The Memories We Rehearse Are The Ones We Live With ~ By Seth Godin

The Memories We Rehearse Are The Ones We Live With ~ By Seth Godin

 

Vintage typewriter old rusty warm yellow filter - What's your story

Happy Saturday you guys!

I had to share this with you. It is short, succinct and says exactly what I would say if I were as smart as Seth. Except I would have inserted a knock-knock joke, so there’s that. This is a pesky problem we all share, our running internal narratives. I am forever trying to re-write mine. To the point where I’m out of erasers and white-out.

Let’s see what Seth has to add to the discussion.

Love you Seth Godin!
Carry on,
xox


“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” – Jonathan Borroughs

The memories we rehearse are the ones we live with.

A million things happened to you today. The second bite of your lunch. The red light on the third block of your commute…

Tomorrow, you’ll remember almost none of them.

And the concept that you’d remember something that happened to you when you were twelve is ludicrous.

What actually happened was this: After it (whatever that thing you remember) happened, you started telling yourself a story about that event. You began to develop a narrative about this turning point, about the relationship with your dad or with school or with cars.

Lots of people have had similar experiences, but none of them are telling themselves quite the same story about it as you are.

Over time, the story is rehearsed. Over time, the story becomes completely different from what a videotape would show us, but it doesn’t matter, because the rehearsed story is far more vivid than the video ever could be.

And so the story becomes our memory, the story gets rehearsed ever more, and the story becomes the thing we tell ourselves the next time we need to make a choice.

If your story isn’t helping you, work to rehearse a new story instead. Because it’s our narrative that determines who we will become.

~ by Seth Godin

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2 Comments
  • angelahite1 says:

    This very idea just came up in my writing group, Janet. About the interpretive grooves we get in and stay there. My maternal grandmother died traumatically in front of me when I was age 9. That, I realized in the class, was the only story I ever told of my grandmother, and pretty much all I remember of her, even though I remember loving her intensely! The trauma was so huge, it took up the entire “grandmother” bandwidth in my memory. So now I am deliberately collecting stories about her from my mother. Not quite the same as a direct memory, but still worthy! Xoxo. Thank you for the Seth share!

    • jbertolus says:

      Isn’t it crazy how tenacious those childhood narratives are? I love the thought of rewriting your grandmothers, I betcha they’ll be a great healing that comes with it.
      Thanks so much for sharing your story, Angie!
      xoxJanet

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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