Step out of your story

We are all born curious.

Wide-eyed and open-hearted, seeing no delineation between where our mother's arms begin and end and the world around us. Moving through life effortlessly, transitioning between natural states and emotional fluctuations without self-examination and meta-commentary.

And then we come into language and begin the act of labelling the seamless patchwork quilt of life in which we exist. In doing so we fragment and categorise to mark out single entities and create comparison.

In this evolution we begin to identify with that crucial ninth letter of the alphabet that appears to dominate our world and define this little me.

I am.

At school we diligently etch out the borders of this story self with sentences punctuated by full stops and adorned with powerful, yet limiting adjectives.

I am brave. I am afraid. I am bossy. I am clever. I am shy.

Repetition becomes conformity as we live within the boundaries of these descriptors and the nouns begin to take hold.

I am a sportsman. I am a princess. I am a thinker. I am a learner. I am a worrier.

We carry these jumbled sentences in our minds and our hearts and we live them out as if they are physical moulds. Even our mobile phones predict the next word based on repetitive content and what is already known.

But what about the unknown? What about the parts of us that see a perspective wider than this constricting story? What about the glimpses of potential that burst out between parentheses and in the gap between paragraphs?

Sometimes we have to feel the tight grip of limitation, to really push up against the restrictive mould, in order to see that it no longer serves us. It's Cohen's 'crack in everything' that allows us to see the contrast and the glimmer of much greater possibilities.

If your story is limiting you, then know that it is just a story. All the time you were standing in that cell, the door was ajar.

So here's an invitation for curiosity and courage, to step out of your story into who you truly are. No limitation. Just pure potential.

@natalienuttall

1-1 innate wellbeing coaching for wholehearted living.