Your happiness is determined by the gap between where you think you are and where you think you should be.
And, where you think you are right now, is based on your perception of reality. And your perception of reality is based on the stories you’re telling yourself about where you believe you are, and what you think that means.
Has there ever been a time where you told yourself something. Let’s say you set an exam at school, or you went for your driver’s license. And as you were doing it, you knew you had messed it up. You get to the end of the test. You brace yourself for the bad news. And you passed, or you aced that exam, you thought you’d completely messed up. That’s your perception of reality.
Now let’s look at the other side of that equation. The story you’re telling yourself about where you think you should be. It’s a story as well. And who decided you should be there? We learn most of our ‘should bes’ before age 7.
Those ‘should bes’ were based on how we interpreted what our influencers and authority figures were teaching us. And what they were teaching us was all based on their stories as well. We’re just absorbing all this information, and making these stories true. All these stories land in our subconscious, and we act as if those stories are true. And because we’re taking action based on those ‘true’ stories, we’re validating them with our own experiences.
Now you can change those stories. You can change where you think you are and where you think you should be, and what that means. And here’s how you do it.
HOW TO NARROW THAT GAP
- Start by reviewing where you think you are today. What’s the story in there? Dive deep. Spend time with this. But also play with it.
- What if you changed the story by changing the meaning that you gave to it?
- Next, do the same thing with where you think you should be. What’s that really about? When did you decide that that’s where you should be? If that story is working for you, play with softening it. Try replacing should, with could. How does that feel? If you’re looking at where you could be?
Ultimately, you’re where you’re meant to be. There’s no good or bad. There’s no right or wrong.
Just take a moment and think what would your life feel like right now if you knew that everything is simply a life experience.