How to Transform Your Life Story

Imagine that your life is a story.

Most of us have lived through every basic genre: drama, suspense, feel-good, adventure, romance, comedy, and maybe even an epic blockbuster.

Some of us have also lived through genres like crime, horror, or a psychological thriller. We’ve known bad guys and villains, people who hurt us, and bullies at school.

I want to lay the groundwork, though, for who you were before the “story” began.

As a human being, you were born with a unique personality, and you were born with the same value, worth, and worthiness as everyone else. You were born deserving of love and affection, care and nurturing, and a life you enjoyed.

You were also born into a family and circumstances outside your control, and from childhood, you started writing your own story based on the events that happened to you and the environment you grew up in.

For many of us, the innate confidence and curiosity we were born with got pummeled like seeds in a mortar and pestle, and though life had some good highlights, things happened that caused us to start writing our stories in a negative context.

We created beliefs about the world we lived in and beliefs about ourselves. The positive truths about us became skewed and twisted, and we took our bad experiences and applied them to our identity.

We grew to believe things like:

There’s something wrong with me

I’m bad/flawed/worthless/unimportant

I don’t deserve love or good things

I’m not loveable or wanted

I’m not special

We created these beliefs instead of understanding that, while tragic, our trauma had nothing to do with who we are as human beings, and we got stuck in a negative storyline.

My negative beliefs about myself made me repeatedly attract the same type of guy into my life: boyfriends who didn’t respect me and ultimately abused me in some way.

It was a pattern. Can you look back on your life and see repeating patterns?

Every boyfriend I had only reaffirmed my beliefs. But my beliefs made me attract those guys in the first place. Stick with me here.

Here’s how mine played out: I believe I’m not deserving of love. > I get a guy who treats me like crap. > I tell myself, “See? I don’t deserve love.”

My beliefs caused this repeating pattern in my life. But was it true that I didn’t deserve love? No, of course not. We all deserve love (yes, YOU), but our beliefs drive our behaviors and choices, which create our reality.

As we get trapped in the loops of trauma in our lives, we start writing a story where we are no longer the hero of our journey but the victim.

We make it about who we are, but our trauma is not who we are. When we can separate what happened to us from our identity, then we can truly start healing, and we can change how the story continues.

To change the story, we need to change our beliefs.

My feelings of worthlessness came from the abuse I endured in my childhood, so I unconsciously tried to affirm my worth through relationships. I wanted someone to love me for real, but I didn’t even know what “real” was.

Then, at 19, I realized I was the problem. So…

I stopped dating.

I started analyzing my beliefs about guys. I didn’t know how to change them yet, but I thought I kept getting bad guys in my life because that’s what I deserved. But I was subconsciously choosing them because of my underlying beliefs.

I made a commitment not to date until I could choose the right kind of guy.

I worked on myself and waited for four years.

I met Mike, my amazing husband, and we’ve been married for 25 years now.

Did life magically get better after that? Did the clouds part, and God suddenly decided to shine His light down on me and make everything better because I deserved it?

No… I deserved it all along! But because I flipped a detrimental belief, I started creating a new reality in my life. I changed the story I was living.

However, the story didn’t end there, and it wasn’t “happily ever after.”

Four years later, after the traumatic birth of my second daughter, the hell of C-PTSD and the true healing of my past began. It’s been brutal, and it’s also been a gift.

The lesson is that we have a say in how our reality unfolds, and it’s based on what we believe we deserve, who we think we are, and our attitude about the challenges we face.

Our beliefs are not the only part of healing but are pivotal. If you let go of what no longer serves you, your behaviors and choices will also change, and you’ll create a different reality.

That’s exactly how I ended up with Mike. I finally believed I deserved real, unconditional love, and I waited expectantly. But I focused on moving towards goals, and as I followed the steps where God led me, I literally ran into Mike.

Do you feel like you’re stuck in Act II of your story, living out an endless loop of faulty beliefs, destructive or limiting behaviors, and results you don’t want?

Consciously, you might desperately want things to be different. You may try numerous ways to get what you want and try like heck to change certain behaviors. But until you look at the underlying beliefs, you’ll struggle to get the life you want. I’ve been there.

My story is now about an overcomer, not an underdog victim. It’s my favorite blend of adventure with some comedy, drama, and feel-goodness mixed in.

I survived some harrowing, treacherous events and came out stronger. My entire family came out stronger. I know my story will have a happy ending no matter what because I know who I am now and what I’m capable of, and I always look for the gift in the battle.

My next article will show you a powerful way to change your limiting beliefs, so if that sounds like something you need, be sure to follow me so you get notified!

I hope this has inspired you to look objectively at the story you’re writing about your life and to take some time to think about the kind of story you want to write going forward.

Starting today, you can begin a powerful rewrite. What will you write next?