The story you tell

It seems that everyone that is successful in business has a story. A story of rags to riches. A story of how they overcome something. A story of being someone that was thought would amount to nothing who became something. You hear them all the time. The drop out that became a billionaire. The dyslexic who now runs a multinational company. The single mother who lived out of her car and now is a multimillionaire living the life of her dreams.

Me…well I have had a pretty average life. I came from a normal working class family. Had an upbringing that was also boringly normal. No major dramas. So when it came to my business, I always thought I wasn’t successful…and wouldn’t be…because I didn’t have an exciting story to tell. I had linked having a story with being successful.

Then one day my relationship ended after years of mental and emotional abusive….domestic violence they called it. My whole life was turned around. Suddenly I was a single mum with an almost brand new baby. I had mountains of debt in my name because of the choices I had made during my relationship. And to top it off I had no job.

The scars from the abuse cut deep, I could still hear him in my head all day, everyday, screaming at me and telling me how useless and inadequate I was. Reminding me how ugly and obese I was. I noticed I walked around apologising to everyone for everything because I was so used to being blamed for everything. I felt like “me” was gone. Who was I now? What had I become?

The debt collectors would ring non-stop…sometimes ten times a day, seven days a week. I had no money, I couldn’t even afford to buy nappies or formula. I was worried I was going to loose the roof over our head because I had stopped paying the mortgage and then where would we go? Some days I would fall to a heap on the ground and just sob.

Life was spiraling out of control and I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Some days I felt like I was trying to swim to the surface for air and then a big hand would come and push me back down again. Not many people know this but I felt so bad about myself and the situation that I actually contemplated suicide. I felt so inadequate as a person, a woman, a mother that I thought my little one would be better off without me.

What I didn’t realise at the time was that in my longing to have some amazing story to tell, I had inadvertently created one.

What you focus on you bring about

And I let “my story” define me for a while. Whoa is me. Single mum. So hard done by. I joined single mum groups so we could all wallow in our own misery together and compare how our lives sucked. This was not the life I wanted for my daughter and me. There was no happiness here.

Then I started to do the work on me. Finding out who I was, what I wanted our life to look like, what I wanted to achieve in life for myself and my daughter. I visualised the life of my dreams. Where we would live. How we would feel. The life we would have. The success of my business.

I started telling a different story

Everything I told myself or anyone else was with intent for this life I had visualised. My actions changed to fit in with my new story. It felt like the grey clouds had lifted and the sun was shining again. The money started to come in and the debts slowly went away.

It’s been seventeen months since the end of my relationship and it feels like it was a whole lifetime ago. I have come so far from where I was to where I am today. The other night as I settled into bed, I shed a happy tear for just how right everything was. How I had manifested where we are today. How I have put us on the right path. We are in exactly the place where we need to be right now to achieve everything that I want for us. It’s such a beautiful place to be. And to think it all started just by changing the story I was telling myself.

What story are you telling yourself? How can you change your story and change your life?

Have fun,