The mind is a busy place.
It’s like a superhighway – cars speeding, weaving between lanes, merging, braking, accelerating, hugging the tight turns of a cloverleaf interchange.
Except instead of cars, these zooming items are thoughts. A relentless barrage of wonderings, fears, inspiration, judgements, ideas and lists, the mind catapulting between past and future in a violent whiplash.
We’re so used to it, we don’t notice the cacophony. It’s barely a buzz in the background. (Until we start meditating, that is.)
The thoughts themselves are rather harmless – mostly annoying. Like when you find yourself making a grocery list while inverted in a downward dog.
Their power comes with repetition. No longer a benign fleeting thought, they become practiced and engrained.
Example: I’m not good at public speaking.
Add in some reinforcing life experience (forgetting your speech at the podium or having a panic attack before you step on stage) and you form a belief.
Throw in more repitition and some emotional intensity (humiliation in the form of audience laughter or forgetting your speech) and you’ve got yourself a neural pathway.
Personal Narratives
Our practiced beliefs shape our internal narratives, or our “stories,” about ourselves and the world.
We make up these stories all the time about ourselves and our lives. We tell them all day long. They run unchecked, the unheard soundtrack to our lives.
These stories function like a script in our mind, not unlike the script actors follow in a play. The problem is they are typically unconscious, influencing our lives in unseen ways.
As our narratives collect around a subject, they form our mindset. We likely have different mindsets on different subjects. Maybe we believe we are worthy of love but money is hard to come by.
Our mindset creates expectations. Our expectations determine how we perceive the world, what we filter for and what we end up actually seeing.
Consider how two eyewitnesses can have completely different, and sometimes contradictory, accounts of the same event. We “see” based on our filters which are shaped by our life experience and practiced beliefs. This is called perception.
A familiar example is the kid who thinks they aren’t good at school. As they tell themselves this story over and over, fear and stress build up. Soon any academic challenge is met with a sense of powerlessness and even apathy. Their subsequent poor performance then reinforces their belief.
Think about the placebo effect, the ill person who immediately feels better when their tests results are clean, or how having your work complimented makes you feel competent and improves your creativity or output.
“Mindsets can impact your outcomes by determining the way you think, feel and even physiologically respond to some situations.” (The Stanford Report September 2021)
Our minds have a lot more influence than we think.
When we look for proof of our worthiness, we find it.
When we look for proof that we don’t matter, we find that.
When we cultivate positive expectation, we are optimized for a good outcome.
When we worry, we rehearse for a bad outcome.
And here’s the kicker: our mindset doesn't just impact our perceptions. It dictates how we behave in the world.
If we feel confident, the world is our oyster. We feel worthy of good things and lean toward opportunity. Conversely, if we feel insecure, the world can feel more hostile. We may think others are judging us, that we are unworthy. So we pull back, cutting ourselves off from possibility.
What Is Scripting?
A script is a first-person, present tense narrative about the self and life we want. It's an exercise that helps us consciously shape our mindset and, consequently, our lives.
Unlike journaling, which is more about processing and reflection., scripting is about creating what we desire. We affirm what we want to be true, writing it out as though it is happening now.
“The exciting news about mindsets is that they are absolutely changeable. The entire field of cognitive therapy is based on the idea that thoughts determine feelings and that you can learn powerful techniques to modify distorted thoughts and self-defeating beliefs.”
- Jacob Towery, M.D. (quoted in The Stanford Report, September 2021)
We can script about our inner state (increased confidence, peacefulness, feeling worthy), our well-being (improved mental health, focus, contentment, body love), or specific things we desire (a new job, a dream house, more money, a relationship).
Scripting cultivates gratitude, positivity and self-empowerment.
Scripting gives us the power to choose our own narrative.
How Does Scripting Work?
Science used to believe the brain, once developed, was fixed. We now know the brain is highly adaptable and ever changing, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity, or the ability of the brain to form or reorganize synaptic connections.
The neuroscience mantra “neurons that fire together wire together” means the more you stimulate a neural circuit, the stronger it becomes.
This can work to our advantage or our detriment.
Positive: New neural connections make it possible for us to learn a new language or instrument, to recover from a stroke or learn to navigate in a new city.
Negative: Trauma, addiction, stress and mental illness can alter the brain in unwanted, even harmful, ways that have lasting consequences.
Neuroplasticity allows us to change our thoughts, beliefs and eventually, our perceptions. And repetition strengthens them into our default way of thinking.
Imagine if worthiness and positive expectation became our default thinking.
(Think about it: those negative beliefs had to be wired in. Why not use the same mechanism to wire pathways we want?)
The cool part is we don’t have to hunt down and bust up unwanted neural connections. We can simply starve them with misuse, let them weaken and wither.
“Different pathways form and fall dormant, are created and discarded, according to our experiences.”
Our brain does this all the time. But we can participate in the process, intentionally choosing what we want to strengthen and weaken. We need not be victims to our mind.
It takes lots of practice and reinforcement. That’s where scripting comes in.
Discover the Power of Scripting
Whatever our goals, regular scripting is a neuroscience hack that can support us in creating the life we want.
Used regularly, it allows us to practice and reinforce new neural pathways, to rehearse for the life we want.
I was first introduced to scripting from the channeler/author Abraham Hicks and was taught how to do it by my friend and life coach, Ginny Gane. (If you’re looking for a life coach, I highly recommend her!) It has become part of my regular morning practice.
I practice scripting in written form, but sometimes I speak it in my head or aloud. This is particulary helpful if I'm on a walk and my mind starts spinning. Scripting helps ground me in the positive, in possibility and changes the channel from my anxious ruminations.
Personally, scripting has helped me:
- Heal my relationship with my body.
- Step into my worth as a writer and begin to make money writing.
- Find the amazing house we currently live in.
- Build my self-confidence.
- Improve my relationships, especially my marriage.
- Feel more joyful and more empowered in my life.
The Power of Scripting as a Manifestation Technique
Two years ago, we were selling our house, and looking to rent. Rentals were hard to find and off the charts expensive. I scripted daily, page after page about an old house that was full of character, with nearby woods where I could walk my dog, a beautiful yard and a situation that would be a win-win for us and the owner.
The clock was ticking. Our house was under contract, and we didn’t have a place to go.
Rather than giving into the fear, I doubled down on the scripting, tapping into the belief of everything works out for me. I focused on how I wanted to feel in the house - at ease, peaceful, comfortable, at home. I wrote about the fun adventure of the process, how trusting I felt for the right house to find me in the right time.
(If you knew me five years ago, you would understand this itself was a miracle.)
Then, as if by magic, the perfect house found us.
We now live in a friend's historic house we've long admired. We caretake the house, a win-win for us and our friend, and love our neighbors and our location. The grounds are gorgeous with two ponds, a small waterfall (no I'm not joking), a gazebo, prestigious gardens and acres of woods. Every morning I walk my dog right out the back door and through the woods to the river.
(From my teenager: “I gotta say, Mom, I had some doubts that you could pull this off. I guess I forgot what a boss you are.”)
There are a lot of ways to step into our power. For me, scripting is one of the most fun.
My artist friend Julia observed, “I am at my happiest/most thriving when I am scripting regularly. It doesn’t just help you manifest in the future, it helps you thrive NOW.”
I love scripting so much I write scripts for others as a freelance service and teach how-to workshops. I love having clients message me to say they are living out their scripts!
A quote from the book Your Brain on Art:
“As Tyler VanderWeele noted in his research at Harvard, one of the keys to a flourishing mindset is imagining one’s best potential self by shifting personal narrative to ones that are more positive. The stories you tell yourself day in and day out matter. Your brain loves stories, and they shape how you contextualize yourself.” (Magsamen and Ross, 2023)
If you want learn, I teach scripting workshops - in groups and 1:1. They are fun, expansive workshops that can revolutionize the way you think you about yourself, your life and your power.
Your dream life is waiting for you at tip of your own pen. Be the author of your own story. (No one else is better for the job!)
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