The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I can still remember standing in my kindergarten classroom crying after my mom left, and if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that the stories we tell ourselves often begin much earlier than we realize. I remember looking around the room and wondering how all the other kids already seemed to know each other. I thought it was everyone’s first day, but somehow everyone else already looked like they belonged.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment stayed with me. Years passed, life changed, and I eventually stopped thinking about that first day of school altogether. What I never stopped thinking about was the conclusion I quietly reached while I was standing there.

At five years old, I wasn’t trying to figure out who I was. I was just trying to understand why I felt different. The problem is, the conclusions we reach as kids often stay with us long after we’ve forgotten where they came from.

 

Where Our Stories Begin

I really did think it was everyone’s first day.

Looking back now, it’s obvious that many of those kids had probably gone to preschool together. They weren’t strangers to each other the way they were to me. But at five years old, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I wasn’t comparing possibilities or looking for explanations. I was trying to make sense of how I felt.

So I came up with the only explanation that made sense to me.

I must not belong.

Not long after that, I started playing football. Once again, all the kids seemed to know each other, and once again I was the kid from the town next door who didn’t know anybody.

The difference was football came pretty easy to me.

Once my teammates saw I could play, everything changed. I went from the quiet new kid to someone who felt like he belonged. They accepted me pretty quickly, and football became the one place where I knew I belonged. Football gave me a way in.

School wasn’t like that.

You can’t score a touchdown in a classroom.

I got good grades, but that’s not exactly what kids care about when they’re deciding who they want to hang around with. I was shy, kept to myself, and never really felt like I fit in during those first few years. Football was the one place where I knew I belonged.

My wife has told me more than once that I can talk to just about anybody. She thinks it comes naturally. It doesn’t.

I had to learn it.

I wrote before about how I learned to use humor to connect with people, and looking back, maybe that was one more way I figured out how to belong. That’s something I explored more in How Humor Helped Me Connect.

Going from school to school meant all the work I had put into becoming kind of popular or fitting in disappeared overnight. I’d finally become what I wanted to be at one school, and then I’d be the new kid somewhere else. Sometimes people judged me before I ever had the chance to make a name for myself, and I was right back to step one. Having to do all that work all over again just to become what I already was at another school was just normal to me. I didn’t question it because I didn’t know any different.

Back then, I thought I was just learning how to fit in.

 

When We Start Believing Them

One of the stories I started believing was that I was someone who never followed through.

I was notorious for having ideas all the time, but very rarely followed through with even starting them, let alone finishing them. It wasn’t because I didn’t want more out of life. I did. I always felt like I had something more to offer the world. I just couldn’t seem to get out of my own way.

For years, I lived in my mom and stepdad’s attic. I watched my friends get married, have kids, buy houses, and move forward with their lives while I felt like I was standing still. After a while, you get into such a pattern of being who you are that it almost feels impossible to become someone else. You can even start seeing it on other people’s faces. Not that they were trying to be mean, but you could tell they pitied who you were becoming.

I felt like I had so much more to give, but my life had become work, the bar, sleep, and then doing it all over again. I’d stay up late at night, partly because I wanted to avoid people, and partly because I’d lay there thinking of ways to make my life better. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t think about changing. I thought about it all the time. It just seemed so much easier to lie there depressed and do nothing.

After a while, it felt like I was getting magnetically pulled in the opposite direction of the person I wanted to become. No matter how many times I’d think about changing my life, I’d somehow find myself deeper and worse off than the day before.

After a while, I stopped questioning the story and started living like it was true.

People always say you don’t change until you hit rock bottom, but sometimes you wonder where the hell rock bottom is because you’re sick of falling.

 

When the Story Becomes a Trap

Other people could count on me more than I could count on myself.

That’s one of the hardest things for me to explain.

I wasn’t lazy, and I didn’t want to fail. I wanted the same things most people want. A family. A home. A steady job. Something to be proud of. I just couldn’t seem to make myself take the first step toward any of it.

I became a creature of habit. Every day looked about the same, and every night I’d tell myself tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow I’d look for a better job. Tomorrow I’d start taking my life more seriously. Tomorrow I’d finally do something about all the ideas constantly running through my head.

Tomorrow always seemed easier than today.

Sometimes I think I even sabotaged myself just so I’d have another excuse for why nothing ever changed. That’s a hard thing to admit, but it’s true. If I stayed where I was, I never had to find out whether I was actually capable of more.

For a long time, I thought those decisions were proof of who I was. It wasn’t until much later that I started questioning whether I was judging my younger self with knowledge he didn’t have yet. I wrote more about that in Should I Have Known Better?

The hardest part wasn’t knowing I needed to change.

It was figuring out how.

It’s one thing to realize your life isn’t going the way you hoped. It’s another thing entirely to know where to begin. Going back to school sounded like the responsible thing to do, but then I’d think about living in my parents’ attic. They were probably hoping I’d start making moves toward getting my own place, not making plans that meant I’d be there for another few years while I tried to get my life together.

After a while, even starting over started to feel embarrassing.

It’s one thing to have the ability to change but no idea how to start changing.

 

When I Finally Had a Reason

Then my wife got pregnant.

I didn’t have a choice anymore.

Years before, I remember telling my mom that I needed someone more important than myself to live for. I was never a strong enough reason to change my life, but I knew I wouldn’t fail if someone else depended on me.

That’s exactly what happened.

I started looking for a better job because stability suddenly mattered. I quit smoking because I wanted to be around for a long time. One decision turned into another, and slowly I started doing something I hadn’t done much of before.

I started following through.

That doesn’t mean life suddenly became easy.

I still struggle with drinking more than I should sometimes. I still worry too much. I still fight old habits that probably never disappear completely.

The difference is, those old stories don’t get the final say anymore.

Now, when I look at my life, I don’t just see the kid who felt like he didn’t belong or the man lying in his parents’ attic wondering how everything went so wrong.

I see a husband.

I see a father.

I see someone who finished a novel after talking about writing one for years. Someone who built a website that had lived in his head for even longer. I see someone who’s finally giving himself the chance to become the person he was always capable of becoming.

When the Evidence Changed

It took me a long time to realize the story I’d believed about myself wasn’t keeping up with the person I was becoming.

I don’t think I suddenly became a different person.

I think I finally started collecting evidence that the story I’d believed about myself wasn’t completely true.

For years, I’d convinced myself I was someone who never followed through. Today, I know I can finish things. That doesn’t mean everything comes easy or that I never struggle. It just means I don’t automatically believe the old story anymore.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I used to tell myself I didn’t have enough time. Now I have even less time than I did back then, yet somehow I still find ways to get things done. I don’t think time was really the problem. The story was.

Maybe that’s how these stories lose their power.

Not all at once.

One piece of evidence at a time.

 

The Story Isn’t Finished

Maybe the most dangerous stories aren’t the ones other people tell us.

Maybe they’re the ones we keep telling ourselves long after they stop being true.

A five-year-old boy walks into a classroom and quietly decides he doesn’t belong. Years later, a man lying awake in his parents’ attic decides maybe he never follows through. Neither of those moments told the whole story, but I believed them anyway because I’d been carrying them around for so long that they no longer felt like stories. They felt like facts.

Sometimes I wonder how many people never become the person they were capable of becoming, not because they lacked the ability, but because they spent too many years believing the wrong story about themselves. How many dreams are buried under labels like “failure,” “lazy,” “not smart enough,” or “too late?” How many people never make it to the chapter where things finally begin to change because they stop believing another chapter is even possible?

If there’s one story I hope my boys never carry, it’s the question, “What if?”

I don’t expect them to get everything right. I don’t expect them to avoid failure, disappointment, or heartbreak. I just hope they never let one difficult season convince them the rest of their story has already been written. I’d rather they try and fail than spend the rest of their lives wondering who they might have become if they’d only taken the chance.

Maybe the stories we tell ourselves aren’t always true.

Sometimes they’re just waiting for enough evidence to prove them wrong.

So I’ll leave you with the same question I’ve been asking myself while writing this article.

What story about yourself are you still carrying that stopped being true years ago?

 

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