Your Life Story Is Not Who You Really Are | Eckhart Tolle

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]A great degree of unhappiness in humans that they live with on a daily basis does not arise from the situations they find themselves in.

[00:00:16]A greater amount of unhappiness arises that is created by an unhappy narrative in their minds which they call me and my life.

[00:00:37]So the important thing is to realize then there are thoughts that continuously go through your head and are you able to be aware for example of certain repetitive thoughts that you tend to have in your mind because they may be there every day. They may resurface in many situations regard in relation to other people to yourself. Do you have recurring thoughts about yourself, about your life? Have you already come to a conclusion about what how your life is? Have you reached the conclusion that your you have your life is a has been failed. You have failed in some in the endeavor of your life. Your life has been a disaster.

[00:01:25]You've missed out on everything.

[00:01:30]Is the the narrative in your head?

[00:01:33]What's it telling you about yourself?

[00:01:35]What what is the story of my life? What is it saying? Is it pleasant? Is it unpleasant?

[00:01:43]Now, the question is, what reality does that actually have?

[00:01:51]Of course, it it's connected with your past, your historical past. You remember the past. You remember things that went okay. You remember the things that didn't go according to expectation.

[00:02:05]So do you and out of that a narrative forms and you call that my life. Now a great degree of unhappiness in humans that they live with on a daily basis does not arise from the situations they find themselves in.

[00:02:29]A greater amount of unhappiness arises that is created by an unhappy narrative in their minds which they call me and my life and they don't know that if they could look through that and see that a large amount of unhappiness in my life and unhappiness could be anger, it could be sadness, it could be resentment, ment.

[00:03:01]It could unhappiness can take many forms.

[00:03:04]Even a slight irritation is a small form of unhappiness.

[00:03:15]And so many people are unhappy with themselves or they put all the blame on others, which is still part of your narrative.

[00:03:23]And then you're unhappy with all those people who have messed up your life.

[00:03:29]I'm not saying that things are done to people that are bad, but I'm talking here about deriving an identity from your historical past or the way in which your mind interprets your historical past.

[00:03:46]It may not be the actual events because if you ask your sibling about a similar thing 20 years ago, he or she might have completely different story of the same event happens quite often.

[00:04:00]So me and my life is my and people are trapped in the conceptual my life and the problematic my life and they carry around this burden of my life. I hope it's going to work out in the future because I still have years left.

[00:04:21]I could still achieve happiness.

[00:04:25]That's the hope.

[00:04:27]But then the hope has a downside and that is what if it gets worse?

[00:04:36]And so you go from hope to fear.

[00:04:42]And of course, I can tell you it might get better for a while and then it will get worse because you're going to get die and the body either you just die suddenly or the body gets older and older and then you hard to walk anymore and you you get retired and you don't have an identity anymore. this to do with your social function. And there you sit and really it's getting worse now. Who am I now? I don't have the job anymore. Nobody tells me who I am.

[00:05:19]Of course, eventually there's always the form begins to dissolve.

[00:05:27]I'm not saying that you should not try to improve the conditions of your life.

[00:05:36]But more importantly is to realize that you do not have a life because that's people say my life. Now if you look at the structure of that sentence my life there's a duality there because if you say my life that implies that you have it it's mine. So it implies two duality. If you say my life there's you and the life that you have it belongs to me it's mine.

[00:06:15]So the this thought this language creates a duality in your mind. Call it my life.

[00:06:23]That's interesting. So there's me and I have a life and then the fear comes in.

[00:06:29]If I have a life, I might lose it.