I Was Still Living Out a Story That Was No Longer Mine

🎧 “Candy” – Sonny Tennet

Last night I couldn’t get to sleep until 2am. Was it the full moon? The coffee I had too late? The fact that Mercury is probably in retrograde? I was ready to blame anything. But the moment I realised how late it was, my brain did what it always does, immediately started catastrophising about how terrible today was going to be.

I was tossing and turning, trying to force myself to sleep. I tried reading, meditating, sitting up, even tried telling myself stay awake, stay awake, don’t fall asleep, reverse psychology on my own brain. Like a child who suddenly desperately wants to sleep the moment you tell them they don’t have to.

None of it worked.

Part of me was getting pissed off. But another part of me was like girl, why are you trying to force something that clearly isn’t happening?

So instead I put Netflix on, probably the biggest sleep no-no there is, but I thought f*ck it, if I’m going to be awake I may as well enjoy it. I let go of my commitments for the next morning and gave myself full permission to stay up and sleep in.

Within half an hour, I was out.

It wasn’t the best sleep of my life. But I was asleep.

When I woke up, my mind went straight to autopilot.

Oh. Today is going to be a struggle.

I was in that anxious, off-kilter energy, you know the one. When you haven’t slept properly and you just feel… not right. I took my time, meditated, did some EFT tapping. Did my best to ground myself back down but it wasn’t easy.

Then I went for my morning coffee.

The waitress told me she was exhausted, she’d only slept two hours. And I was like, me too, except I actually had slept, I just didn’t feel like it.

But what she said next really made me stop and think.

She said she has to put on a smile even when she’s tired. That she has two faces, one in front of people smiling, and one behind closed doors completely exhausted.

And I thought — wow. That used to be me. Yet here I am in a completely new life, new reality and still playing the same story?

I don’t have to live out that story anymore.

The lack of sleep had triggered an old belief. If I don’t sleep, I will struggle all day. And I was already playing it out on autopilot before the day had even started. My mind had gone straight to the old story without even checking whether it was still true.

But my reality is so different now.

I’m no longer a PT running back-to-back sessions, having to be up at 4am, running on empty just to get through the day. I now work when I want to work. I create my own days. So why am I still playing out the old story? It’s like I’m a character trapped in a book that’s already been rewritten.

The waitress who had to smile through exhaustion, that used to be me. And it made me realise: the lack of sleep wasn’t the problem. The story I attached to it was.

Bringing awareness to it. Clearing that stress from my body. Shifting the story to actually match my reality, that’s the work.

The universe literally put that waitress in front of me to show me something.

My reality has already upgraded. But my internal operating system hadn’t caught up yet.

And it makes me wonder, what other outdated programmes am I still running without even realising it?