I'd like you to close your eyes and take us back to the very beginning.
Although you can't remember it,
Imagine yourself there and think back to the day that you were born.
Where were you born?
Who was there?
What was your family like at that time?
What was the world like at that time?
What were the stories being written in history the day that you came into this world?
I'd like you to imagine yourself,
The way you came into this world,
The way you were raised,
Your first days,
Your first weeks,
Your first months up until you spoke your first words.
What were the stories that your family told you?
What was the language they used?
How did those stories and the language they used begin to shape your young brain in the way it began to develop?
Imagine yourself taking your first steps.
Did you see the world as a playground or a battleground?
Did you want to run through it or walk cautiously?
How did your family describe the wild world to you?
What were the stories people told you?
Who did you look like?
Who did you sound like?
Who did you remind them of?
What were or weren't you like to them?
How did they interpret your behaviors?
What labels did they give you and what labels would you later give yourself as a result?
How did these things start shaping the way you saw yourself in the world?
Imagine yourself as you go to your first day of school.
What was it like?
What was the new environment like?
What were the new influences from other people?
And how did they too begin to shape who you were and who you thought yourself capable of becoming?
You start making some of your first friends.
What were the conversations?
The fights,
The struggles?
How did you feel?
Who did you connect with?
What were some of the first memories that started to form in your mind?
Think back to some of those earliest memories and think about why they stuck with you.
Now imagine yourself beginning to get older.
In primary school,
Middle school,
Some of your closest relationships develop.
You start experiencing trust,
Betrayal,
Connection,
Love,
Jealousy.
Who were the people closest to you?
What brought you together with them?
What role did you play in those relationships and why?
Think of your friends.
Perhaps think of your enemies at that time.
Think about your family.
What were the labels that you were given by other people?
What were the liberties that you gave to yourself?
What were the things you liked doing?
The things you hated doing?
The things that scared you?
Or the things that empowered you?
Why?
Think of yourself as an adolescent in high school.
Some of your earliest experiences with a crush,
Love,
Dancing,
Chemistry,
Confusion.
Imagine who you were,
Who you wanted to be,
And what your identity was.
On the empty parts of the canvas of your identity,
What did you fill in the blanks with?
Where did you get those ideas from?
Was your identity based in yourself?
Or did you form it through the eyes and the opinions of other people?
Now,
Think of yourself as you blossom into an adult.
Did you go to school?
Did you move away?
Who did you trust?
Who did you confide in?
How did you begin to find yourself?
Or how did you realize that you didn't know how to?
As you became an adult,
What were the stories of your youth that stuck with you?
What were the stories that empowered you?
What were the stories that limited you?
What were the stories that were truly your own?
And what were the stories that you had simply been told by and adopted from other people?
How did you begin to see yourself?
Imagine yourself.
Imagine yourself.
How did that affect your relationships with other people?
And the way that you walked through the world?
Think of some of the most defining memories,
Experiences,
Events,
And relationships that have brought you to where you are today.
What stands out about them?
Were they successes,
Failures?
Were you alone or with other people?
Did any of your stories that you were telling yourself at that time in your life play a role in limiting or empowering you in those moments?
Why some of these dominant narratives,
These stories that stand out most,
That become patterns in the way we think,
Talk,
And act?
Where do they come from?
Who do they belong to?
How have they shaped the person that you are today?
Now open your eyes and take a few minutes to write down as much as you can remember.
How may you
