Using personal stories to reframe your life.

Stories convey powerful messages, especially the ones we create about ourselves. The stories that we tell about ourselves to explain our lives and our relationships determine how we present ourselves to others, and in turn, how we view ourselves.

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We are all authors, with the ability to influence our lives through the stories we tell about ourselves, according to Fred Amador, a counselor at Phoenix College AZ, a part of Maricopa Community Colleges, and CEO of Peak Insight Coaching. He presented "Change Your Story, Change Your Life" at the NILD/AACC conference in Phoenix in November.

Stuck stories

The stories you tell about yourself can shape your future. Studies continue to prove the power of positive thinking; New-Age believers have long known the benefits of projecting positive energy. If your story is that you're driven, successful and able to make things happen, chances are that you will. Conversely, if you tell yourself that you're lazy, you mess things up and bad things happen to you, you'll find it difficult to summon the resources to improve your life.

Stories of self-defeat are an example of "stuck stories," said Amador. These are stories that are outdated, yet we keep repeating them over and over. We may tell ourselves that we're ugly, when in fact, we're no longer the 12-year-old with braces and glasses. It's like a person who recently lost 40 pounds looking in the mirror: sometimes we're so used to seeing what we used to see that we can't see how much we've changed, or the person we've become. We can't see ourselves as others now see us.

Amador had session participants partner with a person they didn't know to share a stuck story by telling her a five-minute story about something they wanted to change about themselves. Reflecting on the experience with the group, participants said that it felt good to let it out.