How your inner narrative impacts your life

I’ll never forget the day that I learned about the interplay between your thoughts, feelings, actions, and the circumstance you’re experiencing as it was one of those pivotal life moments for me. Not to be dramatic, but it changed my life. This concept was the gateway to me being able to change my own thoughts, perceptions, reactions, and behaviors in ways that has led to me becoming far happier, becoming someone who holds a higher standard for myself (resulting in taking great care of myself and following through with goals), and having a life I’m pretty stoked about.

Your thoughts, feelings, actions, and the context of circumstances all impact each other. For example, specific thoughts can lead to you feeling a certain way or drive you to certain behaviors.

Through understanding this concept, we can see how if we cultivate awareness of how these different interactions are showing up in our own lives and do the work to change our thoughts and beliefs, we can change how we perceive life and how we show up in the world for our benefit.

Our inner narrative is comprised of our thoughts and our (conscious and unconscious) beliefs or, the story we tell ourselves. This inner narrative shapes our perspective, which essentially acts as the lens through which we’re viewing the world.

This goes for surface-level thoughts you’re highly aware of, unconscious beliefs, and everything in between.

If I held the perspective that exercise and eating well were chores and took too much effort, I would likely develop apathetic or negative attitudes towards these actions. Consequently, I would face greater challenges in staying committed to regular exercise and maintaining a healthy diet.

But if I held the perspective that exercise and eating well made me feel great and that I enjoyed and valued supporting my health and wellbeing, odds are I’d have an easier time sticking with my exercise and nutrition goals.

An unfortunate side effect of our beliefs is as they impact how we show up in the world and how we perceive situations, they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as our brains are wired to look for confirmation that what we believe is true.

Let’s say you believe you’re awkward, unattractive, and not well-liked. You walk into a house party and a few people nod and smile but look away and go back to whatever they were doing. You feel like maybe they don’t really like you and are avoiding a conversation with you. You end up trying to make small talk with someone but you don’t feel like they’re really enjoying talking to you. No one is asking you to join them in any game or conversation. You end up feeling like an outsider and your brain perpetuates the idea that you’re awkward, unattractive, and that people don’t like you all that much.

Let’s put you in that same scenario but this time you have good self-worth, you really like who you are, and you believe you can become friends with anyone. You walk into the house party and a few people nod and smile but look away and go back to whatever they were doing. You just smile back and don’t even really notice. You end up chatting with someone grabbing a drink next to you and enjoy getting to connect with someone at the gathering. Different groups of people are involved in conversations or games, and you decide to introduce yourself to a group nearby and join in on their conversation. You made a few new connections and had a good time at the gathering.

Nothing is this cut and dry, but use this example to help you understand how our inner narratives shape both how we present ourselves as well as how we perceive our circumstances.

Your inner narrative shapes your quality of life and the reality of your circumstances as it plays a role in how you show up in your relationships and career, how you carry yourself, and the inner dialogue you have with yourself.

But if you allow yourself to change your mind and change your inner narrative, you can use it as a catalyst to achieve goals you have, cultivate better relationships, experience more joy, and most importantly, have a better relationship with yourself.

If you want to see a difference in your outer world, you first have to make a shift in your inner world. And sometimes, just simply perceiving something in a new way creates the change you wanted or needed.

So how does one change their inner narrative?

Check back next week for my blog that will deep dive into this topic :).