We Breathe It In Before We Know It
We don’t always realize we’ve taken in a belief until it starts living our life for us.
Discourse—those shared societal and cultural narratives—functions like a megaphone for the dominant voice in the room.
It broadcasts what’s acceptable, what’s valuable, what’s normal. And often, we absorb that voice before we’ve even formed our own.
Some of it is explicit: “Success looks like this.”
Some of it is subtle: a glance, a commercial, a child-sized sigh at a parent’s approval.
The Angle That Becomes the Story
We start with a natural, full-bodied sense of self.
Sidebar: Nature Nudges is a series of reflections I write about lessons from the natural world. Animals, like goats, often provide a mirror for human development. They begin life with an innate sense of presence and ease—completely at home in their bodies and environment. One story, about two goats named Leo and Orion, explores how internal safety can turn a perceived prison into a home. Read more in Nature Nudges → But slowly—sometimes imperceptibly—we contort to fit the stories around us.
Stories about how to be likable. How to belong. How to stay safe.
This is the perspective we don’t choose. Not at first.
We internalize the perspective of the group—family, school, workplace, media—until it becomes our own. Until we live by rules we never wrote. Until this angle of interpretation takes over and we wake up one day not quite sure where we went.
How Discourse Reinforces Itself
Discourse can feel like home. But it can also become a prison.
And here’s the twist: we keep reinforcing it—through the things we tell ourselves, the things we leave out, and the unedited reruns we let loop in our heads.
“I’m too much.” “I don’t belong.” “I have to earn love.”
These quick internal responses—what I call our ABCs: Auto-thoughts, Beliefs, and the emotional Consequences they create—are often hand-me-downs from a larger system.
Ones we didn’t know we could question.
The Invitation to Reframe
But we can.
When we name the discourse, we begin to shift the perspective. We begin to reframe the narrative. We begin to write new stories—ones where even the hardest moments become part of a sacred reorientation. Where depression, cancer, or crisis are not curses, but cosmic course corrections. Where escape is no longer the goal—because we’ve made our internal space safe again.
Our angle of interpretation, in the end, forms our personality. It determines what we see as possible. Most people don’t realize that point of view can be chosen—that it is, in fact, one of the most powerful tools we have. And that means we can choose one that brings more truth, more beauty, more kindness, and more agency into our lives.
Working with the Tools
That’s what this work is for.
The Elements—Tools like GO, HOme, Imagine, JI—help us recognize the borrowed angles and choose new ones. Not by erasing our past, but by integrating it. Consciously. Creatively. Courageously.
Because the truth is: life doesn’t just happen and then become a story. More often, we live the story we’ve already started telling.
Let’s make it one that fits.