What story are you telling yourself?

Stories are our driving force. They help us, uplift us, destroy us and lead us down terrible paths depending on the story. What we fail to realize however is that we control these stories, I have failed in this respect as well. My story has changed many times over the past months and it seems it’s about to change once more. I recently convinced myself that the suit and tie life was what I should be doing in life. Wake up, dress up, go to the office, dedicate myself to the job, go above and beyond then repeat. I thought this was the best way to solve the one problem that I’ve wanted to fix for probably a decade now. MONEY. All my life I’ve seen what the lack of money has done to the people I care about, I’ve seen what it’s like to do back breaking work for a week just so you can spend the meager salary on expenses as you receive it. No hope for improvement is what it is. No hope for a better life. When you grow up in a house smaller than classrooms you’ve been in and you often sit in class thinking about that FACT money becomes an obsession. For a long time my story was you don’t have money so never stop obsessing about it until you have it. This story made my life hell, I was a depressed wreck a lot of the time. All because I didn’t have money. Recently I changed that story and learned that maybe there is happiness to be had without money, maybe I don’t need to be chasing this thing that always escapes my grasp as soon as I get it. This made me content for a while but my original story was always there deep down waiting to erupt. Just waiting for that thing that would trigger the avalanche. I find it funny that the thing was a little book. I read a book and before I even reached the second chapter everything came back to me. In this second phase of my obsession with money I no longer consider myself a demon for wanting to acquire riches and I no longer see temporary defeat as the end of the world. This is great, yeah! I’m a little less fucked up, good for me. My issue isn’t with the return of my obsession however like I said I’m done demonizing myself for it, my issue is with the way I convinced myself of how I should acquire it. A ten year plan that would have sent me off on a path I would most definitely regret for the rest of my life. I can’t be an office guy but I told myself a story that made me believe it was the only way. This story was going to be my destruction. How dramatic, a life where you make a living through working. The thing is it’s the type of work. This work is completely against my nature, I can never be happy doing it but my story told me otherwise. We are all storytellers. We tell stories of truth and lies. To others and more importantly to ourselves. All I want you to do is look at the story you’re telling yourself. Actually take some time to analyze it, pick it a part, find out if it’s actually the write story for you. If you don’t you will be giving your happiness away for absolutely nothing like I think I almost did. And if you find out that it’s not for you then change it. It might take a long time or it might not but you owe it to yourself to do something with the knowledge. To all of you who have already found the right story that’s fucking amazing, I’m happy for you. But for the rest of us, for the rest of us just never give up. I haven’t learnt a lot in  my life but one thing I have picked up is that persistence will always beat the shit out of life and all it’s shitty challenges.