How to change the (bad) stories you tell about yourself

I’m not the person to tell you how the brain works.

But I heard this metaphor a while ago:

The mind works like driving a car back and forth on thick ice.

When you’ve gone back and forth 50 times, the wheel creates dents in the ice.

As you go back and forth more and more times, the dents grow deeper.

As the dents grow deeper, they get harder and harder to get out of.

All of a sudden you’re stuck.

With this in the back of your head, think about the stories you tell about yourself.

“I’m a bad cook”

“I’m not funny”

“I hate public speaking”

Are they true?

Most likely not.

Most of it is a truth you’ve created that lives in your head. Rent free.

But tell them to yourself over and over and soon enough you’ll make them true. They’re like dents in the ice.

Now, telling negative stories about yourself that aren’t true sounds like a terrible idea. So let’s shift gears and try one quote and one story to get us out of these stupid dents.

The quote is from Shaan Puri and goes something like this:

“Confidence is the byproduct of leaning into the adventure. The more adventurous you become, the more bulletproof you realize you are… and the byproduct of that is confidence.”

Alright!

So by daring to try, you’ll get more confident over time.

The first time you’ll (likely) screw up. But over time you’ll succeed more and more.

And all of a sudden you have confidence.

Sounds good to me, and that quote made me try a simple change to my life.

Listen to this:

I was a competitive golfer until I was 19. Top something in my age in the country.

But I couldn’t hit my driver straight.

Standing up on the tee with the driver in my hand, I knew I would hit it straight into trouble.

I knew it.

I wanted to run back to the clubhouse and go home every time.

And it became my truth.

“I can’t hit a driver”

Was it actually true?

No!

I could hit all the other clubs straight as a line. No problem. Give me a 9-iron and I would put it inside 5 meters from the flag every time. But with the driver it was a whole other story.

Then I quit playing golf competitively.

But for close to 10 years I kept telling myself the same story.

“I can’t hit a driver”

Until I heard the quote from Shaan.

“Confidence is the byproduct of leaning into the adventure.”

What if hitting a driver is my mini-adventure. And if I do it enough times, I’ll be able to split the fairway.

Not the first time. But the 100th time. Or the 200th time.

So I started.

I made a simple promise to myself: every time there’s a chance for me to hit the driver, I have to do it. No discussion.

The first year, I played my worst golf ever. I was hitting shots all over the place.

The second year was ok.

The third year (today), it’s one of my favorite clubs in the bag.

Do I hit a perfect shot every time? No (then I wouldn’t be sitting here writing).

But I love pulling it out of the bag.

And that’s enough for me.

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