The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Last week, someone close to me told me they were disappointed in something I had done.

If you know anything about textbook Type A, Enneagram 1, parentified-eldest-daughter energy (hi, it's me), you know that "disappointed" might be the most devastating word in the English language — especially coming from someone whose opinion I trust deeply. I felt it land in my chest. My face got hot. I wanted to explain myself, defend myself, maybe even find a way to make it their fault. My old reflexes were all firing at once.

But one of the most liberating things I've learned in years of therapy and self-work is this: I always have a choice.

I know my go-to moves — defending, lashing out, blaming — and I know they only ever make things worse. So this time, I paused. And in that pause, I found something more useful than a defense: a decision. 

I get to choose what this means about me

When someone you trust says something hurtful, it doesn't stay contained to that one moment. It has a way of spiraling — do the other people in my life feel this way too? Have I been fooling everyone? That voice can get loud fast.

So I had a choice to make. Would I let this become proof that I'm a walking, talking disappointment? Or would I let it just be what it was — one person's honest feeling about one moment?

I chose the second one. Not because it didn't sting (it did, and honestly still does a little), but because their disappointment isn't an objective measure of my worth. It's an opinion, held by someone who loves me, about something I did — not a verdict on who I am. I can hold both truths at once: I can take the feedback seriously and refuse to let it become my identity.

The same choice shows up in your finances

You get to choose what meaning you assign to your financial life too — including the daily habits you might not feel great about.

Say you dread opening the mail because you're worried about what bill might be sitting in that stack. You have two options. You could decide this makes you a procrastinator, and quietly reinforce that story every time you toss the envelope aside unopened. Or you could offer yourself some grace: avoiding overwhelming mail is a genuinely common survival response, not a character flaw. It's okay to not love how you're currently handling something — while still refusing to make it mean something ugly about who you are.

The same goes for living paycheck to paycheck. You could decide this means you'll always be broke. Or you could recognize the truth: you're under real financial pressure right now, and that pressure is not evidence that you're a failure. Paycheck to paycheck is a pattern you're in — not a life sentence, and not your identity.

"Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right." — Henry Ford

A small, authentic shift

I want to be clear about what this isn't. This isn't toxic positivity. It isn't pretending everything's fine, and it isn't gaslighting yourself into believing something untrue just to get through the day. I would never ask you to do that to yourself.

What I am saying is this: The stories we tell ourselves about our lives matter. A lot. They're the foundation everything else gets built on, including what we believe we deserve and what we think is possible for us. Shift the story, even slightly, and you create room for something to actually change. Not instantly. Not perfectly. But genuinely.

If you're tired of the story you've been telling yourself — about your worth, your money, or anything in between — try telling a different, truer one. Then notice what shifts.