Just so you know I am not a “techie”. Ask any of my friends that used to work with me in the nonprofit world and they will wholeheartedly agree. I was the last hold out  in our office to get on Facebook years ago and until recently the thought of Twitter made me feel just a little bit sick to my stomach. For as long as I can remember I have pronounced to myself and to all those around me out loud “I am not a techie!” I’ve worn it almost like a badge of honor and have completely and thoroughly believed it. That is up until about a month ago.

The problem was that story I had told over and over again to myself and anyone else who would listen didn’t really serve me anymore. Almost from the beginning of knowing I wanted to become a health and wellness coach I knew I wanted to be able to reach more people by including the use of technology somehow in my business (hmmm, that was going to be pretty hard for this non techie over here…).

It was time to look this limiting belief square in the eye and figure out what was going on. I started to ask questions of friends and family who I considered to be more technologically savvy than me to see how it was they were able to figure this stuff out when I so clearly could not. It turns out they approached it completely differently. Instead of coming at it from a place of defensive overwhelm (yup, that was me) they approached it from an angle of fun and curiosity. And because they looked at it like a challenge rather than a chore they did it a lot more, and because they did it a lot more they were a lot better at it than me. As I watched them work I started to think, “hey, I could do that. Maybe I don’t have to be so non-techie after all…” And in that moment my story began to change a little.

We are all a product of the stories that we tell. Stories are so powerful and the more times we tell them the more we believe them and so does everyone else around us. If you take a minute to think about it can you come up with a few repeated stories you’ve told people about yourself over the years? Some of those stories can be beautiful wonderful ways we identify ourselves and can start very early in life (I like to tell my boys over and over, “you are adventure boys!” hoping it will stick). Hang on to those ones! Others that we pick up along the way can serve us for a time but as we change and grow not so much, or can be downright detrimental from the start.

I would like to say that I am now a technological wiz kid. I am not. However, I am smart and I am committed to figuring it out and working on it every day. The other day I caught myself mid-sentence trying to tell someone the same old story, “I am not a tech….”and I literally stopped myself, shook my head and said instead, “I am learning how to be more techie”.

Listen. You are allowed to grow. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to be a completely different person than you were when you were a kid (lets hope so, right?!?) and even if other people don’t know who you have become yet you are allowed to write yourself a new story. Just make sure it’s one that you love and inspires you.

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”  -Carlos Casteneda