The Secret of the Shadow by Debbie Ford

“everything is fine” prevented her from taking any risks that might involve her seeing that life is not always perfect or happy. Her story kept her trapped within a safe but limited reality. Although she lived in the illusion of happiness, she sacrificed being bold, adventurous, and outrageous, and this stopped her from ever examining her deepest desires.
    H e a r i n g t h e S o n g o f Y o u r S t o r y
    “How can we tell when we are in our stories?” “How can we hear them?” These were the questions everyone wanted answered. A sure way to find out whether we are living inside our stories is to examine the quality of our thoughts and the internal dialogue we engage in on a daily basis. Many people spend most of their lives being somewhere other than where they are in the present moment. When they are at work they are thinking about being at home. When they are at home they are thinking about going on vacation. When they are with their children at the park they are thinking about watching their favorite show on television. Their bodies are present, but their minds are somewhere else. I know that I spent the first thirty years of my life somewhere besides where I was. I lived for the fantasies in my mind, dreaming about what might make me feel better, always trying to give happier endings to the aspects of my life that were not at all happy. I spent at least twenty years dreaming about the man of my dreams and how when I met him I would finally reach utopia.
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    e x p l o r i n g t h e g r e at a n d m y s t e r i o u s s t o r y o f y o u Future gazing is a sure sign that we are deep inside our stories.
    When I wasn’t dreaming about the future, I spent my time thinking about the past: all that went wrong, all that should have turned out another way. I could spend a week reliving an argument I had with somebody in a grocery store over who was first in line. When you’re inside your story, the quality of your thoughts can range from fearful and morbid—like worrying about freak accidents or unlikely tragedies—to the trivial and the absurd, like obsessing about a button on your sweater or the neighbor’s dog peeing on your lawn.
    When we are in our stories, we never think a thought just once. We don’t think, “I would love to have a great relationship” and leave it at that. We think, “Oh, I hope he comes soon. I hope he doesn’t have an ex-wife. I hope he is kind and loving and will buy me a ring. I hope he doesn’t burp out loud or stink up the bathroom.”
    We might dream about lying on the beach in Hawaii, looking better than we’ve looked in ten years and having passionate, fulfilling sex. Then we think, “I hope he doesn’t hurt me. I hope he’s not like that last lying jackass.” And then we think about the last creep we had a relationship with, and off we go on a tangent about how badly we’ve been wronged and how much better we would be doing if we hadn’t ever gotten involved with that person. Inside our stories we rethink the same thoughts over and over—future, past, future, past, future, past, past, past. . . . It goes on and on and on. It’s tireless. When we live inside the smallness of our individual stories, it is often so painful that the only way our minds can deal with the pain is to daydream or dwell in the past.
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    T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w M e e t i n g Y o u r S h a d o w B o x All this internal dialogue goes on inside what I call the Shadow Box, the container that holds the ongoing, never-ending internal dialogue that lives in our minds. Imagine the loudest boom box that ever disturbed your peaceful time at the beach. Now put that inside your head. This will give you a sense of the disturbing noise of your Shadow Box. Your Shadow Box is filled with every thought you’ve ever suppressed—all your judgments, all your righteousness, all your unprocessed emotional wounds, and all your shadow beliefs. Your negative internal dialogue is like psy-chic