What does it mean to be a hero? The main character in a story, who drives the plot, or around whom plot is structured.
We have a dictionary definition of what it means to be a hero but I would like to reframe that. I believe the hero is the person who is the author of his own story and reframes his wounds into a source of power. At one point or another in our lives we have all been emotionally hurt. I am not here to judge who had it better or worse. What I am here to say is that by looking at the traumas you experienced you can find both strength from within yourself and compassion for others who have either experienced the same situation, or who are also victims.
Reframe Your Stories
I will try to make this point over and over about how to accomplish the reframing of your stories and thus the roles you play in them. I believe this will be by far my most important contribution to the community.
Whether the stories are a byproduct of your own creation or someone else created them for you, you confuse them with reality. This is where suffering begins. Buddha said attachment is the root of all suffering.
I believe if someone were to ever conduct a survey on what drives people into the community I believe it would be the haunting by the great love they once had and how they are unable to duplicate that. They are scared they will forever be alone, that they got “lucky” that one time. That’s just a guess based on talking to 100’s of students. These demons manifest as voices in your head and no matter how hard you try you can’t silence them. They just won’t leave you alone.
The Old Riddle
There is an old riddle that says what eats and eats and eats until there is nothing left to eat? The answer is a fire. The problem with our stories, these roles, and the demons is we are more than willing to feed them. There is ALWAYS more to eat. There are plenty of people in their 50’s who wish they had been a better parent, people in their 20’s who want to do high school over again, and the ghost of the love that we lost and will not stop haunting us. We are our own worst enemy. We sit there and think and think and beat ourselves up. We are way too hard on ourselves. One think I teach in the inner game portion of my bootcamps is the power of forgiveness; the power of forgiving yourself and others.
All these stories are logical rationalizations for why we act the way we do. It’s not my fault… It was my parents, I didn’t go to a good enough school, I was born too short, not pretty enough, not rich enough, etc. Now here comes the mindfuck #1. As long as we cling to these stories and believe they are real all we are doing is feeding the ghosts and we are not really healing. At first glance this might appear counterintuitive… It might seem like we are healing because we are dealing with our emotions but we are not. We are stuck in repetitive cycle of self abuse that does not help us change anything.
Whatever view you have of your role in your story you will embody and people will respond to you in kind. Especially women who are much better at reading non-verbal information then men.
