We choose our future with the decisions we make every day.
And our decisions also choose our past.
Hear me out.
Yes, things happened to us in our past. Some were bad things—very bad. We‘ve been hurt. We’ve been taken advantage of. We’ve been wronged. Some of us have experienced severe trauma.
And NONE of this was of our choosing.
But what we DO choose is how we decide to think about our past.
We decide which aspects of our past to focus on. We decide how we’ll interpret what happened. We determine the meaning we ascribe to events in our past.
This becomes the narrative we tell ourselves and others.
It becomes our story.
We’ve chosen it. And it’s powerful.
In fact, Narrative Therapy teaches us how to examine our stories and “re-author” our identity if needed.
Because we’re the author of our narrative.
What are we writing in our story—about our future and our past? Do we focus on past successes? Or failures? Do we interpret past events in a fatalistic light? Or an optimistic light? What type of “meaning” do we ascribe to our past?
The construction of our narrative is how we “choose our past.”
Let’s choose wisely.
Photo credit: Burst from Unsplash
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