Pillar Articles

Meet the two thieves from the past
that steal your present

Discover the two types of limiting stories that steal your gifts,
distort your opportunities and thwart your potential.

In the Pillar Article What is Story ALchemy^tm, you discovered that very early on in life you inherited or created Story Fields for almost every aspect of your life.

Review

You learned that these Story Fields are just like the stories your mom told you when you were a child. They have the 5Ws: who, what, where, when and why. You understood that the reason why you are full of old hidden stories is because that’s the way your brain makes sense of and stores reality.

Bear in mind that once your mind decides that a Story Field works to address reality, it installs it as a Neural Map. From then on, any similar situation is interpreted and responded to based on that blueprint.

The image I gave you was to imagine that your mind is a farm and each of these Story Fields is a field planted there. Some were planted before you were even born! Some are still yielding fresh vegetables. Some fields are rotten. And others are just obsolete and do not serve you anymore.

Two Types of Story Fields

Still, when you meet reality, your mind instantly sends your consciousness through the Neural Maps created by the familiar Story Fields –whether they are appropriate or not. You often are not even aware that your subconscious –which governs about 95% of what goes on behind the scenes– just rerouted a possibility into the blueprint of an old problem… you just see a problem!

Of course, many of these old learned Story Fields are useful and help you understand the world, society and yourself. Without them you would be lost and would not know how to make sense of anything.

Limiting Story Fields

However, many of these Story Fields are limiting. They are based on False Beliefs, wrong or biased interpretations or facts that are no longer valid. I call these Limiting Story Fields.

Examples of a Limiting Story Field:

• The parents do not trust outsiders. The family is very closed-in and protective. You are warned not to trust outsiders, especially if they are from another race, country or culture. This is xenophobia at its best and racism at its worst. This Story Field will keep you from expanding your circle of friends and even clients and it contributes to war, hate crimes and other social problems.
• Your mother’s divorced made her distrust men and she often talked about how men are not to be trusted. This Story Field works behind the scenes, preventing you from finding a partner who can be trusted.

Limiting Story Fields create Set Points —Psychic Fences that do not let you go beyond the parameters of the old story.

• You may call yourself an introvert or shy without realizing that you are limited by a story of distrust to “outsiders.”
• Or you may not trust men and feel that it is perfectly justifiable given the men you know. But has it occur to you that the men you notice or attract have the same MO because you are trapped within the Set Point of your mom’s story?

Prohibitive Story Fields

Other Story Fields are even more damaging: they are fear-based defensive views of the world or judgments, punishment or prohibitions imposed on you at an early age or under duress.

These Story Fields have intense emotionally-charged Psychic Fences that detonate any time you try to overstep their boundaries, triggering massive stress, even terror. They fence you in, holding you prisoner of the past. I call these Prohibitive Story Fields

Examples of a Prohibitive Story Field:

• The parents do not educate the girls in the family because in their time women were meant to marry and they see it as a waste of money.Even in the past, this was unjust; but now it is simply obsolete and a violation of the girls’ human rights. Now you know better and paid for your own education, but you don’t seem to get a good paying job. This Story Field is still operating undercover, sabotaging your professional progress.

• You family and community insist that art does not “bring home the bacon” and your parents do not allow you to choose it as a profession. Every time you are creating, they start their campaign about how it is a hobby, not real service or work. They make you feel bad about yourself and they implant the belief that art has no value other than to make things pretty.Now you struggle with a soul-eating job during the day and do your art at night and during the week-end, as a hobby. You dream of earning a living from your art, but those are pipe dreams, are they not? Your soul is waging war against that learned Prohibitive Story Field that does not let you see your possibilities.

So here they are: two thieves from the past that steal your present.

Any Story Field that limits your potential, diminishes your self-perception and prohibits your possibilities is a Tiny Story. Like a tiny room, it imprisons you in the past while it steals your present.

How to Break Free!

There are two tools that help you break free from that Tiny Room.

• Your delight is a Personal Compass. It directs you towards the things that make you happy, which are the same things you came here to give.
• Your creativity is to your blossoming as the Imaginal Cells are to the Caterpillar; the means to transform into your potential, to grow wings from within and become your Butterfly Self.

In the next several articles we will be exploring the power of delight and creativity to change your Tiny Story.

Meanwhile, get my manifesto!

Actionable Tip:

Select two Set Points that you now recognize. These are like fences you keep bumping against when you try to go for what you want. Example: You try to raise your income and the minute you make more money, you get an expense for the exact surplus. This has been happening for years. Now see it as a limiting Story Field. Explore what could be the 5Ws: who (You and who else?), what (situation, context), where (area of life, expectation), when (cause and effect) and why (belief) of this Story Field.

Found out something amazing when you did this? Share in the comments.

Next: How your Tiny Story scares away your happiness

Unearth the nasty underground fiend that scares away your happiness

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