellos, I asked her to tell me more about the debt so that I could get a clear picture of what was going on. The lighthearted “it just always works out” Carolyn was suddenly gone. Her voice wavered; she whispered so softly I had to ask her to repeat herself. “I’ve got $60,000 in debt,” she whispered, hardly getting the words out. She proceeded to tell me about student loans she’d defaulted on after her mother got sick with pancreatic cancer several years before. Her father had never been in the picture, so he wasn’t a resource she could lean on. She’d dropped out of school to care for her mother and racked up a small fortune in credit card debt. In trying to keep up with the payments on those bills, she’d fallen behind on her tax payments. The most difficult year of her life, with her mother’s death and the debt she incurred, had become a total financial meltdown that rolled from one year to the next, and she could never seem to get ahead.
I was starting to get a bigger picture of Carolyn’s nomadic lifestyle as being not so much about freedom as it was about running. As it turned out, Carolyn moved around so much because she couldn’t pass a credit check to rent an apartment. She traded her website work for the things she needed because the IRS would garnish any wages that she earned from traditional employment. The result? Carolyn was frequently hit with insomnia when she thought about the debt. On two occasions, she’d had extreme panic attacks. Without a job or health insurance, she had ended up in the emergency room multiple times, incurring even more debt.
“The nomad thing is just something I say,” Carolyn confessed. “I guess that makes it light and happy, and, you know, easier. Because the truth just totally sucks. Like, I have no idea how I’m going to have dinner tonight. Usually I can figure out some way to trade something or I’ll just go without dinner one night, but it feels so lame. My mother would be so pissed at me if she saw me living like this. This wasn’t what she wanted for me. I wish I just had something stable—one place to live, one job to go to. You know, a normal life.”
I’d had no idea that Carolyn was carrying all this. She wasn’t technically “homeless,” since thus far she’d always found somewhere to stay. However, she once had to leave the house of a guy “friend” who thought that if he gave her a place to stay for the night, she would have sex with him. Carolyn was highly resourceful, but also becoming exhausted by this lifestyle.
As we finished our first session, we talked about the tool of accessing the body, a highly practical one for someone who was carrying as much as Carolyn was carrying. Then, I added that from a purely strategic place, it sounded like Carolyn needed to take two big actions before our next session. First, she needed to learn more about what options were available to someone in her situation. Second, she needed to start thinking about how to create stability.
“You said you wanted one place to live, and one job to go to,” I said. “So, start thinking through your options. What’s the easiest route to that?”
When we hopped off the phone that day, Carolyn sounded like she was doing better. “I’m feeling a bit better,” she said, “I feel like I’ve got the start of a plan. I’m going to go to the library and start looking at jobs as soon as we’re off the phone.” The power of what Story we choose was evident. Carolyn noticed that the Story I’ve got the start of a plan was making her feel more hopeful and optimistic.
In the weeks of coaching that followed, it quickly became evident that Carolyn’s fear routine involved self-sabotage, and she was a classic Saboteur. Even before her mother became sick, Carolyn had struggled to choose a major in college, deferring the decision as long as possible until she finally chose her major. Later, after she’d already declared, she petitioned the college board for a special exception allowing her to change majors. By age thirty, she’d already received three marriage proposals, two of which she had accepted and started planning the wedding for before she called them off. We started talking about the behaviors that go along with self-sabotage. Was she aware of them? “Totally,” she said. “I feel like all my teachers ever said to me growing up was that I had good potential if I would only apply myself.”
Carolyn was a lot of things—smart, creative, incredibly resourceful, and in so many ways she had the kind of courage that the rest of us admire. Yes, she had trouble with commitment, but she was a fundamentally good person who was pretty universally adored, as evidenced by a wide network of friends who would let her crash with them on a moment’s notice. She wanted to change, but she just didn’t know how to yet. Identifying, questioning, and reframing her biggest limiting Story would prove to be what changed everything.
Think back to Chapter 1 and the routines of the Perfectionist, Saboteur, Martyr, and Pessimist. In the cue-routine-reward loop that underlies all our habits, the Stories we assume to be true will parallel someone’s fear routine. If you’ve got a fear routine as a Martyr, your Stories are likely to be things like I should make sure that everyone else is happy. If you’ve got a fear routine as a Perfectionist, your Stories are likely to be things like I’ve got to work harder; this isn’t good enough, yet! If you’ve got a fear routine as a Pessimist, your Stories are likely to be There’s no point in trying. For the exercises in this chapter, keep in mind the connection between your most dominant fear routine and the Stories that you tend to hold.
For a Saboteur such as Carolyn, I was on the lookout for Stories that had to do with sabotaging legitimate possibilities. I noticed that she was starting to show up just a little late to our session calls, and more frequently she was not completing all the practices between our sessions.
“You get to decide what it means,” I said, when I brought up what I’d noticed. Then, there was a session when she arrived really late, keeping me waiting. “I want to support you in shifting by pointing out that a lack of commitment to a process is part of the Saboteur routine,” I said, wanting to point out what I saw without going into a space of admonishing her.
“Look,” she said abruptly, “The thing is, I got offered a job.” Then, she added, with a voice that was tense and defensive, “And, I’m not taking it. There’s no way. I just wanted to let you know.”
At first, I didn’t know what to say, and Carolyn was a little clipped with the details. However, the details eventually came out. A friend of hers had recently been promoted at a tech company in Seattle and was offering Carolyn a job there. The salary? More than a $100,000 a year, plus they would put Carolyn up in a condo for sixty days while she searched for a rental in Seattle’s tight rental market. Nonetheless, Carolyn was clearly not happy about it.
“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to think my way through the situation. I wanted Carolyn to feel that I was supportive of her choices, and she clearly didn’t want to take this job. At the same time, Carolyn had never expressed feeling good about the financial insecurity that she was in, and with no other jobs knocking at her door with six-figure salaries, what was she going to do? Finally, I asked her if she was willing to try laying out all her options on the table—even the ones that she didn’t love.
“Well, one option is I keep doing what I’m doing,” Carolyn said. “I think that that’s the best option for right now. I’m finishing up staying in Oregon this week, and then I think I’m going to talk to a cousin of mine in Colorado who is having her first baby soon and see if it’s okay for me to stay with her and her husband and help them out with the baby.”
“Okay, what else?” I asked.
Carolyn paused for a long time before she answered. “Another option is taking this job, but that’s not really an option,” Carolyn finally said, sounding defensive again.
“It’s just…I just know that it’s all wrong for me,” Carolyn said. “I see how my friend is living, the one doing the hiring. She’s married to her work. I see how everyone lives in these stupid corporate jobs. They just work, and then they buy houses and get tied to mortgages, and the highlight of their day is coming home to open a bottle of wine. I’m not down with that. That’s not me.”
“But wait,” I countered. “How did we get from taking a job to My life becomes nothing but work and a mortgage and dependence on alcohol?”
“That’s just the way it is,” Carolyn said, and I heard emotion coming into her voice. “You start settling for one option, and your life is over.”
As we talked, I realized that this was Carolyn’s capital-S Story: Committing to one option means you’re settling, and then you never get to have fun anymore. That’s why it had been difficult to commit to a major in school, or a partner in life, and why she was having trouble with the idea of this job. Commitment, for Carolyn, meant feeling tied down. Being in debt and floating around was scary, in its own way, but not as terrifying as commitment. That’s why Carolyn had made so many moves that had taken her two steps forward, only to take one step back.
I felt nervous as I shared these thoughts with Carolyn. She’d seemed so annoyed with me from the get-go on this call, which I now suspected was because she knew, deep down, that I would call her out on her behavior.
“What do you think?” I asked after I shared what I’d noticed. After a long silence, Carolyn finally agreed that she’d think about it. We ended that day’s session early, and I hung up the phone wondering where our work together would go next, or if it would even continue.
Carolyn’s Story that Commitment means settling, and then you never have fun was protecting her from facing her fear of sticking with one thing and really learning how to just stay with what she had chosen. She believed in herself and her capability enough to start down a particular avenue, but then that Saboteur Story about commitment, which seemed so obvious to Carolyn, would crop up.
Again, these Stories are protective mechanisms that are parallel to our fear routines. The Martyr uses the Story of I’ve got to make sure that everyone else is happy as a form of protection. If she’s always running around making sure everyone else is happy, then she doesn’t have time for living her own life and experiencing the vulnerability that comes with naming what she desires or pursuing it. The Pessimist uses the Story Things never seem to work out for me as a protection from the pain of possible failure. The Perfectionist is doing the same thing, in a different way, using the Story of I’ve got to work harder and endlessly pushing herself to be better to avoid experiencing criticism and the risk of failure.
Since our Stories are based in our assumptions and beliefs about who we are and the way the world works, they can operate in ways that can be difficult to recognize. Deciding to tune in to the Critic after years of regarding it as background noise, you might not even realize that you’ve been basing some of your choices on assumed Stories.
Within an hour after ending our session, I received an email from Carolyn. It read: “I thought about it, and I think you’re right about the Story I carry. But, now what?”
I hit reply, and typed back: “We—you—get to change the Story.”
Bringing Stories to your consciousness and reframing them so that you see your life differently is an empowering act. If you’re out walking on a forest trail and see something coiled up on the path up ahead, it’s helpful that your body responds immediately to see that there could be danger. Rather than not walking down that path and remaining avoidant or afraid, make sure you know whether what’s coiled ahead is a snake or a rope. If you look a little closer at the thing that you fear and see that it’s just a rope, you can’t go back to seeing a snake. That’s what it’s like to get out from under a limiting Story based in old fear routines.
Identifying Your Stories
Let’s do a deep dive into uncovering some of your own Stories. For this exercise, use a journal or piece of paper to answer the questions that follow. You can also download the “Identifying Your Stories” worksheet at http://www.yourcourageouslife.com/courage-habit, if you prefer.
After completing the exercise, review your answers and then create a list of all the possible Stories that you can identify. As you’re making this list, a part of you might rebel. It might jump in and say, “No, wait! You don’t believe that to be true. You’re more powerful than that; don’t write that down.” While it’s great that this more courageous part of yourself is stepping up and making itself known, the value in this exercise is in getting real about the Stories that hold you back. To reframe limiting Stories, start with writing down exactly how the Story sounds in your head when you’re in a fear routine. Don’t edit yourself before you fully explore the Stories that play out; it’s likely to result in the same Story creeping back up, time and time again.
As part of uncovering Stories, I frequently ask clients to pay attention to the three most common areas where people hold Stories of limitation. If you scan your own list of Stories you came up with from the last exercise, you’ll probably find that you have Stories that are related to one of the following three categories:
Review your list of Stories from the “Identifying Your Stories” exercise, and put a star next to any of the Stories that fall into one of these categories. These types of Stories are among the most powerful ones that hold sway over our ideas about how possible change really is. These Stories come from very real and painful past experiences that I wouldn’t want you to deny, bypass, or gloss over. Parents abuse children, discrimination is real and leaves an impact, and lack of time and money are not just individual concerns but also reflections of systemic inequalities in our culture. Even though those challenges are very real, the idea here is to see where Stories of limitation enter the picture so that those Stories can be reckoned with, understood, and acknowledged so they no longer dominate your life. Rather than pretend that a painful past didn’t happen or that everything in the future will always be easy, reframing limiting Stories helps you to pragmatically address where you limit yourself, and pushes you to see what’s possible even if that’s hard to imagine. That was what happened in the past, and now you can expand your ideas about how you want to live in the present moment.
When we uncover our limiting and unhelpful Stories, we have an opportunity to choose the next direction of our lives through asking ourselves: “Do I truly believe this Story?” Answering that question can be incredibly powerful, especially if you realize that there’s ample evidence supporting a different, more positive narrative for your life.
Carolyn had a limited amount of time to decide about the job offer she’d been given, as her friend needed to fill the position right away. That week, we scheduled an extra session and did a deep dive into examining Carolyn’s Story, holding it up to the light of her truth. Commitment to one thing means settling—and then you never have fun anymore. Was that true?
Carolyn logically realized that this Story wasn’t absolutely true. Even if it was true for some people, it didn’t need to be for her. We began talking about assumptions. Commitment could mean a lot of things, so what did Carolyn assume commitment had to mean for her? If she questioned the assumptions she’d been carrying about what “commitment” meant and tried out alternative ideas, she could ask herself: What does commitment mean for me? What are the parameters? How long did commitment have to last? What was acceptable and what wasn’t?
“I just realized one other thing,” Carolyn said as we talked about the Stories of circumstances of how we were raised and of what’s possible. “My story is tied to what’s possible. I fundamentally don’t see myself as someone who is ‘a commitment person.’ It’s like I have this idea in my head that there are two types of people in the world, and I’m just not one of those ‘commitment people.’ I’ve always thought it was no big deal, because who was I hurting?”
“That’s brilliant of you to notice,” I said. “Have you hurt anyone?”
“Well, yeah—Charlie and Wyatt,” Carolyn said, naming the two men she had accepted proposals from and ultimately broken up with. “They didn’t know that I was saying yes to the commitment, before I actually felt able to make the commitment. And, given that I’m not actually happy…I’ve been hurting myself by bailing, over and over. I just keep feeling this impulse to run to the next thing, and I follow it in the moment, but that’s my fear routine, not what I really want.”
I encouraged Carolyn to get every single Story—positive or negative—about accepting this job out onto the table. Yes, this job could cover Carolyn’s expenses and get her out of debt, but we both knew that if she accepted it without really being fully behind that choice it would be just another thing that she started but didn’t follow through on. We wanted to examine every Story on her list, and really look at them thoroughly, turning them over and questioning them.
I encourage you to do the same, creating an exhaustive list and really questioning each Story that might hold you back. Take time now to revisit the list of Stories that you’ve already identified. Ask yourself, “What am I making this mean?” and “Is this really true?”
As an example, this chapter started with my own Story that I wasn’t an athlete. The underlying Story was that I was fundamentally unable to become one—a Story of limitation about what was possible.
Here’s another example: Janelle, the mother of three from an earlier chapter, had the Story that a good mother is self-sacrificing.
Apply this same process to your own list of Stories. For each Story on the list, ask yourself “What am I making this mean?” and “Is this really true?” Write down your responses as you go and hold on to what you write, because now it’s time to start reframing limiting Stories.
In the last section, you questioned some of your limiting Stories and started to see how they might not have stood up to the light of your truth. As you embark on the process of reframing your Stories, you’ll be making a conscious choice to release a limiting, constrictive Story for a more resilient, expansive Story. When I explained this to Carolyn, she said, “Wait. Are these affirmations? I hate positive affirmations.”
“Oh, good. Me, too,” I said. While “positive affirmations” are pervasive among coaches, I’m truly not a fan. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me that they chafe at the idea of reciting them, too. This isn’t an aversion based on an inherent or stuck negativity. Most of us have tried reciting affirmations—with some doggedness—only to feel frustrated, like we’ve just been lying to ourselves, over and over. Positive affirmations are based on pushing yourself to believe something wildly optimistic that may or may not be possible, and they involve bypassing any acknowledgment of “negative” feelings, such as fear. If Carolyn wanted to, for instance, get rid of her credit card debt, I didn’t think the answer was to say, “I’m a multimillionaire!” or “I’m debt-free!” until she was out of breath.
Even worse, asking people to focus on positive affirmations when they’re dealing with oppression (such as discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, and gender; a traumatic upbringing; or a systemic lack of access to money or resources) lacks empathy for the very real suffering and impact of those experiences. Carolyn fell into that category, given her lack of financial capital in a society that offers very little in the way of a safety net. This made her vulnerable to accruing debt that she would have trouble ever paying back.
The bottom line is that the hurts that we have survived or that we are still trying to survive are very real. The conditioning that you grew up with is not “just in your head,” nor is change just a matter of only thinking positive thoughts. In reframing limiting Stories, we’re not trying to brush over past experiences of oppression or the effects of our conditioning. In exploring and dismantling limiting Stories, our aim is to stop these Stories from running on a continuous, endless loop that limits our life, in which the pain gets revisited and there is no resolution.
Choosing to find the positive amid difficult circumstances is the real aim. Hard things and serious life challenges still happen to people who consciously choose more positive Stories. What you find when you start to reframe is that the choice to continually look for a more positive Story is part of a resilience strategy to bounce back from those difficulties. Examining your Stories so that you can consciously choose those that are more positive or supportive of your goals isn’t naïve. In being willing to believe that options are available, you’re more likely to find them. Think of reframing limiting Stories as a process of releasing limiting beliefs that may be illusory rather than real, and stretching into the direction of more courageous and fulfilling options. Acknowledge what might be old or part of your past and where you are in the here and now, then see where you can stretch in a more helpful direction.
With Carolyn, this started with taking statements from her list of Stories, one by one, and reframing them. She found that one of her Stories about debt was This is so big and I’ll never pay it off. This was a way of thinking about her life that sometimes caused her to spend unwisely, given her financial situation. A Story that rationalized such moments was Since I’ll never get ahead, I might as well have a little fun where I can. She reframed that with the statement I’m committed to paying this off, even if all I can afford to pay is the monthly minimums. She wasn’t wildly declaring that she’d be a millionaire or pretending that the debt was going to be gone overnight. She was declaring her commitment to shifting her circumstances.
When it came to her Story about commitment being all about settling, Carolyn started with I get to define what commitment means, and whether or not I’m settling. She wasn’t trying to pretend with the snap of her fingers that she no longer believed that commitment and settling were intertwined. Rather, she was reframing in the direction of what she wanted, starting with acknowledging that she could define for herself what commitment would mean to her.
Reframing Your Stories
To reframe a Story, start with what’s authentically true. (In this moment, I’m in debt.) Then, stretch it in a more positive direction. (In this moment, I’m in debt, and I’m determined to change that.) It’s the combination of what is true and a more positive stretch that is important. Try your hand at reframing some of the Stories that you’ve questioned. The questioning process might have turned up some potential reframes. There’s also a worksheet for writing down your reframes at http://www.yourcourageouslife.com/courage-habit.
The following example is another way to think about potential reframes and how you might move through the process. Read through each reframe below for the Story example of I’m not capable of doing this. Each new statement is an example of stretching the Story in a slightly more positive direction.
When I questioned and reframed my Story that I wasn’t a “real” athlete, I initially shifted to, Well, I could try and see what happens. Then, that Story became I’m not fast at swimming, cycling, or running, but I’m able to be consistent with my training. Then, that Story became I can finish a short-distance triathlon! Each Story built on the next, in a more positive direction.
Within a year after doing my first short “sprint” triathlon, I completed a half-Ironman triathlon: a 1.2-mile swim, followed by 56 miles on the bike, and finishing with a 13.1-mile run. It took more than eight hours to complete, but the bigger journey was the shift from “I can’t” to “I can.” I never could have jumped straight from I’m not an athlete to I’m a half-Ironman finisher. Noticing every limiting Story along the way, and consciously reframing each Story as it came up, was key.
Now that you’ve seen a few examples, try reframing some Stories yourself. Take each sentence, one at a time, and reframe it. Keep the authentic truth, and stretch it in a more positive direction.
Write down three different Stories from the “Identifying Your Stories” exercise here:
Now, work with just one Story at a time. Keep repeating the process of stretching in a more positive direction until you hit that point where you know that going any further would feel more “fake” than like a reframe.
Story #1:
If I stretch just ONE step in a more positive direction, this Story becomes:
Now, try stretching the above sentence, again, just one step more in a positive direction:
Try stretching the above sentence, just one more step:
Repeat these small stretches until you’ve arrived at a reframed Story that you can authentically embrace. Repeat each of these steps for the other Stories that you wrote down, or any time you notice that limiting Stories have you feeling stuck.
What happens after you’ve reframed your Stories? How do you turn these reframes into actions that make your daily life any different? Once you’ve reframed any Story, you start reminding yourself of your choice to believe something different. You get to decide which Story you want to choose. Awareness of your existing limiting Stories and your desired reframes becomes something that you’re more present to when the Stories arise. Being present with your Stories is ongoing work, but as you stretch one small step in the direction of your most courageous self, you’ll find that changing your Stories is happening organically, one small shift at a time.
Carolyn had a big decision to make with this job. We uncovered her Stories and went through the Courage Habit steps during a few intensive sessions. Through accessing the body, she tried to notice that moment when her fear routine wanted to kick in, encouraging her to run from her debt problems and keep doing what she’d been doing only because it was familiar. She tried to notice the Critic who told her it was no big deal to bail on a commitment and then would criticize her later for that choice. Most of all, she paid attention to the limiting Stories and assumptions she’d made about commitment that had made it easier to rationalize quitting.
Carolyn eventually decided to take the job. We had sessions for a few more months while she got settled in Seattle. Her life got busy and she felt more grounded in the new life she was creating, so we discontinued sessions, and over time lost touch. Then, a few years later, I was heading into yoga, and there was Carolyn, who happened to be visiting my town. We hugged excitedly, and after class we decided to grab an impromptu dinner and catch up.
“So how are things?” I asked, trying to mask a raging curiosity because I didn’t want it to seem like I was prying. Carolyn didn’t need much encouragement; she was happy to give me an update. She’d had a few bumps and U-turns on her journey, but she had stayed the course and finally paid down all her debt. She now fed her wanderlust with accrued paid-vacation time! She admitted that sometimes she felt like she couldn’t be as spontaneous as she wanted to be. Instead of feeling trapped by that feeling, she tried to question the Story that she was “trapped” and then find some other way to break out of her usual day-to-day routines, such as taking a spontaneous “sick day” and staying home to do whatever she felt like doing.
“I find if I break the rules just a little bit, the part of me that wants to completely throw the rules out gets what it needs,” she confessed. She also had met someone, a man named Gregory, and they had been dating for a little more than a year.
The woman I saw before me was living with a different kind of freedom. What Carolyn had called “freedom” when I first met her had looked courageous on the outside, but it was really a life built on fear and hiding from facing her debt or making decisions about what she wanted for her life. This Carolyn was a different person, someone who had faced her fears and created freedom through powerfully making decisions. That included choosing which Stories about herself she wanted to believe. Her old, fear-based Story was that being committed to a job would mean feeling trapped. Her more expansive Story became: This job gives me more freedom, even if it also comes with responsibility.
Being willing to identify your limiting Stories, question them, and then reframe them, is a game changer. This is where you start seeing the power that you’ve always held to create what you’ve always wanted. Changing old, fear-based habits and ways of thinking is possible.
By now, you’re probably seeing how each part of the Courage Habit process provides reinforcement for the other parts. Stopping and slowing down to access the body is a first step, so that you can be present to the fear sensations that you feel and be mindful of not going into a fear routine on autopilot. From there, you listen to your Critic voices without attachment, which clues you in to what sort of fears are aroused. After that, seeing and consciously reframing those Stories gives you another powerful tool.
There’s only one more part of the Courage Habit process. It’s a step that research has shown to be one of the most influential in solidifying newly established habits. This step helps you to practice these tools in a larger context, outside of yourself. This step is also one of the most fun: It’s about reaching out and creating community.