The stories we cling onto

Maria Arpa

Wednesday Whisper

29 April 2020 Modified :5 years ago

This week

The stories we cling onto

Plus…

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness 

and

Unlocking our position

One of the unfortunate habits we have developed in mainstream society is choosing stories that support our position to the detriment of all others. In a previous blog I talked about the stories we tell ourselves, now I’m focussing on the stories we are exposed to and how we choose which ones to cling onto.

In a world where we can find ourselves exposed to thousands of messages a day, becoming aware and conscious, and understanding we have choice in what we believe has never been more important.

Take any topic – climate change, CV, flat earth, diagnosis of other people….. any topic you like. One of the things we like to do is make sense of it. We may examine many differing views and eventually settle on a view or position in relation to the topic that gives us the most comfort.

This is where the problem can arise. From that point on we choose to discount any other view and actively seek people and opinions that prop up our chosen point of view. Some people endlessly search the internet looking for anything that bolsters their position, ignoring or denying any other point of view on the subject. Or worse. Actively seeking people whose view is different and attacking them.

In over 20 years of doing this work, I have found even the most broadminded of people will have one or two places in which this is true. I have seen it in myself.

One gigantic step we can take is to truly notice the places in our lives that we do this and work to allow other views to co-exist.

Without this we create the tyranny of majority rule which is fine if you’re in the majority. But when you find yourself in a minority of 1, say, in a family system that has decided you are the trouble maker or crazy maker, you can see how your place in the family can be reduced to submit or be exiled.

Think about that at a local, regional or global level.