Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Stories. Diving into this theme has been fascinating because there are so many ways in which we tell stories as humans, with really far-reaching impacts. We talk about the stories we tell ourselves and our families in our daily lives, the stories we share about our family with others, and the stories we create in our minds about what other people are thinking and feeling.

It is so empowering to realize that we can choose the stories we tell. Being intentional about the way we think and talk about our lives is a form of self care, and it can help our children grow up without the weight of past stories, like those that have been handed to us.

Discussion areas

• I love this quote from The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall: “Story is for a human as water is for a fish—all-encompassing and not quite palpable.” Humans are storytelling animals, it’s how we make sense of our world, and realizing that everything is a story can be a life-changing paradigm shift.
• Looking at the stories we tell ourselves, they become our self-talk, our inner voice.
• Looking at the stories we tell others, it can get complicated because as we get further along on our unschooling journey, familiar words have a new richness to them.
• Looking at the stories we assign to other people, often we tend to assume the worst.
• Looking at the stories we tell ourselves about our family, take care with expectations and roles.
• We get to choose the stories we tell, so let’s choose those that make sense and feel better to us.

Links to things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network here

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall

The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide by Pam Laricchia

Transcript

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Video

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