The Stories We Tell Ourselves | How Inner Narratives Shape Our Choices

We don’t always live by facts — we live by the stories we repeat.

In this episode of How Did We Get Here?, we explore the quiet inner narratives that shape our decisions, limit our possibilities, and often go unquestioned for years. Not every thought deserves a story — but noticing the ones we tell ourselves can change everything.

A calm, reflective episode about awareness, perspective, and the power of simply paying attention.

💬 Share your thoughts on Instagram: @thehowpodcast61

🎙 How Did We Get Here? — a podcast about the choices, cracks & crossroads that shape us.

Transcript

Most of us think we make decisions based on facts, but we actually use our stories.
 Quiet ones.
 Repeated ones.
 Stories we didn’t write, but accepted.

They don’t announce themselves and they don’t demand attention.
 They just sit there in the background shaping what we try, what we avoid, and what we quietly decide is not for us.

And the strange part, most of us never stopped to ask where those stories came from.
 Most of us never stopped to ask where those stories came from.

Nobody starts life with a finished script.

These stories are built over time, often for moments, it seems small when they happened.
 A label given too early, a failure that landed harder than expected, or something said once, but remembered forever.

Sometimes they come from family, sometimes from culture, and sometimes from a single moment where the conclusion felt safer than the uncertainty.

And once the story feels familiar, and what the story feels familiar, it starts to feel true even when it isn’t.

Here’s where things get interesting.

Most of these stories don’t sound dramatic.
 They sound practical.

I’m just not good with money.
 I don’t do confrontation.
 That’s for other people.
 It’s too late now.

They sound like facts, but they’re not facts.
 They’re conclusions.

And once the conclusion is accepted, it quietly becomes a rule.
 Your conclusion is accepted, it quietly becomes a rule without ever being voted on.

The real cost is a louder obvious.
 Shows up in what people stop reaching.
 What they tolerate longer than they should and what they talk themselves out of before they ever begin.

Opportunities don’t always disappear.
 Sometimes they’re never recognized because the story filters about first.

Not because someone can’t, but because they’ve already decided they don’t.

And here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about very often.

We don’t hold on to these stories because we’re weak.
 We hold on to them because at one point they helped.

And some stories kept us safe.
 Some protected us from disappointment.
 And some gave us an explanation when uncertainty felt unbearable.

A story can turn chaos into something predictable, and predictable feels safer than the unknown.

Even a limiting story can feel like solid ground, because at least we know where it ends.

Letting go of a story doesn’t just mean changing a belief.
 It means stepping into uncertainty.

And for a lot of people, certainty, even the wrong kind, feels better than standing in the unanswered.

So these stories stay, not because they’re true true, but because they’re familiar.

This isn’t about fixing anything.
 It’s not about re-white, yeah, re-whiting, re-writing your own life story overnight.

It’s about noticing.
 Sing.

Noticing when a sentence starts with, I always, I never, or that’s who I am.

And asking one simple question.
 Who taught me that?

Not to argue with it, not to replace it, just to recognize the story is being told,
 and that awareness along creates space.

Most of us spend years trying to fix our circumstances.

We change jobs.
 Change relationships.
 We even change routines.

This is your torus and then you don’t do that.

But very rarely do we stop to listen to the quiet voice underneath it all and one that’s been there rating the whole time.

The one that decides what feels possible, what feels off limits, and what feels just the way things are.

And maybe the most important moment is it when the voice is challenged,
 but when it’s finally noticed.

So here’s the question I leave you with.

If a story has been guiding your choices for years, without ever being examined,
 what else might be true if you’ve paused long enough to really listen?

Paul is the long enough to really listen.

This is How Did We Get Here?, a podcast about the choices, cracks and crossroads, the shapers.

I’m Jim Richmond, and I’m still here for a reason.
 Maybe you are too.