What if I'm wrong?

You can listen to me reading this blog post below!

Some years ago, I had lunch with an old schoolfriend - and we had a conversation that made me realise how little I knew about him, and how wrong some of my own assumptions about him (and about myself) were - and I started to ask the question - if I was wrong about this, what else was I wrong about?

One of my favourite things that I have done over the past year is being the (occasional) cohost of the Shift your story, change your life podcast with host Ally Rose. Ally works with clients through hypnotherapy to rewire subconscious patterns and the stories built through observation and experiences that they have in their lives (whether they are aware of it or not). This podcast celebrates one year on the air this week and I am pleased at how incredible it has been, and celebrating Ally as well as reflecting on some of my own stories that I have shifted.

When Ally asked me to have some of the conversations with her on the podcast, I was excited partially because I LOVE podcasting!! But also because I was in the process of revisiting some of the stories in my own life - from money, to relationships to work - to that friend I mentioned in the first paragraph. 

It is wild how I spent my whole life carrying around ideas and stories - and even though I thought I had overcome some of them, it turns out it was just surface level, and the deeper stories still sat there, influencing so many of my decisions big and small. 

The thing about these stories is that they are invisible and often buried so deep that I was accepting them as baseline facts, and then making decisions based on them. Here are some of the ‘baseline facts’ that I definitely believed for a long time. There were some that I believed about myself (such as that I was definitely unattractive when I was younger but became better looking as I got older). Some were about other people (that other people had these innate abilities to navigate life that I was missing in some way, which meant that they would always do a better job than me at everything).

But, I was also lucky enough to have some entirely useful stories running - a product of my upbringing, and experiences. And I think that is true for all of us - that we have the stories that worked well for us and the ones that might still be holding us back. And we also have those stories that worked well during a particular time in our life, but now as we have gotten older, they are no longer working.

As I reflect on how I have been able to revisit some of my stories, three practices come to mind - that have allowed me to revisit them openly, consider where I might have been wrong, and gently begin to write new stories for myself. And for me the key has been doing them gently. It can be hard to admit I am wrong sometimes - even to myself. 

And in fact - that was probably the first story that I had to revisit for myself - about what happens if I am wrong. Will anything happen? Growing up in environments (school, church, clubs) where being right is praised (and rewarded) and being wrong is absolutely punished, I know that I carried around so many stories about being right, about being seen to be wrong and how vulnerable that makes me. It was one of the reasons why answers seemed so much more important than questions - and the right answers at that.

And while it’s still true in some environments - especially in a job (like healthcare) where the stakes can be high when it comes to being wrong, I have learned that it’s ok to be wrong sometimes, and to start to recognise when that is ok.

Here are a few practices that I have used to help me to start to revisit and untangle those stories. 

Questions over answers. 

When I started posting regularly again a few months ago, one of the first posts I started playing with was how I started leaning into the power of questions in my own life. Several years ago, I read a book called “A More Beautiful Question” by Warren Berger. I loved it! It was about the power of inquiry, and I think I read it at just the right time in my life, when I was beginning to understand the limitations of focusing on the right answer.

What I didn’t know then is how the seeds planted when I read that book would begin to bloom and blossom as I began to understand the power of inquiry in my own life. In fact when I started writing and publishing regularly, all I wanted to do was write about some of the questions that I was sitting with - which is why so many of these posts centre around many of those questions. 

Changing my focus from the importance of the answers (and the right answer) over to sitting with the question - and seeing it’s power even when I don’t have an answer has been one of the single most impactful practices in my life recently. Moving from questions being only as important as the answer to valuing the questions has meant that I now get excited when questions come to me, and I often sit with them - to determine if they are the type of questions that I need an immediate answer to, or if it is a question I like to call “alive” where unanswered, it holds possibilities, other questions and a change in how I look at a situation. 

Slowness. 

This one has been difficult for me, but it has also been important, and is a part of “sitting with the question” that I mentioned above. As someone who is extremely impatient, learning to sit with the questions required learning to slow down long enough to consider - what else might be true. Brains love shortcuts, and my brain was no exception. So learning how to slow down enough to hold a question, turn it around and look at it from different angles was a skill - somewhat helped by my love for writing (particularly with pen and paper) and by the good friends that I could have conversations with about the topics. 

One other thing that helped was one of my “rules for life” (this is from an OLD blog post that you can read about here) and one of my rules for life is - there is more than one way. Holding firmly to this means that I built a practice that means whenever I come up with an answer to a question, I remind myself that there has to be another answer. And even if I come back to what I first thought was right, exploring other ideas has been helpful for me with the questions that I don’t have answers for.

Reflection

One of the gifts of this age, and of writing has been my ability to reflect over my life, and start to see where I might be wrong about the stories I have been telling myself. One example I wrote about recently, as I talked about my relationship with stability. I felt as if how I worked - being self-employed - was very unstable, and all I wanted was a regular paycheck. Once I was able to feel calm enough to reflect, I realised that even though it felt unstable, I had actually been creating stability for myself - even as I was self-employed. So reflection has been a big part of me questioning my beliefs, as I look back and see that perhaps I haven’t been as bad at navigating life as I thought.

Tiny experiments.

Embracing tiny experiments has changed many areas of my life - including my creative practices - but it has also influenced me as I have been revisiting stories and narratives. Sometimes - even though I want to change and believe something new, I have a tendency to still cling fast to an old narrative - even when it doesn’t make sense. So sometimes I tell myself to do a small experiment in the new way of thinking so that I can begin to build evidence for a new belief or narrative. 

One of the new stories I have built in regards to my belief that others are much better than I am at navigating the world - was that I am good at figuring things out. I have tapped into that repeatedly over the past few years as I took a new job in a relatively new field, and I wanted to say yes to projects while being worried that someone else might do it better than me. I would remind myself that I could figure it out. I might take on a small project with some unfamiliar aspects, and build on my confidence that I can figure out how to navigate these situations. It doesn’t mean that I raise my hand to everything, but it means I have dispelled the belief that there is always someone who can do things better than I can.

I have found in my own life that when things feel sticky, there is usually a story I am telling myself that is framing the way I am looking at a situation, and having ways to process through it has been helpful. And I would encourage you to take a listen to Ally and I on the podcast! This week Ally is holding a Q and A, and answering questions from her audience, and I may have answered one or two as well! Take a listen, and let me know what you think.

And about the friend I mentioned earlier - while he isn’t someone I am close to and so I don’t know how much of an influence he will have in future stories, I am forever grateful for our conversation and the role he has played to this point. Next time I get the opportunity (if he lets me) lunch will be on me.

What are some stories that you have revisited and shifted in your own life? I would love to hear from you.

And I send you big love.