Ep 159: Using Life Scripting to Get Unstuck and Stop Recurring Patterns In Your Life

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello , friends . I hope you had an amazing week . Today is the last day of the new year .

It is New Year's Eve , and I always find New Year's Eve kind of exciting , like I instantly go to next year , you know , and all the things that I want to do , and all the new experiences I hope to have , and the things I want to achieve and all of that . That's instantly where I go .

You may or may not be the same , but today I want to do the opposite . I don't want to look at next year yet , because we are in the final moments of 2023 . And I want to take this moment to think about our life in a different way .

Specifically , I want to think about the types of things that might have you feeling a little stuck today in some area of your life , you know , whether it's in your relationships or at work , in your career or with money , or how you care for yourself , like whatever it is .

I want you to think about any area of your life where you feel stuck and I want to ask you how long do you feel you've been stuck in that area ? How many times have you attracted the same type of experience or person or situation into your life ?

That may be a situation or a person or experience that you don't want , right , I don't know about you , but I have had some experiences on repeat and people on repeat in my life , and I think we all do , and I want to talk about it today through a different lens than I would typically use on the podcast .

My whole coaching approach that I was trained on is centered in the CBT based approach to coaching , so the cognitive behavioral therapy approach , which is a genre of psychology , but we apply it to the person's future instead of ruminating and exploring the past .

Now , today , I do want to talk about the past , but I don't want to do it through the lens of CBT . I want to talk about it through a different part of psychology , and sometimes I think it's really helpful to hear things in a different way , because I feel like sometimes that can reveal things to us that we just hadn't thought of before .

When we hear something different , and for me that occurred . When I got exposed to what I'm about to share with you today on the podcast , I thought what a interesting way to think about it . So today I want to talk about what they call transactional analysis .

It's also called TA therapy and it's a form of psychological treatment and it was developed by a psychiatrist named Eric Byrne in the late 1950s . Now his whole method was really designed to help people improve aspects of their relationships , and it did that by kind of getting deep into personality development and how that was formed back when they were a child .

But I actually want to take just a part of it , and one of the tools they use in transactional therapy is called life scripting , and I want to talk about that today because I feel like that is incredibly helpful to think about when we're feeling a little stuck and we don't want to go into the new year with blind spots on where we're stuck , and we definitely

don't want to go into the new year unaware or just blindly experiencing the same recurring undesirable things in our life again and again and again . Everything starts with awareness and I think this tool , this life scripting theory and tool , could help you look at areas of your life where you feel like they're on repeat , but you don't really want them to be .

They can bring a fresh perspective to that . So let's go ahead and dive in . So life scripting refers to recurring patterns that happen in our lives where the roots of the experience lie in our past . So I don't know about you , but I was saying there are things that crop up in , I think , all of our lives .

I've observed it with friends , I've observed it with family and I have definitely observed it in my own life where it's like how did I get here again ? How am I experiencing something like that again ? Why does this keep happening to me ?

And the reason is that it's centered in this life script that got formed way back when , where we had an experience , something happened or someone said something to us , whatever , and we , our brain , made an interpretation of that thing and that interpretation we made it mean something , usually something about us .

Usually , if we're stuck , something not so great about us , that's probably not true . It's just a filter that we had on the situation . We made it interpret it . We made it mean something , we interpreted it .

And then that becomes stored away in our mind and it's something that we start to think with repetition , and we know what happens when we think a thought over and over and over again . We just talked about that last week . We talk about it a lot on the podcast .

It becomes a belief , right , and that belief , when we have a similar experience in the future , we will pull out that belief , and that belief then becomes a decision that we make about how to respond to it , because that belief makes us feel something , either good or bad , and that feeling then causes us to decide to do something or not do something in response

to that experience . So it becomes a behavior that we have , an action or an inaction everyone to put it and then that becomes the result that we have , which is , you know , maybe we're stuck or maybe we have an undesirable , undesirable result that just keeps reappearing and reappearing , right ? We all have those patterns of behavior and that's how it happens .

It's a life script and the reason why this happens is that our brain , going all the way back to the beginning of time , we have that , that primitive part of our brain . That sits all the way in the back of our brain , at the brainstem , and this is the one that dates back to the caveman ancestors .

One of the things that the brain likes to do is it likes to categorize things that happen , and the reason it does that is that primitive brain is all about responses and urges and it's all about instantaneously reacting to something .

And that was important back when our caveman ancestors lived in the cave and we're facing mortal dangers like lions roaming on the prairie and saber-toothed tigers and things like that , like they wanted to . You know , the brain was really designed to keep us alive back then and that part of our brain is still around .

So when we experience things and a life script happens right , this the script that I just walked you through where something happens or said , we interpret that , we make it mean something that then gets stored away and becomes a belief .

And then , when we experience anything even remotely similar , our brain will want to categorize that thing in a certain in that bucket . Right , we instantly do that .

We're not aware of it , you know , we're not conscious of it , but then what happens is that we start to show up in the same way in that type of experience , right , and we start feeling , like you know , by the time we get to midlife especially it's especially apparent with relationships I think we start to feel like we're doing this dance all the time with the

same types of people , right , and we feel ourselves just responding to things in ways that maybe , in one part of our brain , we know isn't great or isn't necessarily how we want to show up , but it's almost like it's compulsive , like we can't help it . Well , I'm telling you , you can help it .

But the reason that is happening is this life script , which I think is a really helpful way of thinking about it , and that we have a specific series of thoughts and behaviors that cause us to have similar experiences over and over and over again .

Whether those are positive or negative , we're not aware , but these life scripts are playing out all the time and I think that's why , like in the CBT-based approach , I'll have , like clients will say , the belief no , I get that my result was caused by what I did and didn't do , and I get that what I didn't do was caused by how I feel , and I get that how

I feel is caused by what I think , but I can't grab the thought and it can be hard , right , because our brain moves really fast .

But I think if we can start to look at the areas of our life where we're feeling a little stuck or where we feel like something's playing out on repeat and we don't necessarily want it to , if we can look at it through this scripting lens , I think it helps .

It gives us a perspective that is a little bit , it's bigger and we can see the pattern , versus trying to catch the individual thought , which sometimes I think is hard . You have to get deep into the thought work and I think it takes a lot of time .

I have found , especially on some of the deeper things , it can take a while to really identify oh , I keep having the same thought again and again , and that's not a helpful thought , right , and then you can work on shifting it once you have that level of awareness , but it can take a while to get to that awareness .

This life scripting thing , I think , is helpful because it allows you to see the whole pattern and sometimes that's easier to recognize than an individual thought . So we're not aware really , that when we're in a situation that it feels familiar , it's like how did I get back here .

It may not be exactly the same thing or exactly the same person , but it's very similar . We're like , well , how did that happen ? I didn't like it the first time , so what part of it is attracting that to me again ? Like what am I doing to invite this back in ?

And I would challenge you to say that you're probably not inviting it in , but your brain is categorizing it in a certain way and so you're playing at that script again on autopilot , whereas if you chose , if you could catch yourself and say , ah , I recognize this .

This is very similar to what these other things were that happened in my life , that weren't necessarily great or that I didn't necessarily want .

It's like if you can catch it at that macro level , you can prevent your brain maybe from doing that automatic categorization of the thing and you can just say , nope , I recognize this type of person , I recognize this type of situation , I recognize this , whatever the thing is , and I'm not going to go back through that whole script .

Instead , I'm just going to categorize it in a completely different way and therefore my reaction to it and my response to it will be completely different . So let's just take it to relationships .

It's like let's just say that you've had two or three relationships over the course of your romantic life that maybe weren't great , they didn't serve you , they were a type of person that together the two of you just didn't work . And you feel like you keep finding that person again and again and again .

I would submit to you that there's a familiarity in it that your brain recognizes right , and you enter into this kind of dance of behavior . That may not be exactly the same , but it's kind of similar to what's played out again and again and again . In a different way .

If you were catching that life script and allowing yourself to recognize oh , this feels kind of familiar and I don't want to go through this again . I'm not going to enter into even this , I'm not going to entertain this relationship with this type of person , because I know this doesn't play out well for me .

Same thing can be said in your corporate life a type of a boss , right .

There's certain types of leaders , right , and some leaders play well for us and some leaders don't . And you know , I don't know about you , but I have friends and colleagues and even myself to some degree . There have been certain types of leaders that I've had again and again and again . Some of those are perfect for me .

You know , there's a certain archetype of a leader that plays well with what I care about , my value system and who I try to show up as , and there are certain ones that just don't right . And what's helpful is to recognize what are those dynamics of the scripting that happens that isn't so great .

What are the qualities , what are the types of circumstances , what are the types of behaviors from a leader in this example that don't serve you , and knowing that would allow you to just decide this dynamic isn't going to serve me . I need a different type of a leader and it needs to look less like this and more like this .

So it's really about , you know , the awareness of the patterns of behavior that are happening in our life and how they influence how we show up , and that we have the ability to influence how we perceive the world around us , and it's about the choices we make and that we don't have to keep repeating these experiences .

We can't always control the experiences that are served up to us or the people that enter our life , but we can absolutely change how we respond and interpret and categorize that so that we either remove ourselves from that situation or completely change how we show up in the exact same script . We can play a different part in the script .

It's , I think , a helpful way to think about it . So let's talk for a minute about just in detail where do the scripts come from , and they like so many things in our life .

They come from way back when we were young , right in our family of origin , and they get programmed in at a young age and it happens in the following way Something important will happen , you know , and we make that mean something about us , about the world , about other people , and our young mind interprets that , and that interpretation ultimately gets stored away

as a belief , but it becomes a script , right ? It's almost like what gets imprinted in our brain is how the whole thing plays out .

It's like , oh , situation A or person A happens to me and therefore it's this kind of a category and this is the way that I'm going to respond to it and all the different things that are going to happen , and that script then forms the basis for the future , right ?

So the way we categorize things or whatever , it's more than the beliefs that get stored away .

It's the entire playing out of that scenario that gets stored away and it becomes something that , in certain types of situations , we can find out ourselves living this script on repeat , and we have the same interpretation of the same type of thing again and again and again . Whenever something similar comes up .

It doesn't have to be exactly the same , but something that falls into that similar territory . And embedded in these scripts are ideas of who we are in the world . Right , it gets all the way into our self image , which is all of the work that I do , all the way . At the root , like how do we see ourselves ?

Embedded in all of these scripts are ways of thinking about yourself . How do you perceive yourself ? Who do you believe that you are ? How do you believe you relate to other people ? How successful do you believe that you are ? And when we find ourselves in similar situations in the future , we'll just enter into that script and we'll play that part .

And that's why , at times , we can end up saying how did I do this again ? Like , how do I get back here again ? It's a life script , right ? And if you feel stopped , if you feel stuck in a particular area of your life , and not for the first time , that means that you have an active life script that's playing out that isn't serving you right .

We get stuck when we continue playing the same script in our heads and we think that that script is the only solution . It's like situation A happens we always have to have this interpretation and therefore we have to do this set of things and therefore we get the same result .

We all do this all the time with jobs that we have , with things that we do in our life , our hobbies , our relationships , any part of our daily life , our habits . All of that is a script and we get unstuck when we allow ourselves to consider and maybe practice playing a different script .

So if you were going through this exercise with a TA therapist , they would be actively working on identifying those recurring things that keep happening that you don't want right , and you would dissect those . What's my role in this and what am I doing and not doing in terms of my behaviors , and what is that resulting in ? Right ?

Because we can't control everything that happens to us or every person that enters our life , but we can absolutely control how we respond to those things and that's where our choice is available to us and I think when we're stuck , we don't always see that as a choice .

We feel like there's only one solution to a certain situation , and that is what plays out for us again and again , and again .

And the truth of the matter is that if you're flexible and realize that we all have choices in everything , it may feel a little uncomfortable entering into a similar life script and deciding to play a different role than you've played in the past . That will feel very uncomfortable . It's like an actor probably practicing their lines for the first time .

You're not going to feel sure of yourself , you're not going to feel confident , you're not going to feel awkward . It's like trying on a new type of clothing or something that you don't feel entirely comfortable in . It's like you're not used to it .

But if you look at it in that way that this is a script that keeps happening and I don't want to play this role anymore in this type of a scenario , what I'm going to do instead is this I'm going to interpret it in this way .

I'm going to decide to think in this new way and that's going to cause me to feel a different way and that's going to cause me to do a set of different things that could take even the most . Let's just say that you're having the same argument with your spouse on repeat once a month .

It could be about anything how you spend money , the business that you're trying to stand up and they think you're spending too much time . Whatever it is , you could decide that I don't want to play out that script again . It's not serving my relationship , it's not serving me . It's keeping both of us stuck . You can decide going forward .

When the argument starts again . I'm going to play a different role and it's going to be this role . I'm going to be doing this set of things , I'm going to be thinking this thought and therefore that's going to , by default , change that script and it will lead to a different result Now , right away .

That result may or may not be the exact one that you want , but the point is to play a different part , to see yourself really as the actor , the leading lady , the leading man in your life , and to just decide that you want to flip the script .

You want to change the scripts that are keeping you stuck , and you can do this in so many ways where I think sometimes we can feel powerless when we feel like we're in a script , like , let's just say , we keep attracting the same type of love interest and it doesn't serve us Well recognizing the things about that script that are running on repeat .

What are the patterns of behavior that this other person has ? What are the qualities that the person has ? What are the types of things that they do or say to you that feel familiar in a way that doesn't serve you ? You can simply get great at recognizing that and just not entering into a script with them . Don't enter into the relationship .

If you're in the relationship , get out of the relationship If you don't want to get out of the relationship . You just want to change something about the relationship that doesn't serve you . Change how you react in that same situation next time .

That will change the dynamic between you and gradually , through a series of script tweaking , you can get yourself to a better place . Right . Same thing is true if you're in a dynamic at work . I have so many clients that say to me I can't change the culture of the place and it's super toxic . Or I can't change the dynamic with my boss .

They're micromanager , or they've always had it in for me , or whatever . I want to offer you up a completely different idea , and it may be one that right now , when I say it , you will 100% disagree with me . I know it's true because I've been in this situation before , not this exact situation but I've been able to change and completely flip the script .

So I know this works . And what I mean is , if you find yourself in a dynamic with someone at work that doesn't serve you , long before you decide to leave the situation and get a different job , you can do that for sure , and in doing that you're changing the script .

I will say , though I know from experience , if you do not change who you're being , you will find yourself in that type of script . You will find yourself in that script again in the new place .

I promise you it happens all the time to all of us , and if you've had more than one job , I know you can identify similar patterns where it's like how is this happening again in a new company ?

It's happening because there are just certain dynamics that happen in a corporate setting , and the key is not to run from job to job to job looking for the perfect place where . That won't occur , because I can promise you it will occur there too . Just it will have a different person in that role , you know .

It will have a different tenor and tone to it , but I promise you it will happen again . The key is not to change the situation or the company . The key is to change who you are being . I'm not saying don't go out and get another job , because you can do that .

What I want you to do first , though , is change yourself in that environment , because sometimes , when you show up differently , the entire script changes , and sometimes I've even had it happen where it is like nighttime to daytime , where it's like you think there's just no hope . This is not ever going to change or ever be a situation .

That serves me , and if you simply decide that you're going to play a different part in that script and that part is going to focus on what you can control and who you decide to be , no matter what kind of stuff is happening around you , no matter who is your boss , no matter what they say to you , no matter how many terrible ways they show up in the world

, or no matter what kind of toxic stuff might be happening , you can simply center yourself and decide to play a different role in that environment . When you do that and you learn how to show up as your most powerful , focused , centered , undistracted , high performing version of yourself , no matter what's going on .

You have now next leveled yourself because you become bulletproof . I'm not saying that you want to stay in that same dynamic because you don't have to . There are other places to work . There's no perfect place , but you don't have to stay in a terrible situation , whether it's a personal relationship or a professional relationship .

But before you change it , you need to learn how to play a different part in that script . So , thinking of yourself as the lead actor or actress in your life , you need a different set of lines that are running in your head . You need a different thought about who you are , and that is agnostic of whatever the crap is that's going on .

That you don't want and you need to be running a different script . And when you do that , the entire dynamic changes because you're different . So the cast of characters has changed and therefore the ensemble is different , and so the dance is different , and so the outcome is going to be different . It still may not be what you want .

You may still need to change your partner or you may still need to change your job , but what I want you to do today is to think about the life scripts that are running on repeat in your life . What are they ? What are the archetypes of those scripts ? Who are those people ? What are those experiences and how have you been categorizing them ?

What have you been making those experiences mean about you , about the world , about your possibilities and all of those interpretations ? What have they caused you to do ? You know what actions or inactions do you typically take and those kinds of experiences .

You need to kind of understand that , because that is the script that's playing out and the actions and actions you take they deliver the results that you have . So , if you're not happy with that script , think about yourself as an actor and you're playing a part .

You're playing a role and the next time that script starts to play out , just decide in advance a different way that you want to show up and be very intentional about that . You don't have to keep arguing with your spouse in the same way . You don't have to keep responding to the actions of a challenged leader in the same way .

You can just decide a different way that you want to respond and stay focused on that , and that will change the script . That will flip the script . I think this is really helpful to think about in this way because it's going to lead you to greater growth as a person .

Running from situations only to find yourself in the same situation again , or not running from situations and just allowing yourself to stay stuck and playing this part in this life script that you don't want to play ? It doesn't serve you . It's really a recipe for a very frustrating and I don't know a life that I think lacks joy and meaning .

And you can change all of that and give yourself the opportunity to really next level , to really grow as a human being , by saying I don't have to run from these situations .

I can just recognize when a script is starting to play out because I've done the work , I've thought about it , I've thought about the things that are playing out in my life on repeat and I've done the due diligence to think about like what are these experiences , these set of experiences ? What do they all have in common ?

How have I showed up in similar ways and how do I want to do that differently in the future ?

That is when next level change happens and , like I said , you can still you know leave the relationship , you can still leave the job , you can still change things , but you want to change it after you first changed yourself and who you're being in that script that you don't want in your life anymore .

I think that is a really powerful thing to think about on the last day of this year , because it helps you understand why you are where you are in your life and how you became who you believe you are . And it is , I think , the very beginning .

This understanding the life scripts and the role you play in them is the very beginning of understanding how to start seeing yourself in a new way and even defining what you want that to be . And that is the beginning of what I think is so exciting about what's about to happen for all of us at midnight tonight .

Your time is that we're in a new year , and a new year is new possibility and it's a new set of experiences . And you can end and find yourself at this time next year not with a feeling that you're in the same place or that you're stuck or that you keep having the same dreaded experiences again and again and again .

You can actually find yourself in a place where you said , hey , I can't control all the things that are gonna be presented to me in the new year , but I 100% can allow myself to see them , the situations , the people , as scripts and I get to decide the part that I want to play in that script and therefore create the outcome that I want in my life .

So I love this transactional analysis and life scripting thing because it gives you this feeling of power . Being an actor , you can't control how other people show up and deliver their lines and play their part , but you can control yours .

I'm a movie lover so I'll leave you with this thought you can have sort of a mediocre movie , but you can have an actor or an actress that clearly has decided to show up as their very best inside that movie and while everything else might be lackluster and the sound may not be great and the editing may leave something to be desired , and even some of the

other actors might be not so great , but sometimes you can really notice a performance and it stands out and it changes how you feel about the movie or even maybe the success of the movie . That is what's available to you in your life .

So it helps you to not look at yourself as a victim of the things or the people around you , but to say , no , I can play the leading lady or the leading man in this scenario , and here's how I'm gonna show up . Here are the lines I'm delivering . Here's the role that I've decided to play . It doesn't really matter what anyone else does .

That's when I think we become our most powerful , and I think it's super helpful to look back on this last day of the year at some of the things that keep coming up for you that may not be welcome , and I want you to think about them as a script and ask yourself what role are you playing in that script and what role would you like to play to drive to

a different outcome , one that maybe has you leaving that script for good or changing it in a way that is more palatable ? Right , that is what I wanna offer you today , so it's a different way of thinking about it . Super helpful , I think , on this last day of 2023 . So , whatever you are planning for the new year I'm personally planning a very quiet one .

It's my favorite type of New Year's Eve . I want to offer you that this can be a really powerful close to 2023 and the opening up of a new year with unlimited possibilities . I hope you join me tomorrow because I'm gonna have a special New Year's edition .

I don't usually do a Monday podcast , but I am because it is New Year's Day and I have to because I love a bright , shiny New Year .

I hope that as you end 2023 , you look back on the year that was with curiosity and with gratitude and with love , because it may not have been everything that you wanted , but you gain valuable knowledge and that is available to you , to mine , and learn from and take those lessons into a year that can become , honestly , whatever you dream of it being , and that

is my wish for you . So , wishing you a very , very happy New Year's Eve , join me tomorrow for New Year's Day , or we're gonna talk about possibility . I will see you then and until then , have a great day . Do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach

. I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside , we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash Next Level . Don't forget the thepurposefulcareercom backslash Next Level . Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of .

We'll see you there .