Rewriting Your Narratives to Rewire Your Mind
How the stories we tell ourselves powerfully influence our emotions — and how we can rewrite them to create more freedom.
Like every other human on the planet, your ego likely has a habit of reigning over your thoughts and emotions.
What the emotional brain doesn’t logically understand is that the ego thinks it’s protecting us by the way that it tells stories.
Everyone writes stories about their past.
Much of the mind’s interpretation of events, relationships, embarrassing moments, and other personal happenings is based on self-comparison, fear, and the assumption that there is a disconnect between the self and others.
Unless you’re someone who heavily meditates throughout the day, and is more often observing their thoughts than engaging with them — you probably have a tendency to look at the negatives, the worst possibilities, or the ways that a past situation hurt you rather than gave to you.
The comforting news is, you’re not crazy for focusing on the bad parts of life.
It’s just human nature.
You can blame evolution for your pessimism; the human brain was built to detect danger. It’s known as the negativity bias. Evolution did a great job in protecting us from physical dangers, but as societies developed, we no longer need to operate from fight or flight, or the lizard brain.
So, how do we free ourselves from a process that’s seemingly innate to our being?
Humans haven’t yet figured out how to completely rewire the mind’s negativity bias. However, we can make peace with it by soothing the nervous system and practicing mindfulness.
Your brain is lying to you, but it thinks it’s protecting you.
Start by understanding the basics:
1.) You are the observer of your thoughts. You aren’t your brain or your body. You’re the spirit inside.
2.) The ego feels low vibrational. Your natural state of being is high. Notice the difference, learn to recognize when the ego is in control, and do what you can to move into a state of higher energy. Your mind will follow your body.
It’s easy to tell ourselves that we’re victims to our own minds, especially in a mind recovering from trauma.
Rather, we are experiencing our minds.
Rewiring the brain isn’t a linear process.
It requires patience, observation, and new habits.
Eventually, because this is a long process, you’ll begin to feel empowered, and the sense of feeling victim to the brain’s cognitive processing will start to fade.
The brain has the ability to rewire itself, and it’s catalytic in the healing process to believe that you’re capable of doing so before it even happens.
You are the creator of your own narratives.
If we’re able to create stories about the self and believe those stories so strongly that we feel intense emotions in response to them, then it must be possible to write new ones.
Rewritten stories have the potential to create a reality that’s less compromised by a distorted worldview of our own personal filters, which are colored by trauma, fear, desires, and insecurities.
Those unwritten stories have the potential for freedom from the weight and limitations of the old ones.
New stories give clarity, compassion and less judgment towards the self.
You aren’t bound to telling the same painful narratives over and over.
That painful, embarrassing memory can change over time. For example:
Old narrative: I remember when that girl insulted the thing I’m most insecure about. It must be so obvious to everyone. I should change that [insecurity].
New narrative: She used something against me to bring me down to her level of low vibrational, egocentric thinking. Maybe that has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with her connection to love.
The alternative option to retelling those stories is to begin writing the ones that tell the best case scenario.
A more positive interpretation is soothing to the heart, stimulating to the mind, and awakening to the being.
It takes kindness.
You’ll need softness as you navigate changing your mental habits. Judgment of self serves no higher purpose here.
For more ways to cultivate ease, calm the nervous system, and expand into the reality you want, here are some links below.
