Change your narrative
Change your life !
What we tell ourselves – whether true or not – influences our lives . Dr Jonathan Moch explains his view on how a changed narrative can also change our inner fundamentals .
Walk into any decent bookshop , head over to the psychology section , bend a bit , tilt your head and spot the self-help range . For sure , you will focus on a couple of books triumphantly proclaiming : Change Your Thinking , Change Your Life ! ( At the top of the page is usually a boast : “ New York Times bestseller ” or “ 1 million copies sold ”. You get the point .) But how many purchasers read the book from cover to cover ( 10 %?), actually change their thinking ( 1 %?) or change their lives ( 0.1 %?)? What is going on ? Why are so many people stuck in negative thinking ? What are the resistance factors ? I think I stumbled on the fundamental solution .
Recently , I watched a short video clip where a well-known South African business leader discussed some of the reasons behind his company ’ s success . However , around midway , he pivoted his presentation and focussed on dilemmas facing current South Africa and expressed eloquently a profound clue to my cognitive dissonance about resistance to changing sabotaging thinking .
He argued the following idea : Narratives drive fundamentals . Not the opposite i . e ., fundamentals driving narratives . In other words , the stories we tell ourselves , the words we hear and share that drive the quality of our lives , health , relationships and dreams .
“ Declinism ” and an opinion that “ everything is getting worse ” are common themes threading through depressives and “ losers ”. So too , nostalgia for the good old times , core beliefs of learned helplessness and meaningless .
However , listen to the stories of real winners and you will notice a healthy dose of realism and a creative , innovative mindset to
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