Distinguishing between story and feeling is essential to navigating the difficult places in which at times we find ourselves stuck.

We will be helped on this journey as we recognize:

4. Stories become a problem when we look to them as the source of our identity.

No matter how true or accurate our stories may be, we are more than our stories. There is something in us that is richer, deeper, stronger, and more enduring than all the stories we have ever told or been told about ourselves.

Stories operate on the surface. Stories carry the illusion that we can be defined by what is happening or has happened in the circumstances of our life. Stories never go deep enough.

We are not what we have done or has been done to us in the past, or even what is happening in our lives in the present. We are not the harsh words that have been spoken to us, or the difficult world in which we grew up. Although the past clearly has an impact on the present; our past does not have the power to define our identity.

Stories do not define us.

We are defined by the beauty, truth and light that are our essential and deepest nature. Any other source to which we look for a sense of identity will always bring us into slavery. We become trapped in the details of our story, confident that they are true and explain the reality of life.

Our true identity lies in the depths of our being. When we let go of our story, who we truly are is there beneath the surface.

Feelings do not need to be explained, understood, or rationalized. The message of our feelings is, “Go deeper.”

We find our true identity only by looking beyond stories and deeper than circumstance or feeling. As we surrender our stories, space opens and we begin to find a deeper more true and lasting sense of identity.

5. Most of the stories we tell ourselves are constructed around the illusion of insufficiency.

We tell ourselves stories because life as it is feels inadequate. Somehow, we feel we have been short-changed. Things have not measured up to our expectations. Our needs, wants, demands, desires have not been satisfied. Life has cheated us.

When we let go of our stories we come to see that life is not insufficient. Life is enough just as it is.

As long as we have the basic necessities of food, water, shelter, and relative security, life is adequate. We can live without needing to analyze, criticize, evaluate, or judge the life we have.

6. The antidote to the story-driven life is acceptance of what is.

This is your life. Change may come. But change will always come in a more positive direction when it starts from a place of acceptance of what is. These are the parameters of the life we have been given. These are the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We alone can live this particular life.

Life is good as it is. They goal is to live fully the life we have been given and remain open to the creative energy and flow that breathes through all of life.

The surface details are less important that the Life that is being manifest in and through those details. Stories always stay on the surface. They nag away about the past and the future; they move us out of the present moment. When we are caught in story we miss the Life that can only be lived in the present moment.