BLOG: Releasing Old Stories That No Longer Hold Meaning

I'm shy, and whenever I reveal this to people, they don't believe me. While it has been true, I'm beginning not to believe me either. 

As a four-year-old, when my mom dropped me off at pre-school, I slid behind her and covered myself up with her coat so as to disappear and take away the fear. Or so I hoped.

This early experience developed into the story: I'm shy. New situations, people en masse scare me.  

I was confronted with my story at a recent conference, which is, by definition, people en masse. 

As I stepped into the conference room, packed and abuzz with chattering people I did not know, I expected to revert back to the experience of that four-year-old, as I so often have in that context. I expected the fear to come.

So, I waited.

And I felt nothing.

I felt nothing but solid groundedness and ease.

Huh? 

Thoroughly unexpected and utterly welcomed.

What I realized later is that shyness is simply a story for me now. It is the tale of a little one and no longer holds power over me.  

And without that emotional charge, my belief in it is starting to wane. 

That's the thing about beliefs, they appear immutable. But just like fairy tales, we can choose to believe them or not. And when they no longer serve us, we can create new ones that work better. Quite simply, we can grow.

This old belief no longer serves me. It doesn't get me to where I want to go in a world where I have to reach out to people en masse regularly. 

The weird thing is that the old story is such a force of habit that it continues to pop up in my thoughts, even though the emotional charge is gone, even though the belief is waning.

In fact, I just caught myself telling the story today while not even believing my own words.

The practice now is to embrace the change, to actively choose not to believe my own story, and to gently release this habit of thought that no longer holds any meaning. 

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