What is the story you tell yourself about yourself?

I'm fascinated by the story we tell ourselves - about ourselves.

Hear me out. We all have an ego. Some bigger than others but we all have one. Our ego is essentially the way we perceive ourselves. Or the story we tell our self about our self.

We also have an ongoing story that we tell ourselves. And it becomes very easy to connect random occurrences into a ongoing story that makes sense to us. This is known as our preferred narrative.

In other words, we'll rationalize everything. This is good and bad. It's good because if we didn't have the miraculous ability to rationalize, we wouldn't be able to function in this insane world.

It's bad because if something we do doesn't fit into our story we tend to ignore it.

For example, let's take someone who thinks they are extremely honest. If they do something that is dishonest, they will somehow rationalize it, and completely ignore it.

They will chalk it up to something other than being dishonest.

Being self-aware certainly helps. However, we're all only self-aware to an extent - because of this phenomenon.

So how does this apply to us? I think it applies to us immensely.

Every time you indulge in unhealthy food what do you tell yourself? Every time you let up during a workout as opposed to pushing harder what do you tell yourself?

Every Friday night what do you tell yourself? Every weekend what do you tell yourself?

Now when we start to pay attention to our actions, as opposed to our story, it starts to get really interesting.

Because your story is the person you really want to be. That's how you'd like to view yourself.

Your actions, of course, are you! You can't define anyone but by their actions.

You can BE great. But unless you DO great no one will know that.

Think about that today and this week. Let's make our actions follow our story!

-Adam