Let me be very clear on this:
We are controlled by our narratives. We are also the ones who write and direct the narratives we are eventually controlled by.
What is not being stated succinctly and directly is that there is conscious and unconscious narrative control going on 24/7. The conscious control is what you know about your narratives and what you have both written and rewritten in your life to get more from it by writing and rewriting them.
{cue Obewan Kanobe voice} Unfortunately, these are not the scripts you are looking for.{/cue}
It's those unconscious beasts <cough> narratives that are the bastards that'll bite you, cut you and kill you if you don't discover them before they direct you down a gauntlet of activities to which there is no return. We all have them too. They were written for us by our physical construction, our families, our friends, our cultures,, our societies, our governments and our world. And you internalized them without question, believing they ARE your narrative and you live by them not knowing that you took them on as you did.
Part of maturing is 1) discovering/uncovering, 2) examining and 3) modifying/adapting/adjusting/scraping these provided scripts as required by what you want and need, rather than what those scripts tell you that you want and need.
Yes, I call them scripts, not narratives. A narrative is a story. A script is how you participate in that story. I see a major difference in this. Every story that surrounds you may or may not change because of the specific conditions that surround you. That being said, in my narrative on narratives, I get to write/rewrite how I participate in these stories. This requires me to write/rewrite the script as I see fit. It also changes my story!
Of course, if you have been following my "story", you might have already realized my narratives have gone from externally imposed third person view to internally driven first person expression.
At least, that's the narrative that I have written so far!