My Story vs. The Truth

I was running in our local park one day, chugging along the trails. I’m not a speedy runner, and sometimes there’s a lot of self-talk to keep myself moving. This particular day was really warm and as I made my way through the wooded path, I kept the chatter going so I’d keep going.

Not far ahead of me, I saw a man walking. As I passed him, he suddenly started running again, blowing right past me.

Thinking nothing of it, I kept jogging until I noticed he had slowed to a walk. When I passed him again, he once again started running. Okay, I thought, this guy doesn’t want to get beat by a girl. No biggie.

But then it happened a few more times and it really started to annoy me. I was working so hard to move forward and this guy really threw me off my game by zipping past whenever I caught up. Dude, I thought, either run or don’t run but stop trying to show me up! It was like he had to prove a point that he could run faster than me every single time I caught up with him.

Finally, the path wound around to the parking lot. He finished just ahead of me, so I slowed to a walk and shifted my direction to my car.  Before I could get there, he stopped me, smiled broadly and said “I have to thank you! I was really struggling to run today and every time I saw you running it really motivated me to keep going. I couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you so much.”

Oh.

He wasn’t trying to prove a point by not letting a girl beat him. He was struggling and saw my momentum as an inspiration to move himself forward. Very different than the story I was telling myself – a story peppered with words like “testosterone-filled jerk”.

So often the story we tell ourselves is way different than what’s actually going on. That’s always an opportunity to reframe things and tell the story in a way that serves us better.

Got any stories you can reframe?