“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions:
“When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?”
– Gabrielle Roth
I would add one more.
When did you stop laughing?
One of the prevalent stories of our lives is the one of Prince Charming and the Perfect Princess. We all know it, because it’s a story we have been told since we were born, we’ve watched the story play out in books, in movies, in songs, and yet, we rarely see it work in life. Yet, we’ve all bought into the fairytale, because at different times in our lives we have tried to save someone or wished with all our might that someone would come along on a white steed and save us. I know I am guilty. In my 20’s I was ambitiously looking for Mr. Right, to come and save me from… whatever I needed saving from. I wanted to be Sleeping Beauty.
The fantasy of Prince Charming is a little like thinking about what you will do when you win the Lottery. Which is a great tool to distract us and is perfect if we’re avoiding our life. I might even make the argument that the Lotto fantasy is the same story with the character of Cash instead of Charming. These are hard stories to live with because we either sit around waiting to be a hero in someone else’s story or we sit around as a victim, waiting to be swept away from all our own troubles. Unfortunately, when we are sitting around we aren’t actually doing anything to change our life in any of the meaningful ways we might if we were taking action.
And, that last bit is key to why you have to kill the Sleeping Beauty/Prince Charming myth in order to grow.
Let me be clear, I like fairy tales, I love to read them and watch them at the movies. I just don’t want to pretend that I am waiting for the fairytale to show up and save me from my life. I don’t want to wait for Prince Charming, the Lottery, the perfect Mentor, the perfect body, the perfect job, I want to go out and find what makes me happy and grow if from the inside. It’s time to wake up.
I’ve always wondered at the end of the fairy tale, “and, they all lived happily ever after…” Not only is there no such thing as “happily ever after” it is an ending to a story that continues on the next page, it’s also an untruth that gets us into some serious trouble.
What if my life is filled with the normal ups and downs? What does that mean about my value, my abilities, and me? If I never meet Prince Charming am I lost? Or, I didn’t get the happily ever after just because I met Prince Charming, what then?
And, maybe I did find my Prince Charming, but he has a few bad habits, he doesn’t always listen to me the way I want him to, he doesn’t always clean up after himself, he disagrees with some of my genius ideas, he needs me to take care of him sometimes, sometimes he just needs me to be quiet, and happily ever after actually has taken an epic amount of work and willingness to find a middle path. In fact finding the right partner for my life, took a lot of courage and an astronomical amount of self-realization, self-improvement and some deeply honest and painful conversations with myself. I won’t even go into the painful conversations with my partner about my “not so Princess like” qualities that I have had to take a good look in the mirror about, so I could address them. I am happy; in fact, I may have found what amounts to a real happily ever after. But I am not happy because I sat around waiting for someone to come and save me from my past, my problems, or myself. I am happy with my life because it didn’t just magically show up, I have worked on my thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, my actions, and learned to take real ownership of my crap. These tools will stay with me and grow through the rest of my life and add to my happily ever after in real and tangible ways.
Learning to take care of yourself means you have to take your own leaps, you get to run with your equals, that you learn to trust yourself, and learn that you don’t require someone to help you feel powerful in your life. You don’t actually need to be saved. Your care is not dependent on someone else, it can’t just be taken away from you, and so you get make choices, make mistakes, learn, grow and kick ass for the rest of your life. And, magically, you find friends and partners to share all this with, and when you continue to ‘own yourself,’ you get to keep these brilliant gems of people the rest of your life because you’re not wearing them out with your need to save them or be saved by them.
My happiness is a direct result of my willingness to grow myself into a person who I would actually like to be in a relationship with. I want to be a person who owns her good qualities and her ‘in need of improvement’ qualities, a person who listens even when she disagrees, and I want to kill the fairytale so I can choose wake up and get on with my life; finding my happiness along the way.
images from bigstockphoto.com
I would love to connect with you if you feel like you have a great transformational story to share!
As often happens, I was having a lively conversation with my friend Julie. We were talking about my driving over to see her house… which led perfectly into a conversation about my car.
I’m a traveler, I’ve driven all over the country just for fun. Then, last year I decided to go ‘all electric’ and purchased a Nissan Leaf. I had many important reasons in my head about why I wanted to do this; I was trying to support a new direction in the automotive industry, I wanted the pleasure of driving by gas stations, and I had thoughts about my Carbon Footprint. This decision, as most things in life, I probably hadn’t thought all the way through.
In hindsight it appears to me that my conscious brain chose a situation and my unconscious brain saw it as an opportunity to push me… Or, maybe I made a hasty decision.
My car gets about 90 miles to a charge. And, for 80% of my driving, that is actually just fine. I live on an island, that’s 10 miles long and 5 miles wide, so really it’s more like 95% of the time my car is perfect for my situation. Which to be fair, is really great. It’s actually better than my last 3 cars.
The issue I hadn’t thought about was distance travel. What will I do if I want to drive from Bainbridge Island to Portland or the Coast or Vancouver Canada? If I want to do that, I am going to have to stop a few times along the way and charge up. Depending on where I stop, it might take 2 – 6 hours. This is a bit of a hiccup from my perspective and it’s forced me to take the train a few times. Which is really nice and a good thing in it’s own way. Because of my dependence on electrical charging stations for my car and the time requirements, I have to admit I’ve been a little leery of about leaving the island and I’ve created a very limiting story about actually going far off island in my car.
This hasn’t severely limited me in my normal driving, but it has impacted my willingness to jump in my car and drive off without a thought. I felt tethered.
Getting back to my conversation. As I was talking with Julie, we decided that I would drive to her house, on the far northeast of Seattle. This may not be a good commentary on me, but there was a part of me that felt a twinge of concern, my tether was pulling on my psyche. In my mind I was telling a story about how this will be about the farthest I have ever driven in my car. I could feel myself stretching outside my car comfort zone. Stretching doesn’t always feel good in the moment, it seems to feel better when it’s over.
Julie and I hammered out all the basics; yes, I can plug in when I get to her house; yes, she is willing to hang out with me for 4 hours, before she’ll show me the door; and, yes, I need to bring some wine because 4 hours is a stretch.
At the end of our negotiations, she tells me, that her house is only about 29 miles from the Ferry… All of the sudden it hits me that I am making limits where there really aren’t any.
I might not even need to charge my car… I will however still bring wine.
Aha! Isn’t this is what we do sometimes? We create stories in our heads that limit us. We grapple, we toss and turn, we worry, and then we work hard to find ways to stay safe or avoid. All the while, the truth is, we are just fine and we don’t need to be creating these limiting stories for ourselves. Lucky for me, this insight was motivating. I may be going “farther” than my experience has taken me in my car, but it’s an adventure. When I’m done and safely home, I think I’m going to feel great and ready to stretch a little further.
My four take always:
Thank you Nissan Leaf, you’ve helped me grow!
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain
This is a fantastic TED talk, given by Pamela Meyer, which helps to build our understanding about lying. It’s interesting when Pamela talks about how lies are a cooperative acts. If you don’t want to be deceived, you need to develop your awareness about what you really want, because liars play on your wants. This came up for me just today, because of a scam I just got caught in on Facebook. I saw a “Free Southwest Airlines Tickets!” and on one hand I knew, “too good to be true…” and still had a part of me stumble into the free ticket trap and invite all my friends. I wanted something for free, they got me with the lie. So, knowing that we all lie, to some degree, and some are much better liars than others, this is a fun TED talk. Enjoy Pamela Meyer’s as she educates you and helps you to develop your awareness. Maybe you will step lightly past the next person trying to scam on you, that comes your way.
Another good talk is on the TEDtalk Radio from NPR a free podcast. They discuss this issue of deception and it can help you understand even more.
http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/311863205/why-we-lie?showDate=2015-04-03
The radio show talks about ways that we might lie to ourselves and how some of those lies might actually help us. I know for myself I have a strong Optimism Bias, one way our brains make us believe things. Most entrepreneurs have this same bias because we have to believe in ourselves in order to take great leaps and create businesses!
Relationships truly are the sum of our lives. We create circles of friends, neighbors, family, strangers, pets, nature, ideas, and ultimately ourselves. With all the practice that we have in relationships throughout our lives, you would think that we would be experts at having them and doing them well, handling issues and avoiding problems. Yet, we have all experienced some people and situations in our lives that we can find difficult. This is not to say we ourselves are never difficult. I have had many opportunities to muddle through turmoil. I have experienced and created as much as the next person. So along the way I have learned that relationships, as in life, don’t always turn out just the way I want.
I had a painful experience in 2013, it was a situation in which I wasn’t able to navigate a friendly way through a disagreement, even though that was what I wanted more than anything… at the time. I see myself as someone willing to work things out, look for the win win, find compromises, etc. I am also blessed to have people willing to be honest with me. I know that I have my, one-sided, perspective and I don’t always see myself fully. So, while my trusted people are happy to point out my flaws, they also tell me that they see me as someone who sincerely tries to find the middle ground in relationship disagreements.
Which brings me to the situation. There are people in the world who will only feel good about you, as long as you bend to their perspective. They are not interested in seeing how they contributed to an issue or disagreement. They really want you to know that they are mad at you, and it’s your fault, and unless you admit to this fully, and ‘show’ them that you understand their ‘rightness,’ the situation won’t ever get to a place where it feels comfortable. And, even if you do take 100% responsibility for their feelings, it still might not be enough.
I work hard to hold myself accountable and I willingly acknowledge my own part in situations. I apologize when my intentions were quite different from my impact.
I am truly sorry when I hurt someones feelings, even though that generally is never my intention. Still, in some situations you cannot own your own issues or your part in the disagreement enough for the other person, they want more, they want it to be one-sided, all your fault. They point to things that were said, using contexts that weren’t intended, often rigid, black and white ideas of right and wrong. They have listened for ammo, and they willingly use that ammo against you. And, no matter how much you try to hear them and work to show you are listening, when you try to share your perspective, they are not interested in hearing you. They are really just interested in being heard. Trying to work through a disagreement under these terms is hard work, it’s emotionally exhausting.
If we care, even a little, about the relationship, we want to find the middle ground. We want to hear and be heard. We want some sort of closure that feels like we can walk away with respect or kindness, agree to disagree and still have a level of respect. Yet, this is not always possible. When we find ourselves in one of these endings, we often struggle with self doubt, and wishfulness that we are going to find a path to resolve the situation. Sometimes, instead, we have to learn to ‘let go.’ In some belief systems they say, “Let Go and Let God.” I love Frank Herbert’s quote, “There are no endings, just places where you stop the story,” and one of my favorites, “It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past, those moments in life that are over.” by Paulo Coelho.
Allowing someone to see you in the worst light, and still let go with love, let go with forgiveness for our part, let go with forgiveness for the other parties part. I believe that the process of letting go is a powerful way through the sad feelings or angry ones. Letting go of the attachment about how people see us. Letting go of what they say about us. Letting go of the ‘crazy maker’ so that we can continue with our own story. For me the big take away from 2013, and I have learned this lesson a few times in my life so it feels easier this time, is that there are places when my sense of self is so different from someone else’s sense of me that the two ideas of me are too incompatible to continue in any sort of close proximity. If I’ve been honest with myself, gotten feedback from those I trust, looked at my part of the situation, attempted to repair the hurts, but still been met with rigid, angry judgement, then I have to let go for my own sanity. Grieve the loss, but let go of the idea that I can influence a more realistic idea of me, one that is a little closer to my own. And, really, what is lost when people don’t want the same thing? The only loss is an idea of the relationship, an idea that might have existed once, but needs to be released, because it’s now an old idea of a relationship that’s changed.
For my part, if I can do this, then I let go of the spinning of my mind. The wrangling to make reasonable, or rationalize, or over process my thoughts and feelings. I learn to just ‘be’ in this moment, uncomfortable though it is, until the next moment shows up. I do this over and over, through this moment and the next and the next. Until the moment that I am in, absorbs me fully, and my life circles on.
I had moved from New Mexico to Washington State and I had the opportunity to reinvent myself. I took the opportunity with both hands and I began the transformation from Therapist to Coach. As it often happens with any change, it hasn’t been exactly comfortable. As I shifted gears, (visualize a big boat turning… slowly) I found that I didn’t exactly know how to even think of myself in different ways. I was comfortable in my old story of myself and the reinvention forced me to think, a lot, about how to describe myself, what I do, who I work with, or even what exactly I was passionate about. I didn’t want to seem wishy washy, but I was going through various ideas of myself and descriptions, like trying on outfits at the mall. I am a Therapist, I am a Coach, I am a Life Coach, I am a Business Coach, I am a Leadership Coach… I was trying on niche labels like trying on jeans. Some looked ok, but didn’t feel right; others just didn’t fit at all.
I have a very good friend who is a Business Coach and I admire her. I thought to myself I have had a business since 2004, I understand business systems, I have done a lot of marketing, and I have a lot of training that supports businesses. I have designed team building trainings. Yet, I wasn’t really resonating with the idea of calling myself a Business Coach. Calling myself a Therapist seemed easier when I began my private practice 11 years ago because people seem to know what “Therapist” means. There is a issue with Coaching in that everyone on earth seems to want to be a Coach, trainied or not. So, I was told I have to differentiate myself from the Coaching masses and in ways that as a Therapist I didn’t feel that I had to. So, what does the label/niche really mean? What are the words that resonate and empower you to communicate clearly who you are and what you do? And, how does one traverse the journey of personal discovery that you have to navigate as you go?
A friend asked me why I felt the need to call myself a Business Coach instead of a Life Coach or some other type of coach? I responded, “Because I thought it sounded better…”. We both started laughing. I am person who works with people to find their authentic voice and there I was doing just the opposite. The huge take away for me was that it is easy to get sidetracked when you are discovering yourself. Our brains want to be in some sort of comfort zone, and at times we might be willing to slap a label, any label, on ourselves just to be done. Yet, it also feels uncomfortable when we slap on a label that doesn’t fit and we are not being authentic. Internally, I was dealing with the anxiety that comes from feeling lost, like I had an no authentic message and desperately wanting the internal churn to stop. The hardest thing I had to do was I had to sit in this place of discomfort and breathe into the experience. I needed to allow my mind to wrangle with these ideas and not throw an instant “fix” just to superficially stop the discomfort. And I discovered along the way just how wrong it felt to be heading down some path that didn’t feel right, because I had no words to authentically express the right path.
Words clearly matter and they are very literally attached to the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. This is true for all of us. When we aren’t being authentic, if feels wrong inside. Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” So how do you just “be yourself”?
Ira Glass, from This American Life, says it very well, “Everything is more compelling, the more that you are yourself.”
images from BigStockPhoto.com: Transformation Cartoon cartoon resource and Five Girls Image conrado
Storyjacking™ is a technique that can be used in several ways, but at its core it is the recognition that stories are important. We hear stories of success and stories of failure. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves and about others; some stories are painful, while other stories lift our spirits. In each story we are playing out different parts and depending on the part we are playing, it makes all the difference in how we move forward in our lives.
Stories are epically important to how we view and interact in the world around us. We define ourselves, our abilities and even our goals by the stories we believe and share. These stories become part of our personal view of our world. Organizations also create goals, missions, visions and values, and those become intertwined with the story they tell and believe. Stories attract us to our friends, our lovers, our community of people and clients. Stories fill out our memories and impact our feelings and adjust how we think about everything. Every now and again when we notice something isn’t working or isn’t feeling right, we need to notice the story that we have assigned to the situation. If our story isn’t serving us, negatively impacts our families, our communities, or our organizations, we might just have to find a way to “StoryJack” the story, transforming it, and creating a new story that we resonate with so that we can “Jack Into” a better version or experience the story – and our life – in a new way.
1: We “StoryJack” a story when we change it. Maybe there is a story we’ve heard or a story we tell ourselves and we want to rewrite the story, changing the message into something that works better for us. Maybe we have a story about not being good enough, or smart enough; these would be good stories to StoryJack. It can happen with a story we’ve been told, like a fairytale, where we change the story into something more meaningful, maybe the princess kicks butt and saves the prince for a change. Really, we StoryJack all the time. Anytime you create a vision of a future that is different than the moment you find yourself in, you are working on StoryJacking. The people who successfully StoryJack their lives go to the next step in the process of Jacking Into the story.
2: We can “Jack Into” a story that resonates with us. We feel the connection to our new story and “Jack,” that emotion into our own story. We have all had that experience when we hear something that creates a powerful and positive emotion or excites us. We want to see and feel ourselves in the story. We have a resonance that occurs and it deepens our understanding of ourselves or the world around us. It’s in these moments that the story and you connect. “Jacking Into” a new story can be exciting and even scary. It may be moving from the story of being a student to becoming a fully fledged adult. Maybe it’s shifting from being an employee to becoming an entrepreneur. In business, it may be shaking up the story of the dysfunctional team and creating the new story of the Team that Rocks It! In intimate relationships, it might be the move from being “unloveable” to seeing ourselves as “loveable.” These story shifts are epic. To do this well, we have to really create a story that matters to us. These shifts can be so big that it is important to create a rich and full bodied story, to create an excitement that propels you into your next story. We won’t commit to stories that feel lukewarm to us. No one wants the cold oatmeal story! We want the exciting, passionate, and empowering story. We may want our story to be a force for good, even a force for change. We may want to share our gifts with our families, with our communities, with the world. But, no change happens without a strong desire and StoryJacking is about how we create and manage the desire to change we want to have.
I will be writing more about the process in the coming weeks. It all begins with once upon a time…
images from BigStockPhoto.com: retro typewriter Vagengeym and open book Remains
Creative Human Solutions 
