SYTB 8: Controlling the Narrative

Handle your inner dialogue, handle your life.

The most profound part of the book “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz was before all the agreements were rolled out. It was in the first chapter where he describes the inner judge and critic and the system in which they work together to keep you from moving forward. He says, “The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for every mistake they make.” He continues, “We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justice exists, then that was enough”… “But every time we remember, we judge ourselves again, we are guilty again, and we punish ourselves again, and again, and again.” And he ends this paragraph asking, “Is this fair?”

Well, sheesh! Of course, not!

However, most of the time we aren’t conscious of this inner narrator. We don’t notice when it takes breaks from the plot to fill in this back story from the past. So we also don’t even notice that it’s telling the same story on repeat that convinces us how unworthy we are of our dreams. We don’t consciously hear it suggesting we aren’t worthy of finishing this picture. Not to mention, boundaries are all about focus and about how the show must go on. So, how do you think these kinds of spiraling monologues that get us nowhere in our plot toward our happy ending set us back in finishing our picture?

Boundaries would tell us to put what we want in the frame. These old stories are not what we want, not directly at least. However, they can be useful tools to getting us there.

I had a spiritual teacher once tell me, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not set up camp there.” But, this is what we do if we are sleepwalking, unconscious of the narrative, unconscious of our inner dialogue and not working within our framework and boundaries.

As far as whether or not we are worthy of finishing the picture, I want to stop you all right there. Nothing makes you more worthy of finishing your picture and having a glorious happy ending than your set backs, your errors and your failures. What kind of picture starts out happy, has no conflict and ends up happy and is worth watching? None, zero, zilch, zip! The reason people follow your story is BECAUSE of your setbacks and failures. They have them, too, and whether for inspiration or new ideas, they want to know how you overcame your obstacles of shitty inner dialogue and mental condemnation to get to your final production and presentation. Your life is only worth nothing if you don’t ever let yourself win. Let yourself win. It really is that easy.

I am telling you that if you stay focused on the picture and use these setbacks to fill in back story, your picture will be better for it. However, you can’t keep going back and telling the back story again and again. We got it. We know what you went through. We know you fucked up. To everyone else, it only matters that you took a half a second to acknowledge it. Nothing more. Stop making it more important than that. Stop it! Unlike the unironically titled series “The Punisher” we aren’t going to tell the audience 3 times in every episode how everything bad that happened to us and the people we loved was because we feel we failed and brought bullshit into all our lives. We are better writers than that. We now can learn ironically from the mistakes of “The Punisher.” We’ll nail our fuck up once in the beginning of the first episode and move forward without dragging our audience through grueling, redundant, self-flagellation. And, unlike “The Punisher,” our revenge will be our success. Let’s face it, success truly is the best revenge. We don’t all need to become a weekly program where everyone around us is out to get us for the rest of our lives. Practice freedom of association. Learn and grow. Hang out with better people!

Here’s the biggest epiphany I got from “The Four Agreements” before ever reading about any of the actual four agreements. Ruiz later in the first chapter concludes, “In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly.” So wouldn’t it make sense to become consciously aware of when we are judging and punishing ourselves if we want to create better patterns in our relationships with others? And should we not then, start to tell ourselves a better story about ourselves?

This is why so many people recommend stream of consciousness writing, journaling and positive self-talk. But before all that, it is recommended for writers to turn off the television and computers and give yourself a multi-media fast every so often. The narration from commercials, TV, news, magazine articles, books and movies clogs your mind and keeps you from hearing your thoughts. If you can’t hear them, you can’t use them as the foundation for your happy ending.

I remember one time I had been at my mom’s house. She keeps a radio or TV on in every room of the house, usually on news stations, almost 24 hours a day. So walking from room to room, I was bombarded with voices of yelling, righteously indignant, talk radio hosts, jubilant and persuasive advertisers and manipulative music designed to accompany compelling news stories of war. At the time, I hadn’t had any news on in my apartment for almost a year. This was several months after 9/11 when I got rid of my cable box that very day after watching an airplane hitting a building on repeat no less that 50x in the first hour. I said, “this can’t become the mantra of my year or my life.” So, I stood in line at the local cable store and returned the box on the spot for a small credit.

But a year later in my mom’s place, I heard this thunderously ominous, theme song behind a story about the conflict in Chechnya. Because I had been off the mainstream, sponsored news system and television channels for nearly a year, I was no longer accustomed to hearing it. I immediately pictured a studio musician in a sound booth recording that song and the artist hired to sit at his keyboard and come up with Chechnya conflict mood music. I laughed out loud to myself, admittedly like a crazy person, picturing how funny it was to think someone got paid for this short jingle of terror and doom. I also realized how manipulative it was that for most of my life up to that point, I was so unaware of how the media propagandizes us and keeps us from seeing where they are interrupting and hijacking our thoughts- even with music. I noticed, too, when I got home I was very tired after being in her house of noise assaulting my brain for several hours. Moreover, when I laid down for a nap in my apartment, I noticed that my mind was lucid dreaming loud, fake commercials for mentally made-up products just to keep the noise going as it had for the period of time I spent in her home. I realized that media holds the brain captive and reprograms it to tune out any distractions, such as conscious or even subconscious personal and original thoughts. So it was that as I was falling asleep, I had one of my greatest awakenings. We have to allow for periods of silence and stillness to detox from the outside noise of the world. Once we do, we can start deprogramming and recalibrating what thoughts we want to consciously choose to think.

So, all this to encourage you to get still first. It may take a few tries to get used to silence and enjoy it. I do this weird thing where I try to listen to my shoulder or some part of my body I am certain isn’t making any audible noise. If you live in the city, where it is never very quiet, you can listen for breaks in the noise, breaks in traffic and just bring your focused attention to those moments of respite.

Once in that place of stillness, talk out loud to yourself. Narrate your life like a narrator that is rooting for everything you do as if it were the center of the universe. After all, you are the center of your universe. The film “Stranger Than Fiction” gives great pointers on how to do this. The movie starts with something as simple as the protagonist, Harold overhearing the female narrator (Karen, coincidentally) describe to him how he is meticulously brushing his teeth. I highly recommend watching it, but today, you can start like this. “As Karen was going about her Tuesday morning, looking over her to do list for the week, little did she know the great treasure awaiting her for merely accomplishing these simple tasks in just a few short days.” This narrator sees your mistakes, sees the seeming banality of your crawl forward, but also recognizes when it’s time to learn from these moments and moves the audience (also you) toward the final picture. You are the unconscious observer and narrator, but you are also the observed. Narrate in such a way as to hear that your life is going somewhere great and believe it!

Obviously, you might not want to narrate out loud if you live with other people. This is where journaling and stream of consciousness writing come in. These are good substitutes for oral narration. Stream of consciousness writing allows you to see your less conscious thoughts on paper and journaling allows you to capture your thoughts and use them as a foundation for resolution.

Notice when you get stuck in a loop of criticism, when it has taken over and kept you dwelling on some incident in the past where you failed and didn’t get a do over. See a creative possibility of how you can either write or talk yourself out of this loop and into a resolution. Then grab that resolution by the horns like a bucking bronco and do not let go. Stay to the end, to the realization of one of your dreams, even if it is a small one. Share this win with others and celebrate it like you just won a $20 million lottery ticket. This is how you say “yes” to what you truly desire and embrace your accomplishments. This will also create a check list where you can start prioritizing memories of your triumphs that are louder than your failures. One after another, if you follow this process, you will win. You need to make the wins as- if not more important than the losses you’ve already beat yourself up for one too many times.

You may not ever get an exact do over with those same people or circumstances in that past scenario you are replaying and punishing yourself for, but you do get to move forward and have everything else you want in life, including a future -if you say “yes” to it. You can’t let some scenario of the past with people that were not likely good vibrational matches for you keep you from moving forward. You can’t let a time in your life when you still felt low and unworthy of good friends keep you from moving toward your dreams and creating new relationships with lovely people that resonate at higher vibrations and bring out the champion in you.

Well, then again, I guess, you can let that happen, but then, you wouldn’t be someone who is proactively saying “yes” to what you want and reading this lesson. So be you, the yes-person you that took the time to learn a new way to be, to write a new story and to reauthor your life for better outcomes. Control the narrative. It’s your life after all! Who else is going to live it or redeem it?

Are you ready? Of course, you are!

Alright, so your homework for today is simple.

First, get quiet, then get talking.