Change Your Story To Change Your Life

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

If you want to change your life, the most powerful thing you can do is change the stories of your life.

Why?

Stories are the operating system of your life. The operating system in your computer controls the programs that run on your computer. Stories have the same effect in your life. They run your life.

Stories tell you who you are, and they tell you how you are to live. Stories also teach you who has the right to tell you what to do.

If you are struggling to change something in your life, the place to begin is to identify the story you tell yourself about this situation. If you want to change your life, you need to change your story. More than anything else, people stay stuck in old patterns despite good intentions and efforts to change until they change the story that keeps them stuck. This means you cannot change your life until you change the story that is the operating system of your life.

What Are Your Stories?

If you think about your life in terms of the stories you heard again and again, you will begin to discover how much your life has been shaped by those stories.

What were your favorite stories, either from your own life or from books, movies, and family lore? What stories did you hear again and again when you were young?

What did the stories teach you? Did they teach you to be powerful? Did they teach you to be obedient? Did they teach you to be afraid? Did they teach you to imagine yourself capable of accomplishing great things? Did they teach you to mind your manners and don’t step out of line?

These questions are worth investigating. If you can identify the power of stories in your life, you will recognize the power of story to rule you.

Inherited Stories

When you ask these questions, you will also discover that the stories that rule you are usually inherited stories. You didn’t choose them.

Family Stories

You inherited stories from your family. What are the stories your family told about you? What are the stories they told about your family history and the place of your family in society?

School Stories

You also inherited stories in school. What stories did you hear in school about your ethnic identity, your national identity, your political identity?  What stories did you hear about the geographical place you lived? What did you learn about education itself? 

Religious Stories

You also inherited stories from religious education. What religious stories did you hear about human nature and the purpose of human life?

Religious stories are especially powerful because of the authority vested in them as God’s will for human life.

As a Biblical scholar, I am acutely aware of the power of religious stories to trap people from Christian backgrounds in guilt, shame, anxiety, and fear based on the stories they learned in their religious education.

Be especially aware of the power of religious stories to rule your life, even if you have never had a moment of religious instruction in any faith community. You cannot live in any society without being shaped by religious stories.

Society Stories

You also inherited stories from the larger society around you. What stories did you hear from TV and radio and movies about society, about money, about education, about work, about social status, about race, about business, about politics, about law, about government, about the place of your country in the world?

These stories are the tip of the iceberg. We live awash in a sea of stories. This flood of stories tells you who you are, what you are, why you are, and what you are to do.

 How To Create Your Own Freedom Stories

Here’s the good news. If you don’t like your life stories, you can change them. The fastest and easiest way to change your life is to claim the power to make your own story.

The common theme of my interconnected websites is that you can change your life by changing your limiting inherited stories into your own freedom stories.

I teach a process of story transformation, which transforms the old stories that keep you stuck into new stories that set you free to create your own authentic stories.

My Websites

Change Your Life By Changing Your Inherited Stories 

Authentic Life Stories is about the difference between authentic stories that empower you to know yourself, and inherited stories that keep you stuck in stories that do not allow you to be true to your authentic self.

The theme of Authentic Life Stories is: “Change your story to change your life.”

[This site is at the very beginning stages of development.]

Change Your Life By Changing Your Money Stories

No Money Limits and No Money Limits Blog are about changing the money stories that keep you stuck in stories of money limits, so that you can live with “No Money Limits.”

Although it’s a bit confusing to have two sites with such similar names, each one has a different focus.

No Money Limits is about transforming the story that money is a commodity in limited supply to a new money stories that will teach you how to create money.

The theme of “No Money Limits” is: The only limit to money is the belief that money is limited. 

No Money Limits Blog focuses on the other side of the money story. It tells the story of how banks and governments have another story about money than the familiar “money limits” story most of us learned as children.

The theme of “No Money Limits Blog” is: “What the banks don’t want you to know about money.”

“No Money Limits Blog” tells the story of how banks and governments use money magic to create money. This knowledge is especially important for individuals to know as consumers and business owners, because the money-making decisions and policies of banks and governments are an essential part of personal money stories.

There is some overlap between these two sites, but my goal is to show that what banks know about making money is an important clue about changing your own money story. 

Change Your Life By Changing Your Bible Stories

Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies and Bible Authority In American Politics are about transforming the power of “Bad Bible” stories to rule your life.
“Bad Bible” stories are the types of stories that keep people stuck in fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, and helplessness. Bad Bible stories are almost always distortions of Bible stories and become weapons of power against the most vulnerable people.

These sites are not typical Bible study sites. They are also not Bible-bashing sites. They are not about faith in but about the power of religious stories to rule your life.

I earned my doctorate in Biblical Studies and use my training as a biblical scholar to read the Bible on its own terms in its own contexts.

I teach people from Christian backgrounds how to transform the religious stories they learned religious stories that keep them stuck in fear, guilt, shame, and anxiety into authentic life stories.

You don’t have to believe in God, Jesus, or the Bible to be affected by Bible stories. And you don’t have to abandon faith in God, Jesus, or the Bible to set yourself free from the power of “Bad Bible” to rule your life.

The theme of Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies is: “How “Bad Bible Bullies” claim Bible authority over your personal freedom.”

Bible Authority in American Politics changes focus from the power of Bible stories in your personal life to the power of Bible stories in public life.

The theme of Bible Authority In American Politics is: “How radical claims about Bible authority hijack political freedom in American politics.”

The goal of Bible Authority In American Politics is to raise an alarm about efforts to impose particular religious beliefs on public policy. These religious beliefs are almost always based on “Bad Bible” distortions of particular Bible verses and Bible stories.

Change Your Life By Changing Your Bible Stories About Money

Going Broke With Jesus combines stories about money and the Bible by looking at common money beliefs based on Bible verses.

The theme of Going Broke With Jesus is: What Jesus really said about money.

Going Broke With Jesus shows the difference between using the words of Jesus as heroic stories about money and using them as morality tales about the evils of money.

Other Websites  

Make Money Insight: Discover the Money Making Secret That Makes The Difference Between Struggling To Earn Money And Making Money Whenever You Choose.

Offers the Best Book Award Winner, No Money Limits

Impolite Topics is an earlier version of Bible authority In American Politics. The theme of Impolite Topics is: Religion, politics, and the Bible…for Seekers.

This blog also focused on the role of Bible in public life. I no longer write for this blog, but the original content is still available. 

Abundantly Alive Now! Newsletter was a weekly labor of love for two-and-a-half years. I no longer publish this newsletter, but all of the articles are available in the online archive.

For Your Freedom,

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.

“The Story Transformer”