Troubled by math in first grade, I asked mom for help. "We Chapman's aren't good at math," she said. 

   Suddenly, doing well at math seemed as impossible as a changing my eye color. That story played in my head, blocking improvement.

   Strangely, we make self-destructive mistakes everyday. We forget that we can change those stories. And are the only ones that can! 

   Every life coach encourages us to detoxify our lives by reconsidering old narratives. Engage compassion and, most important, offer the benefit of a doubt. 

   Once, during a speech, I noticed a caregiver asleep in the back row. Afterwards, I talked with her supervisor.

   "Gladys is great," he told me. "She is the soul caregiver for five children and her sick mom. That shooting in her neighborhood last night murdered her sleep."

   My "facts?": "Gladys fell asleep at work. Is she a lazy caregiver?" Then the "facts" changed. I had failed to engage a vital human gift: The benefit of the doubt. 

   Fifteen years ago a friend ended a quarter century relationship with her best friend.

   "Why?" I asked. 

   "She made a bad comment about my son."

   One comment poisoned years of intimacy. She made it worse by trashing her former pal as someone she, "always thought was a narcissistic phony." That story-telling still blocks reconciliation. Who suffered? 

   Acid corrodes the container. And we all allow terrible self-stories to erode well being & healing. 

   Decades after my mom's innocent pronouncement I looked anew at math, changed my own toxic story & learned to interpret complex hospital financial statements.

   Still, countless bad stories play in my head & break my heart. David Whyte writes in Consolations, "Heartbreak is the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control."

   Demonizing others kills healing. It's hard to let go of control, accept human frailty & forgive. Change begins when we recognize stories that need new light.

   Everyone of them can be reinterpreted. And only we can do it. It is part of living love, not fear. 

-Erie Chapman