Fact vs Story, Flooding, and The Serenity Prayer
This past week has been a “challenge”.
Between catching a summertime cold (who gets sick at the beginning of June?), major flooding in our area, and a migraine headache to top off the Memorial Day weekend – I’ve been struggling.
I’ve had an internal battle over the last few days of wishing reality was different – wishing I wasn’t sick, wishing the rain would stop, wishing the water would stop rising, wishing our neighbors homes were not under water, wishing my head would quit pounding.
Wishing.
And do you know what all that wishing did? Made it that much more difficult for me to just be present in the moment and allow what was happening without resisting it.
How much time do you think you spend resisting your reality?
Wishing that you weren’t overweight?
Wishing you could eat whatever you want, whenever you want without fear of gaining weight.
Wishing your family understood you.
Wishing you liked running.
Wishing your life was different.
Wishing, resisting, wishing, resisting.
This makes me think of the Serenity Prayer
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
I’ve always loved this prayer – it really gets to the meat of what we struggle with most – accepting reality for exactly what it is without wishing it was different – and being fully aware of the things that we CAN change in our life and then taking responsibility for actually changing them.
This also reminds me of a very interesting exercise that I learned in Life Coach School that I use to help my clients (and myself) distinguish what we cannot change (facts, circumstances) from what we can (our thoughts, feelings, actions).
It’s all about identifying what is fact and what is story (or better said – what is provable in court and what is the drama we create around the facts).
Facts are just that – facts.
For example – we had 14 inches of rain in two days that caused flooding in our neighborhood.
Story is what we say/create around these facts.
Example – the flooding was devastating, people lost everything, this never should’ve happened.
Now – would some people agree with the story part? Sure! But is it factual? Is it provable in court?
The flood was devastating – fact is – there was worse flooding in the area 20+ years ago – many more homes were flooded and the National Guard was called in to help evacuate people.
People lost everything – fact is – some people were able to move their cars to higher ground and shift their personal belongings around in their homes to safeguard them from the water. AND most importantly (in my opinion), no lives were lost!
This never should’ve happened – fact is – it did. There are arguments all around about how the flooding could’ve been handled differently, how people of authority should’ve done this or that, etc. The fact of the matter is the flooding happened – you can argue with reality – but you will lose 100% of the time (thank you Byron Katie).
I’m using the floods from this past weekend as an example – but this can be used for ANY situation in your life.
The facts vs story of your weight gain.
The facts vs story of the fight you had with your spouse.
The facts vs story of what your boss said about your report.
The facts vs story of why you didn’t work out this week.
When you find yourself spinning in a cycle of pain because of a circumstance you cannot change – take a step back and take a hard look at how you are adding drama to the story.
How might you be able to look at the situation with a different perspective?
When you truly realize and take ownership for your role in how you feel about a certain situation
– you then have the freedom to choose whether to stay in a cycle of hurt/pain/disappointment
– or you can choose to empower yourself with the ability to change the way you tell your story.
