how this one habit is ruining your life

I just got out of a journaling session for two hours on this very topic, and I'm so excited to share it with you because I believe it has the power to change your emotions, your feelings, your actions, all by getting to the root of what's driving them. We're talking about something today called your core stories. If you just take that word story, isn't it crazy that for thousands of years, humanity's history was passed down through stories? Not written language, but through oral traditions. Isn't it crazy that if you think of a Pixar movie, even though you can't remember exactly what happened, the story was so well told that you can probably be like, oh yeah, that's the one where he does this and they do this. You know the gist of it because it sticks with you. Well, what's crazy is how your mind and how you operate through life is exactly the same way. You have stories about memories of your past. You have stories about them breaking up with you or falling in love. You have stories about, I'm too good for this. I'm not good enough. No one will love me. I have a wound I'm trying to heal. And pretty much everything in coaching and therapy and self-improvement and manifestation in books, in journaling, the reason you're doing any of that boiled down to the core level is what? To change your story. And once you do this, it gets really fun because guess what changes your emotions, your beliefs, your habits, your routines, and your self image. Our last video, we talked about identity, which is one layer down. I don't want to get too technical here. I want to keep this video really conversational between me and you here, kind of a different format. So let me know if you like it in the comments. But one level before that is your stories. These are what's actually influencing your identity and we're going to talk about how to build them, break them, what they are in this video. So let me tell you a brief story about stories. I know this will really sink in after for you. It's from the Untethered Soul, fantastic book, which at Michael Singer, the author tells a story about a woman who gets stabbed with a thorn right in her arm. And this thorns pretty deep. It's really big too. So it's there, it's painful and she's looking at it and she's like, oh man, this thing hurts. I'm not going to touch it because it'll hurt more. And slowly her life starts conforming to the thorn in her arm. She used to be a dancer. She can't dance anymore because when she moves her arm, it's too painful. She used to wear all these dresses. She used to love fashion, but now she has to cut the sleeve off one because if it touches the thorn, it's too painful. She even sleeps on her left side, right? Her bed, she can't roll over because it's too painful. And so her whole life has constructed and conformed around this thorn in her arm. Instead of taking it out, she's living with the pain, carrying it around and changing her whole environment to conform. In her mind, she's kept herself safe from the pain, but you and I looking from the outside in can see, dude, just take the thorn out of your arm and you can have such an easier life. Your life would be less painful. It might hurt in the moment, but dang, when you remove that, how free are you going to be? That is the exact same thing that you have, that I have. We all have as humans in this human experience. That thorn is a metaphor for your core stories. And what's really crazy is I find that people in the work I do, you know, people run on three, four, maybe five core stories. And these can happen from your childhood, how your parents were there or weren't there. These can happen as past relationships. These can happen as mentors or teachers or coaches who maybe didn't treat you a certain way or did. And these are influencing all your beliefs, all your behaviors, all your habits. And unless you get to the root of them, it's going to be like that thorn. You're going to construct your whole life as a protection mechanism to avoid pain. Because if you know anything about human beings, we have two needs, pain and pleasure. These are the drivers. And there's more, but for simplicity's sake, let's stay here. You work much harder not to lose something than you do to gain something. Put another way, your life is designed to keep you out of danger, not necessarily just go after pleasure. When I was 20 years old and I was getting into the world of self-improvement, and if you know the story, I moved into my mom's basement post-college because student loans aren't free. You have to pay those back. They're not just IOUs, right? And so I moved in there and I had all these ideas about what I wanted to do online and YouTube. And I started posting videos, but then there was something some guru or coach said on stage once. He's like, if you're 20 years old and giving life advice, no one wants to take advice from you. Do something else. And I remember that one phrase. It seems innocent. It seems just like a rant, like maybe you've had something you heard in passing or one teacher told you and it really sticks with you. And when I trace back to most of my insecurities in my 20s about business and content and YouTube, it came down to that. Like, oh man, well, I want to talk about inspirational videos and help people and how I was able to change my life with some of these concepts, but yeah, no one wants to take life advice from a 20 year old, right? And that held me back for the longest time. Or maybe you've had the belief. It's very common. Like, well, I would go for X, but I'm too young. I'm too young to do that. You know what's so funny? Like, so I had to work through that process through it and realize it was bullshit. And once I finally released it and let go, it was like weight was lifted from me and I could finally post content and videos and I was off baby. It was, it happened really fast. But what's so funny about that belief? That's one of them. I'm too young. Or maybe it's the inverse. I'm too old. I would do that. But dude, I'm 45 now and you know, I'm not a young 20 year old anymore. I can't do that. You know what's so funny about that belief? It's completely arbitrary. What is too young? What is too old? I can see stories, headlines online about a woman in her nineties running a marathon in Hawaii and crushing it. I can find people who are in their twenties completely demolishing it online with business and their youth actually attracts people because it's fresh. It's new. We want to follow people like us. So what is I'm too young? What is I'm too old? That is nothing but a story you're just telling yourself to keep you in this little safety net to avoid the pain because if you put yourself out there, yeah, people aren't going to agree with you. People aren't always going to like you. People might say mean things. So these stories are your thorn protection mechanism in your life keeping you safe. Some other common ones I wrote down that you might relate to. Write these down. You want to go deeper on them so you can reframe them. Again, I'll get to that in a minute. Everyone leaves me. Maybe as a kid you had parents that split up and maybe you had step parents rotating in and out of your life and that was really hard because you'd get attached to them and then they'd leave. Maybe you had friends move away. You get attached to them and then they leave. If you never resolve that, guess what's going to happen in a relationship? If you know anything about attachment styles, the anxious attachment normally stems from a fear of abandonment. A fear of someone leaving after you gave so much and you invested so much and you had a good thing and then it gets ripped away from you and you're left with nothing at ground zero again. Another one might be my life is harder than everyone else's. That's a story I see plaguing a lot of people. And look, it's true. You might have had unique challenges. Life is hard. I mean, that's the truth we can all get behind. Shit doesn't always go our way. Shit gets real sometimes. We're tested constantly. Death is a real thing. Heartbreak is real. All this pain in the world. But ultimately that story is going to do nothing for you. It's not going to serve you. And that's hopefully the point of this video you're seeing is like a lot of these strategies and stories that you've told yourself up until this point, it's not wrong, it's not bad, but it's not going to get you to the level of what you want, which is the 2.0 version of you. And to really evolve, you have to drop and let go to make room for new things, new people, new opportunities into your life. I need to prove myself. I'm not worthy of love. So I need to show people that I deserve it by my actions. It's like more of a worthiness validation story. I'm not that kind of person. You know, I would, I'm just not that kind of person. You want to watch out for these stories being a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if they're negative, they will be. And so in my 20s, when I was telling you about the I'm too young story, another one I had that came up once I started getting some traction here. And I think I had around 200, 300,000 people that were watching. I started to develop this unexpected story that I never would have thought of when you're getting started posting videos because you think like, oh man, if I have 300,000 people, I'm going to just keep going. I'm going to be cranking. I'm going to be more motivated to film. And I started having this one pop up that no matter what I said, I'm losing people. Like they're going to click off. I got to hold their attention. And what's even worse on YouTube is that they fill you and bombard you with graphs, literal retention graphs. And so you deep dive in your analytics and you're like, where did I lose people? What did I say that made them click off? And although that can be good data to learn how to speak more charismatically or with more conviction or whatever people are seeking out, it can also really work against you and get in your head and mess you up because you're always worried about keeping people and oh, they're going to click off here. And so that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because if you go into a video with that energy, I'm losing people. You know, they're going to click off. Well, then people can sense that subconsciously. Your cadence increases, more words per minute, which conveys that you're like in a rush somehow. And I think that people more and more, they want the realness and the authenticity. And so not to berate that point there, that was a story that I had to work through and shut off and reframe. And once I did it, I was able to have so much more fun with videos. It was no longer this like me versus them frame that a lot of people approach content with. We're like, here's what I want to say and I'm trying to get them to listen. It's much more of a collaborative you and I conversation. Same thing if you approach and talk to a group of people, or maybe you're in the dating scene and you're on a date. Well, if you go in with the intention that I have to be the most interesting person in the world, otherwise they're going to leave, they're going to get disinterested, they're going to get bored. Like you're an entertainer and you're trying to like manipulate and entertain them instead of being like the authentic version of you, which I'm aware can be easier said than done. So in a way you're trying to manipulate the conversation and get something, get their approval, get their validation, get their attention, get their approval that you're worthy of their attention. And so once you're able to drop that frame, if you know anything about human dynamics, becoming interesting is not as good as becoming interested. And I have so many stories about people who I've hung around, who all they did was just ask people questions. And they were so interested in other people that they became interesting to them. And I'm not saying there's never a time to talk about yourself or, you know, you should never say anything about yourself and just ask questions about other people. I'm talking about letting go of that need to entertain. And that's something that I did that served me very well. And if you're relating to that story at all, if you adopt that, I know it'll serve you too. Now here's what you've been waiting for. Well, Clark, how do I find my core stories? Good news is this is very simple. It's pretty easy. You're going to listen for three things. I can't because. I want you after this video to pause, write that down and fill in the blank. And what you're going to realize is that so many of those blanks are filled in with the core stories that I just told you. Too old. I'm too young. I failed in the past. My life is harder than everyone else's. I'm too overweight. I'm too out of shape. I'm too vulnerable. I'm too much of a mess. I'm too exhausted from the time I failed. Don't judge yourself here. Please do not judge yourself here. You're on your own team, but allow yourself to fill in the blank because unless you're aware we're not going to be able to jump in and fix it. You and I. Does that make sense? Number two. I always blank. I always mess it up. I mess it up. There's something I do. I don't know what it is. Something good comes in my life. Someone good and I push them away. That's just what I do. And perhaps the most powerful one of these three, I am blank. I am blank. A sub point on identity here, whatever you identify with, you're going to get. And if you don't believe me on this, scroll through your Facebook feed or Instagram feed or any social media platform and what you'll find when people disagree with something that challenges their story and their version of themselves that I am, they always have to let you know. Like perfect example, as a Christian, this offends me. As a Democrat, I am offended. As a Republican, as a conservative, as a mother of five, as a millionaire, as someone who grew up, didn't grow up with the silver spoon in their mouth, whatever it is, they have to tell you their story before they can say what they want to say. So it's almost impossible for your mind to not identify with things, but what you have to understand is that you're capable of changing that identification, of changing that story. And once you do, because this is such a powerful motivator, like literally your life conforms to the stories you tell yourself and your identity. So once you start changing your stories and your identity and your self-image, you raise your standards and you're always going to take actions to meet your standards and enforce that self-image. Nobody wants to be seen as a hypocrite or going against themselves. We have to have this consistency bias of like, we did this in the past, we're this kind of person, so of course we're going to do this. So now you're probably wondering, well, how do I heal these? If stories play such an influence in my life, how do I find them? You gave me the three questions, how do I heal them? There's so many different modalities that you can dive into and work with. But I think one of the most important ones, and this is going to sound really simple, but I don't want this to just be something that you hear about, you're at the end of this video and then you never do it. Take action on this. I want you to really take out a journal and I want you to go to a blank page. You're going to write down, I can't because, I always blank, I am blank. I want you to come up with five to 10 points for each of those. Somewhere in there is your core story. Remember, awareness is always the first step. Once we're aware of where that thing is coming from, which is impossible for me to tell you where it's coming from in a video. Once you dig, once you find it, you might be surprised where it's coming from. Again, some of these run deep, childhood, parenting, relationships, but not always. They can be as recent as your previous relationship or maybe the job you had where the boss was an asshole and made you feel a certain way that you now internalize and project out into the world and this is self-fulfilling prophecy. Then once you're there, you can reframe it, you can play with it, you can work with it, you can let go of it. One of the most powerful ways I've found to do that is a method called inner shadow shifting. Core stories run so deep, identity runs so deep. Once you identify the root, you're able to let go of it through someone who's trained to do this with you. That's why in my Metamorphic program in week three, we literally spend the entire week on these core stories, where they're coming from, giving you exercises and tools to do it on your own. Also, we got this badass coach who I hired full-time, comes in, works one-on-one with every single client. You get two of these inner shadow shifting sessions that we kind of pioneered and tweaked it over hundreds and hundreds of people, found what works best, how to do this in two sessions. You're able to reframe, release, and let go of these core stories. You can make huge progress on your own. I have as well, just doing that exercise that I gave you in this video. Remember that awareness is always the most powerful step. If you want more info on that in our program, I'll link down below where you can talk to one of our coaches for free. Now that you know about core stories, I'll link up here the next video for you to watch. This one's all about letting go. So, this is a technique that once you have the story, you can use to help let go of it. All right. Thanks so much for watching. Until next time, stop settling, start living. See ya.