Our experiences have tremendous power. They help us define ourselves in many ways, and can reinforce whatever we've been taught to believe about ourselves and about our place in the world.

Too often, though, we base our perceptions of ourselves — and our inherent value — not on the truth and what we know is real about ourselves, but on what we allow others, through their own actions, to say about us. And it all goes on inside our own heads.

What we're willing to take as fact is just a piece of someone else's fiction.

If you're going to believe anyone's story about you, believe your own. Because you know better than anyone the truth of who you really are.