A short reflection

The Story You Learned to Live By

And the one you get to write next.

This is a reflective exercise to help you tease out and uncover the limiting beliefs that may be quietly shaping the outcomes you are experiencing in life, and discover where you have the opportunity to create something different.

We are all great storytellers of the subconscious conclusions and decisions we have made. These are quietly drawn from the events, experiences, and people that have shaped us, many long before we could put words to them.

The important context of this exercise is that it is a naming exercise, not a blaming one. Our learned beliefs can be shaped by the way we were parented, experiences with teachers or other adults, friendships, the messages we heard repeatedly, or even a seemingly insignificant moment in the school playground that stayed with us. Ironically, it is rarely the event itself that shapes us but the conclusion we drew from it. So, a young mind will create a rule instead, such as “I must not be enough”, “I am not safe”, “I must not be worth staying for”.

These rules can take us in a few directions: pushing you to overcompensate, strive, perform, control, please, prove, or it can push you to undercompensate: to shrink, avoid, hide, stay small. Both are the same thing: protection, wearing two different personalities.

It’s easy to mistake these for flaws. They’re not, they’re strategies that worked. The question now is whether they still need to run the show in your adult life, and, as a famous TV personality once said, “how’s that working out for you?”

To be clear, this isn’t a trauma or diagnostic tool. It’s a way of noticing the patterns that may have been quietly shaping your relationship with food, money, intimate relationships, work and yourself for years. Rather than trying to fix a collection of symptoms and behaviours, we’re going to the source, with curiosity rather than judgement, and questioning whether the beliefs that once made sense still deserve to direct your life today.

A hand releasing a stone reading Behaviour Change and Self Identity, as a blue butterfly rises from it on a sunlit path.

I believe “if it can be learned, it can be unlearned,” but here’s the thing, insight can be a full stop, or it can be a way forward.

You get to choose.

I like to think of this as the start of an amazing journey. It’s not an excavation, more a gentle lifting of the stone we never realised hid so much possibility underneath. You are not required to reinvent yourself. This is about gently letting go of the thinking that no longer works for you, the thinking that may sit at the core of the repeated cycles in your life that keep yielding outcomes you don’t want.

So, let’s begin.

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Question one

Your result

What's likely running the show

Based on your answers, these are the beliefs doing the most work right now, ranked highest to lowest. All seven are shown in full below, not just your own.

Knowing is just the start An Invitation

You’ve exposed stories shaping your experiences and outcomes. Insight alone can’t create change. Real shift happens when you do the work with what you’ve uncovered.

Explore my workbook →

* Where this comes from: these seven patterns are checked against established psychological models, including cognitive behavioural therapy’s model of core beliefs, schema therapy, and patterns consistent with the DSM-5’s criteria for disordered eating, such as secretive or binge eating. This is a psychoeducational synthesis, not a diagnostic tool.

The Self Belief Workbook - Module I

I created The Story You Learned to Live By: The Self-Belief Module Workbook as a gentle guide to take you through the deeper work of challenging the stories that never belonged with you in the first place and rewriting the outcomes for the rest of your life.

Drawn from years of extensive research and practice, writing and working with people, this 86-page workbook takes you beyond simply living with a label and staying in the same place. Understand what sits beneath the pattern, challenge what you’ve come to believe about yourself, and begin to reshape the way you move forward.

Download The Workbook

The workbook is $29 AUD.

If you feel you’d benefit from more personal support along the way, I also offer one-to-one coaching sessions.
Visit foodnoisefreedom.com.au →

And if you’re looking for more intensive support, you can find out more about my personalised 90-day Food Noise Freedom support program.
Explore Food Noise Freedom →

You’ve done the discovery, now it’s time to show up for yourself and do the work.

This is a self-reflection tool for general wellbeing and personal insight. It isn't a psychological diagnosis, a clinical assessment, or a substitute for professional mental health care. If any of this brings up more than you want to sit with on your own, a therapist, counsellor, or your GP is the right next step.