CHANGE YOUR STORY, CHANGE YOUR LIFE

here’s how it works & what it costs you

Photo of a dozing heron with head tucked away

​The following story has one purpose. To illustrate something for you so that you can find where this is operative in your life and being. So that you can feel inspired & empowered to change a story that keeps you down. Please be big and get out of your own way. You’re beautiful.

I used to struggle with insomnia. At age 25, it kicked in as a THING, as a debilitating oppressive miserable thing for me to reckon with. It came and went for years. So it was still a part of my reality after I went to the School for The Work of Byron Katie a couple of decades ago.

Except that next time insomnia struck, everything had changed in my perceptions. Everything had changed in how I met what life brought me. Byron Katie had taught me to question every story that didn’t make me feel good & peaceful & empowered & loving.

AND I was assiduously APPLYING what Katie had taught me, because at that point I’d gotten to some rock-bottom of (Enneagram Four-ish) suffering that I could no longer allow myself to hang out in.

I had so much story about insomnia. Here were some of the beliefs I was operating out of, WHETHER I ACTUALLY STATED THEM OR NOT, and some I stated A LOT:

• If I have even one bad night’s sleep, I will get stuck in a 2-4-week cycle of sleeplessness
• I am not okay if I’m lying awake
• It’s horrible if anyone wakes me up, and they are cruel and careless and don’t get it
• It’s horrible if any random event wakes me up, and it’s evidence of a cruel and careless Universe
• It’s an appropriate response to feel angry and miserable when I’m lying awake—who wouldn’t?
• I am not okay if I don’t get X hours of sleep per night
• I function very badly if I don’t sleep well
• I cannot get my needs met when I’m not sleeping well
• I am not fully responsible for how I behave when I’m sleep-deprived
• If I behave badly with other human beings when I’m exhausted & sleep-deprived, I’m a victim of insomnia and it’s not fair that my relationship with any other is being determined by this wretched condition
• Insomnia is a terrible affliction and I am terribly afflicted
• Insomnia makes people (me) crazy
• I will never get ahead in any realm of life and will forever be a loser because of the impact of insomnia on me
• Nothing works to fix this, and I’ve tried EVERYTHING (within my budget, which is limited, so I’m also a victim of that)
• I am not okay and life is decidedly against me

Let’s be clear. Some of the above statements may be true, or may be seen as true looking through certain lenses. This is why the second question of Byron Katie’s inquiry process is, Can you ABSOLUTELY know that it’s true? When we go to the absolute, we find that there are so many possible lenses to look through; we can no longer fully believe the one lens we’re looking through. That one lens may UNMISTAKABLY show us certain facts—but it also leaves out a whole bunch of other facts, some of which might point us to different conclusions. Or to fresh possibilities and curiosity. To something kinder and more empowering.

I did not question all of the above thoughts in formal inquiry. I did question some of them. I did notice the thoughts I was operating out of and I noticed that they weren’t telling me the whole absolute truth.

More important, this is what I did do. I decided that lying awake was something I could not control. If I could, I’d sleep well every single night. Since I couldn’t control it (or, since it wasn’t in my realm of agency), then it wasn’t my business. I got very curious, then, about what my business WAS while lying awake. What I discovered changed me profoundly. Changed my life. And cleared up my years-long history of insomnia.

If I were currently marketing a sleep program, I’d tell you a bunch of other things, like the rules for Lying Awake I developed. If you’re curious and think these could be relevant to you, check them out by following that link. You may find them super supportive.

Since I’m not giving a sleep program anytime soon as far as I know, what I most want to point you to here and now is the fact that I got into a different relationship with sleep because I STOPPED TELLING THE OLD STORY. It was a grand experiment. I stopped believing it and I stopped reviewing it and I stopped telling it.

The old story was demoralizing, defeating, deflating. It undid me. It kept me stuck. It kept me entrenched in victim mentality. Within the confines of that story, I saw no place to go to get any real relief or to create something different.

The new story was no story at all. I simply took in and accepted that until I was unconscious (asleep), then I was conscious. So perhaps all I needed to do in those moments was meet consciousness. That is, meet myself. Be with myself. Stay close to myself in this present moment. That’s it. That was my business. So, when lying awake …

• I stopped thinking about my problems and trying to fix them. (In fact, that was forbidden. I’d never gotten to good solutions that way anyway.)
• I stopped evaluating myself, my character, my worth, my growth trajectory—anything about myself or my life. (Strictly forbidden.)
• I stopped thinking (worrying) about tomorrow and how badly I’d function then and what I would or wouldn’t be able to do and what I’d fuck up or which more deserving sentient beings I might harm in my negative state. (Verboten! Let tomorrow take care of itself.)
• I stopped thinking I should be asleep. I got that from Byron Katie too. If I’m awake, I’m awake, so let me align with that reality. But not in order to do any of the things above (figure things out or fix them, evaluate, predict). And not to resist sleeplessness (I’m awake, and that’s that). Just to meet myself as consciousness here & now, because I’m conscious here & now.

In the absence of story, and with the idea of simply meeting myself as consciousness because I was conscious, I learned what is often referred to as mindfulness. Or, I taught myself how to meditate lying down, sometimes for hours. I just kept coming back to sensations in the body, fully dropping into the body (feeling the mattress and giving it my full weight), connecting to my five senses, and connecting especially to the sensation of breath, the felt sense of the breath. I hung out inside my own body, not in my head. If I felt emotions, I felt them in my body, and I did not analyze them or have thoughts about them or try to make them go away. I met them by sensing, with awareness, with breath.

I also dropped all story about what a sleep-deprived day needed to mean. This allowed me to come into an unprecedented level of self-care and of showing up just for this moment to learn (not predict, not fear, not worry about, not rail again, not resist in any way) what I was and wasn’t doing or achieving that day. This was the point in my journey when I started to come close to my guidance system, and follow all the flashes to call So-and-So, try this, ask for that, go ahead and do this, don’t do that, slow down, let go, do this at a lower standard than the default level, etc, etc. All of that came in IN THE MOMENT and required presence. Kind self-awareness.

You’re welcome to check out my guidelines for a sleep-deprived day right here.

Both during the night and during the day, I was practicing living in the power of now. I was discovering what not sleeping now meant NOW, instead of reaching for a heavy, tired, self-sabotaging story of horrors and then being stuck with how that story made me feel (and behave).

I was discovering what tired meant NOW. I found that I didn’t even need to call it tired. I could just show up, responsive to my body and how it felt right now. I could notice and respond to the ideas, or guidance, coming in about what to do or not do.

THIS WAS JUST ME LIVING MY LIFE IN THIS MOMENT—not me having insomnia. Not me stuck in another insomnia loop. It was just my current dance with consciousness, and right now (just right now), this is how I felt in the dance, and this is what I wanted to do. That is what I want to move toward. That other thing is what I want to move away from. A dance with consciousness constantly in the making, moment by moment, which required no hours of sleep, no certain sensations in or out of the picture, no figuring and evaluating and accomplishing and prediction. Nothing. Nothing except presence.

I had a few remarkable experiences of being bone tired and in pain one moment, and some minutes later, having not focused on that or made it into a problem or getting caught up in worry or fear or faulting myself—I was fine. No symptoms. No signs of sleep deprivation.

What did it cost me to change my story? It required:

• letting go of the old story—all things previously decided
• letting go of the identity that went with that story
• practicing presence now & now & now & now & now & now
• relentlessly interrupting the old story & coming back to presence

That’s pretty much it.

I invite you to it. In what realm of life would you like to drop ALL STORY? Where do you think it would be (or has been) hardest for you to do so? Do it there!

Or not. Do it somewhere easier. But since it doesn’t matter where you practice it, do it where you most want something different. Get out of story, get into presence (body, breath, and the 5 senses, which will only ever report THIS MOMENT to you—not your past experience or story; not what the future will bring; not your thoughts & beliefs about things).

In my current reality, I sometimes sleep badly. I don’t mind. I meet myself during the night. I meet myself however I feel the next day, now & now & now (which means, how I feel keeps shifting—it’s not fixed). I do not have insomnia. I do not fear insomnia. I have changed this aspect of my life that I felt entirely powerless over. I invite you to the same, because this is available to all of us.

We all have access to INTERRUPTING OUR STORIES and COMING INTO PRESENCE. Do it relentlessly. Do it as if you mattered to yourself, as if your well-being mattered to you. As if you were not longer willing to abandon yourself in the old story while stubbornly calling it truth or just the way things are. Please.

Love & blessings, Jaya