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Stories are weaved into everything that we do.

They have ways of molding and shaping us, even defining us. These past events, whether we look at them as positive or negative, can either lift us up or tear us down. We can embrace them as lessons and learn from them, or we can cry them into the abyss of victimization and remain blind to all else.

Everyone has a pivotal story or stories that have helped shape them, or so I thought.

Diving deep into self-discovery and growth, I found myself questioning my beliefs and feelings on this.

I knew the story that brought me here, to some degree, but really questioning it led me someplace I was not fully expecting. In this time of really beginning to let my true self come forth, I realized a couple of things. One, being the events that created the story that kept me small. I then stumbled upon the lens of the mind that created the feelings that gave the stories power.

What?

“The viewpoint or perception of the mind that created the feelings is what gives the stories power.”

All this time, I had known the stories—the list of events. Boy did I ever know them! What I had failed to correlate was the perception behind them.

You see, it is not the events that cause us discomfort or thrill; it is our own perception of those events.

As a nine-year-old, how I perceived or processed the events determined the story, the feelings, and the messages. As I grew older, the way I would look at things would change, grow, and develop as I did, but the “original” play would remain untouched. Many aspects of my life would unwittingly center around this one piece of time.

Each one of us is gifted with our own unique way of looking at things. We think that it is the stories of our past that create our vision, but I feel that is not necessarily so.

We come in with our own personalities in this life. These inherent gifts brought forth from lifetimes prior to this one. We see that in our children. It is already encoded—our unique gifts.

Perceptions and viewpoints can be changed and expanded at any given moment. It is a choice. In an effort to grow and become more open, I have done it time and time again. Thoughts from yesterday have changed today when given another piece of information or angle in which to look. Going back though memory allows me to also make a tiny shift in perception and now alter the steps I will make tomorrow.

The events don’t change; my history doesn’t change. How I move forward changes. Another angle sprouts forth, and old limiting beliefs diminish, expanding my view even more. Energy spent on keeping me reeled in bursts forth in abundant freedom.

 

 

Maybe it is only the view of the eternal optimist, but once again, my heart, my soul, breathe that much freer in a world continually trying to contain, maintain, and define our essence.

The stories we tell ourselves, the stories that we rerun and claim, are not who we are. They are experiences laced with emotions and perceptions. They carry the potential to define us, but nothing more. It is the lessons that we can yield from them and the lenses in which we view them that ultimately help define us in the physical form.

Beyond all that, we are undefinable. We are energy, free from the shape our eyes have given us, continually in motion and uncontained. Definition lies only in the physical, and the realization of this releases the bonds and reaffirms our limitless potential, unweighted by the burdens of mind and ego.

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