What if Your Stories Are the Root Cause of Your Problems?

Key points

We are story-telling animals, constantly narrativising our experiences and storifying our existence.

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves shape our inner reality and determine our happiness.

Our self-stories are either helpful or unhelpful.

The most common toxic self-stories are self-blaming or world-blaming.

We are story-telling animals. Stories are our core sense-making tools. We constantly spin narratives in our head – about the world, other people, what we are doing and seeing. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are especially important. They shape our sense of identity , our interpretations of our past and our expectations for our future. [1] What is more, they also significantly determine our overall sense of well-being and life-satisfaction. [