Wise Words from Williams: Rewriting the scripts in our lives | Culture | Berkeley Independent

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Wise Words from Williams: Rewriting the scripts in our lives

Published Tuesday, January 26, 2010 9:01 AM

By Valentine Wiliams
Berkeley Independent

The year is still young. But time flies and before you know it many people will be saying that they cannot believe how far the year has advanced.

Whatever we need to do we need to start early. Early gains will boost our confidence so we will work harder to achieve other successes. On the other hand if we struggle to succeed in the early part of the year it might cause some of us to get discouraged.

On the road to success there are some speed bumps. The ones that are the most difficult to handle are the ones that are the most entrenched in our lives. That means year after year there are some struggles we face that have been hard to overcome, to the point that we have accepted them as part of our ongoing existence.

We see them as things that are always going to be a part of our lives.

One such reality for a young woman I know and for many of us is that people always seem to dislike her. No matter what she does after a while people just doesn’t like her and there is nothing she can do about it. According to her that is just the way it is in her life for as long as she can remember.

These beliefs are what we call scripts. These are things, negative or positive, that we come to believe about ourselves over time. How do we develop these? They happen in various ways. Typically someone will say something to us such as “You are clumsy” because we tripped over something or dropped something. It could be that you went to a new job and had some problems adjusting or to school and had a similar experience and someone said to you, “You don’t get along well with people.” You internalized that statement and started believing it. When you had those experiences no one might have said anything to you.

Once you internalized that idea and you started believing it you wrote a script that would play again and again in your mind.

We tend to behave according to the scripts in our heads even though those scripts might not have been formulated after clear, logical analysis or any clear thinking. Once we have developed these it becomes a challenge to get rid of them and they can sabotage our efforts for self-improvement severely and in more ways than we can imagine.

They tend to have a life of their own unless we make a conscious effort to control them and eradicate them. As I indicated earlier scripts are not all bad. There are some positive scripts that most if not all of us have and there is great benefit in consciously and purposefully developing your own scripts that will help you instead of hindering you.

But how can we overcome the negative scripts that we developed from childhood or even in adulthood? I will share with you a few steps that can get you started next week.

The Rev. Valentine Williams is the Pastor of Transforming Life Center Church in Pineville, a motivational speaker, seminar/workshop leader, personal development coach, adjunct instructor and the author of Youth Empowered to Succeed. He is also the president of Williams Speaking and Training Services, a people development organization that conducts professional and personal development training and staff development workshops. For questions, comments or speaking engagements contact him at valmyval@yahoo.com.

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