How to Tell Yourself a Different Story

Recently we were at a conference and Janet ran into a friend who told her, “I’m so nervous about wearing something that looks good I brought 3 suitcases of clothes.” Now this young woman is gorgeous and would look beautiful in anything she wears. But that’s apparently not the story she tells herself.

The negative story she tells herself is different than the positive story everyone else tells themselves about her. Everyone else thinks, “She always has it so all-together! I wish I could be like her.” But she’s filled with self-doubt and second guessing.

How often do we tell ourselves negative stories that no one else does? On the one hand, it’s good to be our own worst critic. It drives us toward excellence and doing our best work. We’re the only ones who hear the passion our heart is silently screaming to release. We know when we nailed it. But far too often we’re our own worst nay-sayer instead.

We need to hear the story the Holy Spirit says about us. We need to hear the song God sings about the identity he uniquely created us to inhabit. And we need to keep hearing it. We need it on a loop playing over and over again in our heads, because it’s so easy to dismiss and forget what we don’t agree with. It’s so much easier to agree with all the negative loops we hear playing over and over in our head.

The enemy constantly echoes our mistakes back to us. But we don’t need his help to be negative about ourselves. I can shoot down my identity all by myself, thank you very much. I’m a great shot. I hit my heart every time.

To be positive about negativity, it thinks it’s doing us a favor. It’s protecting us from risk. But by doing so it’s also protecting us from living. Life is a dangerous place, a painful place, a risky endeavor. But God is good; not necessarily protecting us from the pain, but being with us in the middle of it, and working his beauty in our lives out of it.

We empower what we agree with, and it’s time to start empowering God’s truth about us instead of all the lies, from whatever source. So here’s the most powerful way to start hearing God’s identity for your life. Are you ready?

Tell someone else God’s truth about them.

You know the truth I mean. Tell them the positive qualities you see that God’s put in them. It’s so obvious to you, how can they not know? But honestly, so often they don’t. Let’s start telling others the positive qualities in them that we take for granted. Because they honestly don’t know.

This is a principle in the Bible. God gives us what we give away, with increase. (See Matthew 7:2, Mark 4:24, Luke 6:38.)

• Do you need to be encouraged? Encourage others.
• Do you need a financial breakthrough? Up your giving.
• Are you lonely? Be a friend to others.

We constantly need to be telling our brothers and sisters God’s story about them, how we appreciate them, the truth about their identity. And pretty soon, we will find people encouraging us.

Let me conclude with a beautiful story of what church is supposed to be. I retell this story often on this blog—so apologies if you’ve heard it before—but it’s so good it bears repeating. There’s an African village where, when a woman gets pregnant, she and other women go into the wilderness away from the village and pray, until they discern the “song of child”. Then they return and teach the song to the rest of the village.

The village sings the person’s song to them at significant events in their life—their birth, their death, their wedding, after great achievements or victories within the tribe.

But there’s another time when the village sings the person their song—when they mess up (often in adolescence). They put the person in the middle of the tribe with the whole village around them, and they say, “You’re not acting like yourself. Let us remind you of who you are.” And they sing the person the song of their identity that their mother got for them before they were born.

That’s what church is supposed to be. A place where people tell us the truth about who we really are that we’ve forgotten. A place where we remind each other who we really are.

TODAY’S ACTION STEP: Tell someone else today about some godly quality you take for granted and appreciate about them. Does it surprise them? Did they know this about themselves, or do they tell themselves a different story? In the process, what different story did you hear about yourself? Tell us in the comments what happens!