The Power Of The Stories We Tell Ourselves
The other day, I emerged into the sunshine, energised and inspired from a fabulous talk organised by the lovely crew at Creative Mornings. The speaker, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, is such a delightful, articulate, intelligent and warm individual, that it's difficult to grasp why so many people have spent the last few months attacking her so assiduously... I don't want to focus on that, but rather on the main content of her talk. It's something I badly needed to hear this week, so I took careful note:
Abdel-Magied recounted her time working as a mechanical engineer on offshore oil rigs. Apparently, she genuinely saw herself as exactly like her colleagues, which in this case meant "middle aged white guys with random neck tattoos". It didn't even occur to her that other people may look at her and think she might look out of place. In this instance, the story Yasmin was telling herself was that she belonged. She was the same as everyone else. And by stories, this doesn't mean "fiction" so much as "message".
It's one thing to have a little chuckle about the absurdity of a young Sudanese Muslim woman telling herself she's just like the 45 year old bogan dude ... but the power of this message is that she is telling herself that she is equal, that she is qualified, and that she has exactly the same right to be there doing that job. Abdel-Magied's point was that if she had been (mentally, sub-consciously) telling herself that she didn't belong, couldn't compete and wasn't worthy, then those stories would have become true, at least in her own mind. This,in turn may well have affected her ability to perform, which would in a roundabout way have made the awful, negative stories come true.
She mentioned how our neural pathways can be formed from habit; if you tell yourself something often enough, you will eventually believe it. This is one of the fundamentals underpinning Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT practitioners encourage people to lay new neural pathways as a way to override the negative self-talk with kinder, more supportive messages.
So it made me think abut what stories I can choose to believe about myself. Today, in the sunshine, I am choosing happy, hopeful and courageous ones.
Further Thinking
I can't recommend the Creative Morning's experience highly enough. They operate in a shit tonne of cities around the world, so there is most likely a chapter in your local area. You can follow the link above for more info. And there are also loads and loads of other talks available on the website, so you could potentially never attend an actual event and still get your regular dose of inspo... but you'll miss out on the free coffee.
"Don't underestimate the power of the stories you tell yourself"
Abdel-Magied recounted her time working as a mechanical engineer on offshore oil rigs. Apparently, she genuinely saw herself as exactly like her colleagues, which in this case meant "middle aged white guys with random neck tattoos". It didn't even occur to her that other people may look at her and think she might look out of place. In this instance, the story Yasmin was telling herself was that she belonged. She was the same as everyone else. And by stories, this doesn't mean "fiction" so much as "message".
It's one thing to have a little chuckle about the absurdity of a young Sudanese Muslim woman telling herself she's just like the 45 year old bogan dude ... but the power of this message is that she is telling herself that she is equal, that she is qualified, and that she has exactly the same right to be there doing that job. Abdel-Magied's point was that if she had been (mentally, sub-consciously) telling herself that she didn't belong, couldn't compete and wasn't worthy, then those stories would have become true, at least in her own mind. This,in turn may well have affected her ability to perform, which would in a roundabout way have made the awful, negative stories come true.
She mentioned how our neural pathways can be formed from habit; if you tell yourself something often enough, you will eventually believe it. This is one of the fundamentals underpinning Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT practitioners encourage people to lay new neural pathways as a way to override the negative self-talk with kinder, more supportive messages.
So it made me think abut what stories I can choose to believe about myself. Today, in the sunshine, I am choosing happy, hopeful and courageous ones.
Further Thinking
I can't recommend the Creative Morning's experience highly enough. They operate in a shit tonne of cities around the world, so there is most likely a chapter in your local area. You can follow the link above for more info. And there are also loads and loads of other talks available on the website, so you could potentially never attend an actual event and still get your regular dose of inspo... but you'll miss out on the free coffee.
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