The Stories We Tell Ourselves
What’s a story you tell yourself over and over that’s likely not true?
The first one I can think of is that “I’m not an athlete.” Then I look through my life and see, football, baseball, wrestling, rock-climbing, mountaineering, alpine skiing, telemark skiing, kayaking, ski-touring, track, marathon, ultramarathons, road races, oh, and almost forgot the years of Karate and Judo.
Miles into the Bighorn 100
You don’t qualify for the Boston Marathon without being an athlete. You don’t run a hundred miles or mountain bike a hundred miles without being an athlete. You don’t run a block without being an athlete. As I write this, I am recognizing my own biases and how these stories start to formulate. Even someone who has lost their legs or arms, their sight, the ability to move below the waist, their hearing, can be powerful athletes.
The vision we have of athletes is created by society, culture, rules that we make up. We vision Labron James, not Neal Palles.
The story “I’m not an athlete” came from stories I was told by coaches, family, peers and repeated to myself again and again as I compared parts of myself to others. Those stories become self-fulfilling prophecies. I was often last to be picked in kickball. I had trouble skipping in kindergarten. I was typically last in the four hundred in elementary school. I would often drop pop-ups that came into right field and barely get the throw to second base. I remember recently taking a mountain bike skills class and being way behind the group. The stories I was telling myself!
I remember distinctly about twenty years back on the backroads of Boulder running into a prominent coach setting out water bottles for his athletes, I am not sure how the conversation started but he stated was there for his ‘athletes’ and I remember almost immediately doubting myself whether I was actually an athlete, twenty miles into a run.
Then, when I was completing my degree in sport psychology, I had to write a narrative of my own athletic career. Athlete? Oh, I’m not an athlete. As I started writing I realized more and more that this is what so many go through. While I am not an elite or professional athlete I still grinded it out day after day. I’d get on the bus and go to tournaments. I’d run in meets. I’d play in games. I’d fall in love with a sport then get sad when I couldn’t run or climb. I am an athlete.
Not an athlete Running down a third place age group and a Boston Qualifier in 2019
Then there’s this story that’s showing up for me now. I’m not a writer. You can’t write. The grammar police are going to show up any minute. This story comes from childhood too. Teachers dumping out my desk in front of the class. Frustration and argument with a teacher about writing a paper about Jupiter when I was in the first or second grade. I remembered my seventh grade English teacher using peer pressure to teach spelling, the other students would lose points if I misspelled something. Talk about a set up! Every time I picked up a pen I froze. The story was written. I’d eventually learn as a freshman in high school I had a learning disability and would get help and tutoring, but the story was powerful.
What do we do about these stories that we tell ourselves? How do we move beyond these stories that are so thick, so engrained in our psyche’s we’re often unaware of their pull?
Here’s a couple tools:
Acknowledge the story is coming up for you.
Note it. Name it. “There’s the wimp story.” (You can even get vision of it.) There’s the ‘slacker’ story. Notice how it pushes you around. You have a choice to do it differently…just like I’m writing this page right now. It’s not coming easy, but I’m writing this page despite what my mind is telling me about the “You can’t write story.”
Look for the truths.
They’re there. I didn’t make it through two graduate programs not able to write. I mean, I may have missed some grammar and spelling here and there but I was able to come up with page after page and get good grades. I didn’t make it to Boston not being able to run fast. I was not able to come in third or fourth at a Karate tournament because I couldn’t fight.
Look closely. You ran a mile. You ran a block. Find the truths.
ACT. Move forward.
Go against the grain of the story that keeps coming up for you. When you do this, the story, just becomes a story.
I help athletes move beyond the story. If you’re needing assistance with this feel free reach out to me here, I respond to everyone