Contents
Change the story you tell yourself about your life and your life will change
personal development
Diana Orero explains in “Everything Counts” that the way we relate affects how we think and how we feel
“It is not the same to tell a story from the wound than from the scar.” This message full of hope is from Catherin Burns, an expert in «storytelling» and is one of the many quotes that the specialist in narrative identity, creativity and communication Diana Orero shares in her book «Everything counts. Discover how to tell (you) better stories »(Ed. Létrame). His work, halfway between the novel and the personal development book, is the result of an investigation on how it affects thoughts and feelings the way we tell each other what happens to us.
The author also explains that the more times we tell our story by paying attention to different details or by telling it from new perspectives and finding something valuable about what happened, the more chances we have that the story we tell ourselves will “heal” us. The explanation lies in what, Orero recalls, said Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who spent his entire life talking hopefully about the horrors he lived through: “People become the stories they hear and the stories they hear. they count ». And why can this phrase explain the healing power of stories? Well, because, as Diana Orero argues in her book, «we can always try to tell ourselves a better story and there is always a better way of saying things because that is where we put a large part of our happiness and our ability to make people happy. around us”.
This is how he tells his story
The personal story that Diana Orero tells (and tells) about her mother (she was orphaned at age 14) is that “everyone has their mother at home” but she has her “everywhere.” And the story that is told about her father (he died when she was 33 years old) is that he left in peace and was happy because he always made an effort so that his children learned to live and were “enjoy.” She was orphaned when she was very young, she has worked for important brand projects, she has written two books, she has set up three companies, she has been part of projects that were about to destroy her psychologically and she has been several times on the verge of bankruptcy, but she has also experienced sound successes in the world of advertising and communication… There are lights and shadows. Sadness and happiness. Successes and failures. But the truth is that when you listen to how she tells her own story of her life, the feeling that remains is that it seems that she was always lucky in life. “Similar things happen to all of us, but not all of us experience them the same, the only thing that differentiates us is the way we tell them,” he says. That is why in his work he explains with total conviction that the stories we tell ourselves can change our perception of reality and that even by changing that perception, we also change.
Life is pure story
From “the coconut comes” from when we were children, to Aesop’s fables or parables, through series, movies or gossip… Life is a story and we learn through stories. In fact, as Diana Orero affirms, we need stories of ourselves and of others to make sense of our world because the way we relate to each other builds our identity and it affects how we think and how we feel. And that is why, he explains, it is so important to learn to tell and tell our own story well.
And for this the first thing is to choose the protagonist well. “My girlfriend does not love me, my boss does not value me, my son ignores me … Are you really the protagonist of the story you tell yourself or are other people?” Asks Diana Orero. “Often we leave our mood in the hands of others, and this book invites you to get it back, “he says. Once we are clear that we really are the protagonists of our history, it is important that we give value to what has happened, but not to the event itself (“What difference does it make what happened to you?”, He insists), but to what we have done with what has happened to us. For this, the expert invites you to play with words, to nourish yourself with them to give meaning and value to what has happened because, as she explains, when you give value to something, you free yourself. To give value you have to do things like change the “because of” to “thanks to” and use the words that she calls “polar” (“because they guide me when I get lost”) as “still”, “why ? ”, Gratitude, leadership or forgiveness.
And this is where the explanation of how to use them comes … «How many things that they tell us ‘buy’ thus believing at face value that something is wrong or right? And how many of those things that they tell us do we tell ourselves, totally convinced of it for better or for worse? ”, Asks the author. The best antidote to these beliefs is question things Well, as he assures, the stories are not real and the reality is not what happens but how you live what happens. That is why the author invites us to undertake a process inspired by the «The Work» method, by Byron katie which includes the following steps. The first thing to do is ask ourselves: “Does the story I tell myself make me more or less happy?” If it makes me happier, I’ll keep it. But if I see that it doesn’t make me happy, I have to ask myself, “Is this true?” And then I have to think, “Who am I without that thought?” and then go to reverse thinking, that is, instead of thinking something like “My son does not love me because he does not pick up the socks” turn it over thinking: “I do not love my children because they do not pick up the socks” and then ask ourselves: “Is that true?” And finally, you have to make a reinvestment to reach the conclusion that “I don’t love myself because my state of mind depends on some socks on the floor.”
In «Everything Counts» Diana Orero provides, through stories, the necessary tools to better relate to oneself, to the people around her and to what happens to her.