3 Ways Our Scripts Keep Us From Becoming Who We Are

EPISODE 72 | 3 WAYS OUR SCRIPTS KEEP US FROM BECOMING WHO WE ARE 

Hello again, dear listeners! Now, you have heard me speak over and over again about scripts, right – about life scripts. And I've talked about scripts in different ways. And today, in this episode, you're going to hear me talk again about life scripts. And you may be wondering why is it that Ann keeps going on about scripts, especially in this season where the general theme and the focus is on well, discerning personal vocation or discerning like the unique way that God created me to be and to live and to serve in His kingdom.

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One of my clients just asked me this exact same question very recently during one of our sessions because one of the things that we do – so, my coaching sessions are very specific, right? So, currently I have one signature program that is meant to help individuals who wish to clarify who they are, right.

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They want to understand a bit more about their own motivational design. They want to understand what motivates them and how they operate in the world. What is the natural preferences that God has given them. So, the premise for actually Becoming Me, as well – this whole podcast, right – where I come from, is that we have been gifted.

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We have been given a particular design, right? God created each of us in a specific way and put us in the time and place that is also very unique to us. Our stories are unique and they're unique also for a reason. There is never going to be another person with the exact same life as you or as me.

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To become fully alive is to enter into that acceptance and that embrace of this self that God has given me. But along the way, there are many obstacles to us being able to discover this self and to be able to accept this self. Now, those are two different things, okay? So, to discover is one, and then to be able to accept what we are discovering is a different thing altogether.

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And so, it's an ongoing journey. It's an ongoing journey. And part of what obscures our journey is what I call our scripts, okay? Our scripts serve to obscure and kind of like block this journey – this interior journey of integration that we are on. But when I say block, I want to say it doesn't mean that it's something that we need to get rid of per se.

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I don't think we can ever really get rid of our programming or life script. When we become aware of them and when we grow in integration, these scripts have less of a hold over us. When we are not aware of them, these scripts actually really colour and distort the way we manifest in the world – the way we express ourselves in the world, the way we behave in the world. And that is why without becoming aware – consciously aware – of what are the scripts that are often in operation in like the background of our lives, we won't really be able to know – you know, like even let's say if we do the motivation code assessment – which I bring my clients through – or the Myers Briggs.

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A lot of times we may be selecting data or even answering these assessments based on the scripts that we have in our life. So, in a way that we're answering out of our personas because we can become so identified with our personas, we can become so identified with our life scripts that we think that's us. And we don't recognize that when we are operating in those scripts, it's not really us.

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It's kind of like us in a particular mode; a particular mode of performance, for example – a particular mode of trying to be acceptable to others. So, when we want to have a truer, clearer perspective of this self that God created, we need to be able to distinguish between the programming and the scripts that we have taken on to protect ourselves versus what God has given us.

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Okay, and the reason why these two things coexist – why we have life scripts as well – is often because in our younger days, we have experienced that aspects of our real self is maybe not really welcomed in our families or the people who are important to us or our care givers. And we've learned to hide parts of ourselves. And we've learned to maybe emphasize or exaggerate other parts of ourselves. And we may have learned to even take on certain traits that are not really parts of our true self, but we've learned to perform, right?

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So, all that leads to why we have life scripts. So, today's episode, I talk about three ways – three very important ways – our life scripts block our discernment in terms of our personal vocation. Three ways that life scripts actually obscure or prevent us from becoming who we truly are. So, this is a very crucial episode to listen to if you are really getting serious about wanting to become your true self, and you want to know what is it that holds you back.

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Why is it that you often feel like you take one step forward and three steps back in the interior journey. It could well be that it's something to do with your life scripts.

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All right, so, my clients had asked me, so why is it important that we identify our life scripts? And I want to say – this whole episode is my response to that question. Although, what you're going to listen to is actually an Instagram Live that I recorded much earlier – you know, I think a couple of months earlier – before my client asked me this question. But it is meant to address this exact question.

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For anyone who wonders, why is it so important for me to be able to identify the scripts that are in operation in my life. So, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you have any questions, please drop me an email or if you are interested in learning more about Clarity – which is my signature program that guides people through this process of uncovering their life scripts and their motivation design and their personality, kind of like how they operate in the world – please go ahead and visit my website. I'm going to drop that link into the show notes of this episode; the link to find out more about Clarity.

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I only just a few slots every year for this program because it requires a longer journey and a deeper journey, so I can only take a few people every year.

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There's a process to go through to check whether or not this is the right thing for you, the right fit for you at this point in your journey. So, my new intake will be for next year, 2024, but I'm just putting this out there right now because sometimes people take a few months to get a sense of whether or not this is the right time for them to consider doing this journey.

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And also, you would need to have connected with me and done an exploratory integrative live consultation session before you can apply for Clarity. So, if you've been enjoying my podcast, if this resonates with you and you really feel like you want to go deeper, I invite you to start checking up my resources; my website, listen to the other episodes that I've recorded.

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And reach out if you think it's maybe time to find out a bit more about working with me. So, without further ado, I present to you episode 72 of the Becoming Me Podcast.

[00:08:30] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.

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Hi. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to another IG Live on the topic of personal vocation discernment. Okay, so this is series of conversations that I've decided to kind of like document around topics and themes to do with trying to figure out who we are or what our life's work is meant to be.

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A lot of people that I know, who take their faith seriously and who sincerely wish to know how God is calling them to serve Him – how they're called to live their lives to glorify Him. And they seek to know what their calling is, what their personal vocation is, right. But for most people, we don't have the language and the tools and instruments to really understand what this process looks like.

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What is actually required of us? Like what the steps are, what needs to come first and what happens next? And very few of us actually know when we kind of feel like we're stuck in this process of discerning our life's calling – very few of us know what to do to get unstuck.

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So, this series of conversations of IG Lives that I'm recording is really just my way of documenting some of the things that I've been observing; some of the things that I have already been thinking about, pondering, putting into my work with clients, the people that I'm accompanying, right.

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So, I'm just sharing this as free resource. And hopefully anyone of you who might just come across this – this may help you in your own journey. Okay, because the things that I observe and the things that I'm going to be talking about – they come from different parts of my own journey and from different kinds of resources.

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And from what I know, most people, one, are not very aware of what resources are out there that can help them in discerning their personal vocation. Or if they're aware, they're usually only aware of kind of like one resource or one kind of resource, right? So, where I'm coming from is kind of like a – you know, it's an integrated picture of things that I've picked up in my own journey from a very long process of, let's say, spiritual direction – of regular spiritual direction over years – of the instruments that I have used in trying to understand my temperament, my personality, my motivation codes.

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But I think above all really, it's what has been coming up, what I've been discovering as I heal, as I go into this interior journey of integration and healing. And then there are things that I just never knew before, right. There were things that I just was never aware of how much they impacted my journey into discovering who I am and who I'm called to be and the life work that I'm called to do. So, I've been trying to know, or I've been desiring to know the purpose for which I'm created since I was a little girl, I think as early as at least secondary school.

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I've always longed to know why am I here. Why am I – particularly me, right – Ann, here in this world – what is my life about? Who am I? And that desire has fuelled me even through all the different meanders and turns that I've had to go through in my life. This desire for authenticity and to feel like I know what I'm about – I know what my life is about.

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This has directed, I think, and fuelled my pursuit of God. initially, I will say very honestly, I think when I came to know God personally, it was also out of desire of someone greater than me who could hold me and who could direct me, and who could tell me the answer to my – to life's questions.

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Right, and that relationship has since evolved, of course. But what I want to talk about today, is one of the ways, or one of the things that I've discovered that really impacts my journey without me realizing, right.

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In the first maybe – I don't know, maybe decade – more than a decade or so of me trying to figure out what my life is about, I had no idea how much my life scripts actually impacted me. Okay, so in the earlier conversations in this series, you know, I talked about what we may not realize about personal vocation, discernment, right?

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I talked about how important it is to feel really accompanied by God and by ourselves in this journey – that if we don't have that secure base of knowing that we unconditionally and consistently accompanied by God in this journey, and that His love for us is independent of our success or failure, and being able to figure out what our vocation may be, right. Unless we have that confidence that we are loved no matter what, we can't actually make this journey, right.

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So, that was one of the earlier things I talked about in one of the videos. And in my last video – in my last Live – discussing what may prevent us from actually making progress in the interior journey. I mentioned how – I mentioned this metaphor or this example of how we may be wanting to run a race.

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We're getting ready to run this race, but we don't realize that our feet are bound, right? That our bodies are actually impacted in ways that prevent us from being free enough, able enough to actually run a race well. So, one of the ways in which we are bound – in a way that few of us are aware of – are our life scripts.

[00:05:12] WHAT ARE LIFE SCRIPTS?
Now, I've been talking about scripts quite a bit over on my podcast, my Becoming Me Podcast. And if you're watching this and you're a listener of my podcast, some of this would be familiar to you. But this will go a little deeper. And if you're new to me or new to my podcast – you haven't been listening to The Becoming Me Podcast – and you're interested in what I'm about to say or what I'm going to be saying in this video, then I encourage you to go and check out the Becoming Me Podcast, okay?

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Okay, so, life scripts are kind of like the programming that we have running in the background, that we are often not even aware of. There's kind of like this energy that fuels and directs the way we act without us realizing, okay.

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So, give you an example of a life script – of my life script. So, one of my scripts is I must be responsible. And it's like almost at any point I will ask myself, what's the responsible thing to do? And that shapes my decision making, right? Now, is it good to be responsible? Well, generally yes. But there are times when there are other questions that need to be asked in order for a decision to be made.

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And sometimes the most important question may not even be one of responsibility, right? Responsibility is not the only virtue there is. And one of the problems, or one of the ways that life scripts kind of like bind us, is that it limits our perspective of ourself. So, if let's say you're someone that, your life script is I will always get the job done no matter what.

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Okay, I know people like that for whom – you know, they take great pride that nothing that's happening in their life will get in the way of them getting their job done. Okay, so, that's a very strong script that has sometimes propelled them to success. But at the same time, that life script prevents them from seeing themselves from anything other than the person who will get the job done no matter what.

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So, that means then, that we will end up with a rather narrow perspective of ourselves. So, for example, I mentioned that for me, one of my scripts is that I'm the responsible one, I'm the dependable one. Because I was the eldest – eldest child – and I was a student leader from when I was very young. So, I saw myself as being the responsible one.

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I have to take responsibility for other people. You know, there are more important things than my happiness or what I want. And that became so much a part of how I saw myself and how I felt I needed to be. So, this shaped the persona of who I felt I needed to be. So much so that I can't really think of myself outside of being the responsible one.

[00:17:59] #1: CONSTRICTING OURSELVES
You know, and in almost every circumstance, even outside of, let's say, when I have a job to do or when I have a role that I need to execute – I am still driven by that script of I need to be the responsible, right. So, given the vast array of different situations that our life consists of and the many different contexts in which we are present, right.

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Whether we are with family, with our spouse, with our friends at work, I mean, life is meant to be multi-dimensional. When we are very held by our life scripts, that multi-dimensional perspective of who we are gets really narrowed down to a very specific slice.

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And often that slice is that script that we have found has helped us to feel somehow maybe acknowledged, seen, heard, maybe affirmed. So, we keep defaulting to certain scripts. Our scripts then can impact us when we're trying to discern that big question about who am I ultimately – who am I and what is the life work that I'm called to do that will bless the world?

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If we can't see outside of the very narrow life scripts that we have, we are never going to be able to actually make a proper discernment because our field of vision has been narrowed and our range of motion, in the ways that we can respond, is also really restricted to what our life script dictates.

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The person I always feel I need to be becomes dominant and it obscures my ability to hear God calling me to be the person I am and the person I'm being called to become. So, I'm still in the process of becoming. But if I'm stuck in my life script, usually what happens is we end up being very rigid and very static.

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And I think if you think about sometimes, it's hard for us to look at ourselves, it is often easier to see this in other people. So, if you can think of maybe someone that you know well – could be a family member, could be a friend – sometimes we can recognize when somebody's just kind of like stuck in a very rigid way of thinking.

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And we may feel for them, you know? We can see that they are so much more than that persona that they keep coming back into – that they don't allow themselves to be more than what has kept them safe, right? But the same thing is usually happening to us. The same thing is happening to us.

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Okay, so, the first way that I'm talking about today, in the way our scripts impact our ability to discern our personal vocation, is that it really constricts us. It binds us. It constricts our range of motion of responses, and it also really restricts and narrows down our perspective of how we can see ourself. Okay, so, it's just maybe one slice of who we are.

[00:21:05] #2: DISTORTING OUR GIFTS
The second way that the scripts – our scripts, our life scripts – can really impact our ability to discern is that it distorts our gifts. Okay, it distorts our gifts. Now, a lot of people really, really like to find out, oh, what are my strengths? What are my gifts? What are my talents? You know, what are my charisms, right?

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I mean, like, what are the spiritual gifts that God has given me? I think there are many reasons why people really want to know these things. One reason could be well, they make us feel like we have worth, right. A lot of us struggle with self-worth. A lot of us struggle to think of ourselves as lovable and worthy of respect outside of maybe, being gifted or talented. And so that's why we want to know our gifts.

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Now, the problem is, of course, we are more than the sum of our gifts and our talents. And also, what makes our gifts powerful – whether we're talking about natural gifts or we're talking about spiritual gifts – what makes our gifts impactful are not the gifts themselves.

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It's the strength, the integrity, and the authenticity with which we can hold ourselves – with which we can live our lives. The talents and the gifts, the charisms that we have, they're like the icing on the cake. On the firm foundation of someone who is secure in who he or she is, who knows, he or she is deeply loved – these gifts they really can shine. And they really can make an impact.

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But if we – and I'm talking about all of us – but if we are still living out of our life scripts because we are not firmly rooted and grounded in who we know we are. We are not yet securely rooted in the knowledge of how loved we are.

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We want to use our gifts and our talents to perform, to earn love, to earn approval, and affirmation, right? So, then these gifts cannot be freely given to others anymore. Like, so the talents that we have, we can't really use them fully for service, for mission without fear of being rejected, rebuffed. You know, our gifts shine the most – especially our spiritual giftings.

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I'll say all our gifts put together, but our spiritual giftings especially, shine the most when we exercise them without fear – when it's coming out of a confidence that this is God's work; that I'm loved and I'm moving with Christ. It is Christ acting through me. And regardless of whether someone rejects me or accepts me, this gift is still given because it is good. Because God is good and because I believe I am good.

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Coming from that space, our giftings – our spiritual giftings especially – can be very powerful, right. Because they really mediate the way Christ loves. They really reflect how Christ loves – which is without condition. But if we use our gifts – I don't know, kind of like, because we are not yet very confident about who we are. 

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If we need to believe we are gifted, if we need to see how our gifts can make an impact on others so that we can feel that we have worth, without us knowing, really – and I say this without us being aware – our gifts can be distorted. You know, we can't really let go and let God, right? Whether it's natural talent or spiritual giftings, there will all be some kind of impact there because again, it's linked to the first point I made; our scripts can bind us, kind of limit a range of motion, right?

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We are not able to move really freely in the spirit. That freedom of movement, that freedom of response comes from interior freedom. And the interior freedom is that of knowing I am loved no matter what – that I am acting and serving out of abundance, not out of a place of scarcity.

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When I am living out of my life scripts and the scripts are what we've learned will give us safety or what we have learned will make us feel liked or respected, we are not resting in our belovedness. Okay, so in that way our scripts can distort our gifts, can distort our talents, even our spiritual giftings.

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And because they distort our spiritual giftings, even if we kind of like know what our gifts are, we can't really be free to discern how those gifts kind of give us the clues to the personal vocation God is calling us to. Okay, we are not really free to discern because we are too vested in an outcome.

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We want the gifts, our gifts, to work a certain way to make us valuable – maybe to make us liked or powerful or respectable. Okay, so, in that sense, our life scripts will distort even that which is, you know – our gifts, our talents – even that which is supposed to be the things that we tend to like most about knowing about ourselves.

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All right, so, that's the second way that our life scripts can impact how we discern our personal vocation or the process of discerning our personal vocation. And the third way in which our scripts can negatively impact our discernment is really linked to the first two, okay.

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Because our life scripts often come about from our wounds, okay. Our life scripts often come about from our hurts, from our trauma – from our developmental trauma. Often, maybe because when we were younger, the ways that we didn't feel accepted, didn't feel seen or heard – we found some way to be noticed. We found some way to feel significant.

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For some of us, it may be the "good girl, good boy" script, right? Like, oh, if I'm really good, I get praised. I'm liked. You know, my parents notice me. Or maybe if I really – I'm very clever or I do very well in school, or I become a leader, or I have a really good talent in sports or in music, when I perform and I shine – I'm noticed.

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Okay, then we default to that. That slowly over time becomes our script. But for some of us, it may not be the path of achievement or being good. It could by being very rebellious. It could be by being very anti-establishment because when we are bad, when we don't behave, when we are naughty, we get noticed.

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And even if the noticing is not pleasant, right – even if the noticing is getting scolded instead of being praised, sometimes that's better than no attention at all. That's better than not being noticed at all. So, all of us have different reactions and responses. These are kind of coping mechanisms, right?

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We all have different kind of coping mechanisms. And our coping mechanisms, our trauma responses make their way into forming our life scripts. So, the example I gave earlier; me being the responsible one – I remember when I was in primary school, right? So, I was like seven, eight years old. And I would bring back at the end of every semester, I would have a report card, report book – that I had to bring back to let my parent sign, right.

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And other than the results from my tests and exams, there's usually a little brief comment that the teacher writes about me. And the comment, I remember, I was always very vested in what the comment was because sometimes it was the comment that got my mom really happy. It wasn't necessarily the results, which were always more or less around the same for me.

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I remember my mom paid a lot of attention life if the teacher had written something like, "oh, Ann shows a lot of initiative", you know? Or she's very responsible or she shows leadership. I mean, these are the words that I remember; my mom would get really happy. She would smile and she would tell me, “Wow, you know, I'm so proud of you, I'm so proud of you". 

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And if I didn't understand the word – you know, I was very young – I didn't understand what the word responsible meant, for example. And then, you know, my mom would explain to me what that meant. And it's like instinctively, I would feel like, oh, this is what I must be all the time. So, being responsible could have been a natural part of me.

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Maybe it was really a good part of me, right. It's natural, but it became rigidified when it became a script that I then felt I must constantly live up to, right? So, the script that we all have, the script that we adopt often stems from our wounds. The script stems from our wounds. It is what helps us to feel better about ourselves or to win some kind of attention attachment. So, because of that, our scripts are always externally directed. Okay, so what do I mean by "externally directed"?

[00:30:35] #3: EXTERNALLY DIRECTED
Think about it. Scripts – even, let's say in a play, we talk about state, or you know, or a movie – when an actors act out of script, right? It's a performance that they need to put up. Same thing, our life scripts, they're kind of like – they come from our wounds. They have been developed through our experiences of when I act a certain way, I feel more liked or noticed or loved by my parents, by my teachers, or maybe by my friends.

[00:31:05]
So, the scripts are externally directed because we're playing to an audience. It wouldn't make sense to act from that script unless there was someone to observe us, and there was someone to give us some kind of feedback. And it's because we want that feedback that we live out of that script. So, our script is externally directed. And it's very reactive at times because it comes from a place of pain and insecurity in us.

[00:31:32]
Our scripts are what we have developed to get us some sense of safety and security, even though it's not the real thing. So, for that reason, we often hold onto our life scripts very tightly. It's very hard to let our scripts go. Why? Because our past experiences may have been, if I don't act out of the script, I'm alone. I'm abandoned. Nobody notices me.

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I have no worth no value to anybody, you know? So, let me share with you another script I had, especially when I was younger – it's that of being a friend. And I felt that I was going to be the best friend anybody could have; the most reliable person that will always be there when they needed someone.

[00:32:19]
And I can tell you the reason why I was so vested in being that person, in being such a friend – especially when I was a teenager and young adult, when friendships were so important – was because deep down I didn't feel that anyone would really love me just for being who I was.

[00:32:37]
I felt that the only way someone could really love me or like me and want to remain my friend, is if I could make myself indispensable, somehow, in their life – if I could always be there for them. I mean, like I thought who would not want to have a friend who would always be there for them? Who would not want to have a friend that's going to always be loyal to them? And that will always turn up when they needed help, right?

[00:33:04]
I mean, that was how I thought in my youth. Actually, in real life, that's not how it works either. But see, I became so vested in being not just that responsible person but being that reliable friend that will always turn up when I am needed.

[00:33:23]
If you notice, nothing about that is based on who I am and who I'm called to be. I mean, it's driven by how someone else will see me. All right, so when our scripts – because our scripts are externally directed, we won't have – it keeps us actually from being able to have a true mirroring or true perspective of who we are, right.

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It is important to know – it is important to be mirrored, but mirrors, there can be good mirrors and there can be poor mirrors. When we are acting out of our pain and insecurity, when we are acting out of our scripts, we are not able to actually see ourselves mirrored accurately by others because we are desperately looking for a particular kind of feedback.

[00:34:17]
And when we don't get that feedback, you know, we can just feel very down, very low, and we double down on our scripts. So again, you can see script, our life scripts is about managing the perception of others, whether we realize it or not. It helps us with performing, but maybe not so much with living fully. 

[00:34:38]
Because living fully requires us to also know with authenticity who we are and dare I stand apart and alone, if this is being true to who I am, even if that means being criticized by others, being rejected by others. If the only way I can act is in a way to win affection and approval from others, then it's going to really affect how I can see myself accurately. So, if we're very desperate to fit in, we're very desperate to so-called belong to someone outside of ourself or to community outside of ourselves.

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In a sense, we may never find that belonging that we long for, right? Brené Brown has written and spoken on this topic a lot. I think in one of her books called about Braving the Wilderness. That true belong includes or is built on the belonging we have to ourselves, which will include being able to stand apart and alone when it calls for it.

[00:35:43]
Now, for people of faith, our sense of belonging to ourselves comes from that experience and the knowledge that we are deeply loved by God unconditionally, regardless of anything we have done or failed to do. And it's from that firm foundation then, that we learn to act from a place of integrity, from a place of authenticity.

[00:36:11] RECAP
Right, so, that's what today – I mean, in what I've been talking about were kind of just three ways that our life scripts can impact the way we discern our personal vocation. Or three ways that our life scripts can prevent us from effectively discerning our personal vocation, right. So, the first reason was it, it limits our perspective of who we are.

[00:36:37]
We end up just seeing one slice of ourselves. It restricts the range of our responsiveness. We also find that we can only respond from a particular persona when we are very driven by a life script. We find that our gifts, including our spiritual gifts, can be very distorted by our life scripts when we're just living out from our life scripts because we're then using our gifts to earn our worth or our value – or to earn love.

[00:37:06]
And finally, because our scripts are coming from a place of woundedness, it is always externally directed. It is kind of like to manage other people's perception of us. And when we get stuck just living out of our wounds and out of managing other people's perception of us, we will never, never reach the point of knowing who we are because that must come from within.

[00:37:31]
It must come from a place that is distinct – and I would say even independent – somewhat independent of what others mirror to us. All right, so one big, big reason why so many people can't really make progress in discerning their personal vocation is actually because they're unaware of the life scripts that they have. Because really, it's something that is operating in the background.

[00:38:04]
Most of us, we don't know it's there unless we know what we're looking for, right? We won't know it's there. We don't know how much it impacts our likes, our dislikes, because in a sense we have great capacity for self-deception – human beings, right? And so, sometimes, we begin to believe our own life scripts. We begin to believe that that's who we are.

[00:38:26] TELL-TALE SIGNS WE ARE LIVING OUT OF OUR PERSONAS
We begin to believe that we are the personas that we want to project to the world. And all the while, even if, let's say externally, we seem very confident and we can seem like we are even very accomplished, one of the tell-tale signs that you will know that you're actually living out of your life scripts and not out of a deep integrated place of a core identity of who you are, is that you have this feeling that any time – at any time, the other shoe drop. You have this suspicion that you are acting and you're afraid that one day you'll be found out; that people will find out you're not as great as you are, not as smart as you are, you're not as articulate as you are or whatever it is.

[00:39:09]
Right, that's one tell-tale sign. Even if nothing externally in your life shows this, you know there's a niggling sense in your gut, in your heart. This is not real. Another tell-tale sign is that you have a hidden life. You have a double life. You have one life that's lived for the world to see, and you have a secret life.

[00:39:33]
Maybe some addiction, some compulsion, some hidden secret relationship that you're having on the side. Something that gives you a reprieve from having to put on this show, this constant show and performance of who you are to the world. I say this without judgment. I've been there and I know why we go there. It's because we cannot live a life – we can't; we are not created to live a life of just performing.

[00:40:04]
When we live falsely, when we just live out of personas and we are distant from ourselves, we're absent from our true selves – we neglect what's inside us. It comes out some other way. That secret lives that you may have, that secret addiction that you may have, that inappropriate relationship that you may have, whatever it is – that's actually a cry for help from you.

[00:40:31]
You are longing for integrity, integration, wholeness – okay, wholeness. I don't want to be fragmented. You don't want to be fragmented. None of us can be happy when we are fragmented. We want to be whole and we all long to be authentic. But the thing is, we're terrified that we won't be accepted and loved if we're just who we are.

[00:40:52]
That's because many of us have experienced that in our own home, in our own families or our friends, people don't seem to like us or accept us very well when we reveal our vulnerability or our flaws or our weaknesses. That's actually not – that's not our fault. It's part of the reality of a broken world. And that is why this interior journey into integration and authenticity can only happen if we have something more solid to stand on than just the relationships that we know and the imperfect love that we get from other people, right.

[00:41:29]
It's all of this somehow but resting on something far more solid and secure. And for those of us – and this is actually – this tends to be my audience, right. You are someone who says that I have some kind of relationship with God, or I desire to have some kind of relationship with God.

[00:41:50]
That's the rock on which we stand on. You know, that's the story for another day as to how we can develop that relationship so that it becomes that secure foundation on which we stand on. So, I invite you, kind of like a call to action, you know? Call to action from today's sharing – maybe ponder on what might your life scripts be that is kind of running your life, that's making you perform.

[00:42:23]
And without judgment, without judgment – but just kind of like ponder what that may be and how it might be actually impacting your ability to discern what ultimately your life's calling may be and what your personal vocation may be. You are in my prayers.

[00:42:45] PRAXIS: LISTEN. PONDER. ACT
Here are the praxis prompts for this episode. One – Listen: as you listened to me talk about scripts and the ways that they block our discernment, what resonated with you? Two – Ponder: I invite you to ponder when was the last time you kind of experienced yourself just automatically reacting in a certain way, in a particular situation, and then later wondering, why did I do that? Why is it that I always react that way? So, try to remember that last time you had such an experience.

[00:43:45]
Three – Act: I invite you to try and name, if you can – just kind of like name that memory that may have come up in step two – when I invited you to ponder and recall the last time in a particular situation, you reacted a certain way and then you found yourself wondering afterwards, why did I react that way or why is it that I always seem to react that way in this kind of circumstance? Or with this particular person?

[00:44:18]
See if you can name what was it that you were trying to do, okay. In that reaction of yours, what were you trying to prove? What were you trying to prove about yourself? Usually when we are very reactive, we're trying to prove something, we're trying to do something, we're trying to be, or demonstrate the way we are – or you know, a particular way.

[00:44:42]
See if you can describe it or name that. And this is a very simple way that you can begin to start observing and discovering what might be your life scripts, right. And this is just to cultivate that awareness. What are the patterns that you find yourself repeating? Who are you trying to be? What are you trying to prove?

[00:45:14]
And what you put down could be the beginnings of identifying what some of the life scripts that are in operation in your life. Well, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope that it has blessed you and I wish you blessed journeying as you continue to uncover more of what your life scripts may be and how they may be holding you hostage from becoming the person that God created you and meant you to be.

[00:45:43] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me, where new episodes drop every first and third Wednesdays off the month. Remember, the most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, and no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

Don't forget to visit my website at becomingmepodcast.com and to subscribe to my newsletter, as well as to this podcast. Until the next episode. Happy becoming!