You Are the Storyteller

You are a master storyteller. Every day you craft stories in your head about all kinds of things. Whether you are paying attention to your stories is irrelevant. They will evoke feelings.

What types of stories are you creating all day?

For starters, you make meaning of things. Look around the room you are in. What is in it? What does it look like right now? Notice the meaning you put on what you see. Pause and notice how you feel. Maybe the room you are in is beautiful, neat,and tidy, and you feel proud. Maybe you see a special item that someone gifted you or you purchased on a trip and you are thinking of a story about that person or that travel memory.

I’m currently sitting in my kitchen. It is 6:30am. There are dishes in the sink and on the cabinet from my daughter’s room that she brought down last night. I ask myself, “Why didn’t she put them in the dishwasher?”

My story-making quickly jumps to, “I’m a terrible parent because I haven't instilled that in her.” My mind goes to all the things I haven’t instilled in my children and that I’m failing them and they won’t be successful in life. That’s how quickly my creative story-making will take me to shame! My happy, centered, “I’m going to write my weekly wisdom and encouragement message” feeling has gone straight to anxious feelings in my body that I get when I’m in the “bad parenting” shame.

What other types of stories are we actively, subconsciously creating all day long?

Stories about the future. We convince ourselves that we know what’s going to happen. We think we know just exactly what everyone is going to think or how everyone will respond. It is really hilarious when you start paying attention to how good you are at making up the future and then believing it to be true.

We make up stories of expectations of how we want things to go or how we want people to behave. Then, we wait to see if it all turns out according to that story we made up. If it does, we feel good. When it doesn’t, well, that usually results in feeling not good.

We tell stories about our past. Some are embellished, others minimized. In some stories the pain of it gets worse, in others the hard stuff is minimized. Whether we are ruminating or reliving with joy, we are in the past and therefore we are making up stories through our own perceptions and those have a way of morphing over time.

We are master storytellers about who we are and how we see ourselves and how the people around us see us. We believe all of it.

The thing is, our stories left unchecked out of subconscious habit can lead us to shame, blame, guilt, regret, doubt, fear….. In other words, our stories, left to their own devices, will lead us to feelings that are no bueno. They will bring us down, which leads to the type of doing that keeps us stuck in the same circle of shoulds. The stories will have us upset with others and worse, disconnected from and disappointed in ourselves.

Do me a favor. Today, get curious about telling a new story. You are the storyteller - not the story. This year has been a doozy. No doubt about it. Please, for today, tell yourself a story that involves feeling proud of yourself. 2020 is literally changing every human on the planet. Don’t waste more time discrediting yourself in the face of it. Tell the hero story that will be the one you reflect back on for years to come. “That was a difficult year and I realized that I am capable of hard things. I discovered a new level of resiliency in me. I showed up. I loved. I found a way to keep living. It changed me. Forever and for the better.”

Let’s do it together. Every year, I hold an end-of-year ceremony, to release the current year and welcome the new one. Join me for this powerful evening with a candle, a cup of tea or glass of wine, and our good ole friend, Zoom. Just hit reply and let me know! I’ll give you all the details.

Courageously yours,