Love Your Story: Stories and discussions about personal growth, mindset and living with intention

Choosing Your Perspective on Purpose – Interview with Ryan Clarkin

Welcome back to the  Love Your Story Podcast Interview Land! Drumroll!

Choosing your perspective in every situation is a concept that frankly blows the lid off of life as we know it because it gives us complete control over our realities. While to some this is an exciting idea, to others it’s WAY too much responsibility.  I don’t always do this particularly well, but sometimes I do, and when I do it’s amazing the wonders it works in creating my perspective, and my life.  So today, stay tuned to talk with Ryan Clarkin, a life coach who specializes in this very thing. Let’s figure out how to do it.

Ralph Marston said, “What limits you is not the way things are. What limits you is the perspective you choose to see the way things are.”

Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee, and I’m excited for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. Story power serves you best when you know how to use it.

Ryan Clarkin is a business and mindset coach for entrepreneurs who are ready to live a life of their design. He specializes in creating a clear vision, mastering interpretations, and how to instantly change your life through changing your interpretations.

So, welcome Ryan! Let’s talk about how we can create better, happier stories by choosing our own perspective.

To get ahold of Ryan you can find him on social media:

Treasure Hunting

Elizabeth Gilbert said in her book, Big Magic,  “…you have treasures hidden within you –extraordinary treasures—and so do I, and so does everyone around us. And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.” Join us today for some treasure hunting – finding and sharing chests of gold and diamonds.

Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee, and I’m excited for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. Story power serves you best when you know how to use it

The inspiration for the title of today’s podcast comes from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic. In the first few pages of her book she challenges the reader. She says, “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” She is talking to creatives, people who write, act, dance, create. I proffer the same question to everyone. Within each of us are individual and unique talents, gifts and interests. I believe that our interests are the things we are meant to pursue. They are the compass that points us in the direction of our destiny. Which I’ve always considered great news because that means my destiny lies along a path I’m going to be interested in.

Gilbert says, “I don’t know what’s hidden within you. I have no way of knowing such a thing. You yourself may barely know, although I suspect you’ve caught glimpses. I don’t know your capacities, your aspirations, your longings, your secret talents. But surely something wonderful is sheltered inside you. I say this with all confidence because I happen to believe we are all walking repositories of buried treasure.”

Michael Strasner puts it another way. “Don’t rip the world off,” he says.  I attended a leadership conference that he facilitated. As he pushed for each of us to stretch our imaginations, our courage, and our commitment, he often came back to that idea…”Don’t rip the world off.”  You have gifts and beauty and incredible things to share with your tribe, your people, maybe even with the world on a larger scale, and now is not the time to play small.  “Life is now!” he often said. If not now, when will you start living brave, bold and giving what you have to give…telling the story you have to tell?

I have always been fascinated by the array and variety of talents and abilities that people have. It’s one of my favorite things– to come to recognize an individual’s gifts, and I get excited about what those gifts mean; how they bless the person and give them their own color and power; how they make the world more diverse, richer with kindness or music, art or insight, wisdom or poetry; how they bring something different than I bring, and how that makes my life richer, and the world richer because they are alive and in it. Getting to know a person is like unveiling a new work of art and getting to appreciate how much better the world is because Dan, Sara, or Amanda is in the world. And EVERYONE of us has our own, personal treasure. What is yours? How do you share it?

In the story, the Count of Monte Cristo, the main character is wrongly imprisoned and after years of solitary confinement eventually meets another man who is imprisoned and they share a secret escape route as they try to dig their way out of the forsaken prison where the lost are surrendered and forgotten. He and the man become friends, partners in their escape, and the older gentleman teaches him to read, teaches him history, and even teaches him fencing. Right before he dies of an accidental cave-in, he gives to Edmond a treasure map that he has always kept hidden. Through devious plight, Edmond makes a body switch with the dead man, and when the prison guards haul a body down the hill to throw into the seas, it is really Edmond. After his daring escape, he embarks on the journey of finding the hidden treasure. It’s a famed treasure that is known for its massive abundance, trunks and trunks of gold coins, diamonds, and other precious jewels. In order to find the treasure Edmond goes through many experiences, making alliances, securing a boat, a partner, and  of course, all the while he isn’t certain it will be there, or that he will find it, but he believes, he perseveres, he gets creative, and he fights his way forward – quite literally, with sword, gun, and pure intent. Eventually, his hard work pays off and he finds the incredible stash on the island of Monte Cristo, but even once he finds it he must dive into the caves below the island and pull the trunks up, hundreds of them, one at a time. He must then carry and cajole them all to safety. It is a herculean effort.  He buys the island of Monte Cristo and proceeds to unfold a life of adventure and daring revenge. It’s a great book, and movie, I highly recommend it, but I retell this cliff-note account to point out that our buried treasure isn’t just sitting on the front porch. Sometimes the greatest gifts are dug for, hungered after, developed and not given up on. While we certainly have natural gifts, things that come so easily to us that we are unaware they are not easy for everyone, we also have gifts that can be developed. Gifts and treasures of great value, if we’ll put the time and energy into finding them.

While I would guess that most know what they are good at, have an idea of the treasures within them, if you’d like to seek within yourself for the hidden treasures in your soul, dig a little deeper, ask yourself – What makes me feel alive? Is it painting? Is it reading to your children? Is it throwing a party? Is it a competition at the office? Is it Pinterest? What do other people really appreciate about me? Do you get compliments about being a good listener, being thoughtful, being a good friend, going the extra mile? What natural abilities do you bring to the table? Are you great at making people laugh, promoting the weekends activities with your energy, organizing your family?  Some of these things I’ve mentioned are things within ourselves that get taken for granted all the time. We look at the more obvious talents like singing, dancing, skiing, playing guitar – something that’s outward and obvious, while other fabulous and important skills that are perhaps less obvious get overlooked. In high school, I remember preparing for pageants and struggling with the talent portion because you can’t exactly shoot free-throws or ski down a stage. I ended up playing the xylophone because I was a percussionist and that was the most acceptable form of performance talent that I possessed. We do what we can, right?

There are three types of treasures – One’s we’ve buried, ones we’ve claimed, and ones we haven’t discovered yet. If we’ve buried your treasures that usually stems from self-doubt. One’s we’ve claimed we are aware of, proud of, and share them. The one’s we haven’t discovered may be either things we do so naturally that we aren’t even aware they are treasure because we assume that anyone can do them, and/or things you would be wonderful at with some digging and shining. There are possibly some in all three categories.

I have a friend who loves to sew. With her creations she not only creates her art, but she gifts others with beautiful bags, aprons, covered notebooks, and any other creations she decides to undertake. While she sews she teaches her daughter the trade, cultivating with her daughter talent and self-esteem. Just by focusing on this one talent she has developed she creates works of art, rejuvenates herself, blesses and teaches her daughter and shares her gifts with others, which blesses their lives when they have a fun apron, diaper bag, or journal from a dear friend.

I have another friend who is an occupational therapist by trade. She takes a couple weeks each year and travels to foreign countries on mini-missions with her church to bless those who do not have the money and resources to seek help in dealing with debilitating situations. In this two weeks she takes off to use her skill she shows her children by example what it means to serve and care for others; she lightens the burdens of the poor and sick; she finds her own reward within her service, and she keeps on top of her professional game.

Both of these women have many more talents than just the one I have mentioned, but you can see how much difference one can make with even just one talent. When you start unearthing all the treasures you have to offer and sharing them with the world, just think of the bounty.

Does it excite you to think of the joy in living fully focused on the things you are good at, celebrating your skills and sharing your gifts? I think it’s imperative to living well! It’s a must to be true to God who has blessed you with these gifts, it is a must to fulfill who you are in the greatest space of joy, and it is a must to live your best life and to impact those you can impact. Often when we are searching for our purpose in life, what we are really looking for is how we can best use our skills and our time to create a meaningful existence.

Let me share one of Rumi’s poems:

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.

Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love, be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

I love that poem, especially that last line. “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” There are hundreds of ways to write your story. There are hundreds of ways to be beautiful and let the beauty we love be what we do.

In Matthew 25 in the New Testament, there is the parable of the talents. In the parable, the master gives gifts of money, called talents, to his servants. He then leaves town and waits to see what the servants will do with the treasure he has given each of them. Some of them invest and develop what was given to them, for whom the master praises their wise stewardship upon his return, but one is afraid and buries his talent. The bible says that this man was chastised, and what the master originally gave him was taken away, while those who developed and created more with what they were given had more added unto them. While parables, by their very nature, have a variety of interpretations, I interpret this one to plainly state that God has given each of us treasure or gifts within ourselves. He then has left us on our own to see what we will do with what he has given us.

Are there any of you out there right now who are saying, “I don’t have any talents?” “I’m not good at anything?” “I’m not sure what my passion is.”  –I’ve heard that refrain plenty.  I want to quickly point out that those are the one-liner stories that we talked about in episode 06, and they don’t serve you. Get over it. If you need to do a little digging to find your buried treasure, that’s okay, to be expected, but I promise it’s there. Ask some of those closest to you what they most appreciate about you. What they feel like you are good at. You might be surprised at the answers you get.  I know I was when I tried it. I had to put up with my brothers laughing at me and saying I was fishing for compliments, but the responses were still really fascinating and unexpected. And remember that skills like listening, being a good friend, knowing how to make people laugh, how to organize a closet or bring people together. These are talents and skills that DO NOT get to be overlooked because they aren’t featured on American’s Got Talent. These are the skills, and others like them, that make all the difference in creating a beautiful world. Silence any voice in your head that tells a story of doubt regarding the treasures within you. It simply is impossible. No one is here without gifts and talents to share and develop. Noone. Choose to cultivate stories in your head that support you in discovering, accepting and celebrating your own beauty and treasure. This is where you hop bravely in the boat, put out to sea, pirates be damned. We choose the narratives we allow to play. Choose one that supports you and all the original beauty that resides in you, or you rip yourself off.

A story is never as good unless there is a cast of characters who are diverse and interesting. Embrace your diversity. Embrace the treasure that is yours. Don’t wish for someone else’s. Dive into the water and pull up those chests of gold and share with the world every beautiful piece you have to offer. Don’t rip the world off either, because the other option is to leave all your buried treasure, down there, buried, untouched. Are you brave enough for the adventure of finding all the gold and jewels inside of you? Of course, you are…

This week’s challenge is to identify a treasure within you, and then to really focus on it. Remind yourself each morning, as you look in the mirror, how awesome you are because of let say, you are one organized son of a gun. Find a way to use and share it, because you can.

Share this podcast with a friend so everyone starts digging for those buried treasure and sharing with each other. Make the world richer. See you next week on the Love Your Story podcast. Please go to www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and sign up for our weekly inspirational thought!

Episode 033 – A Business Episode – Using Story to Discover and Define Company Culture

Scenario #1

John sat at his desk, shuffling papers back and forth.  He’d recently taken over the marketing of his mortgage company and he was trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. He posted on FB, Instagram, Twitter, all the spaces they felt they could reach their customers, but they weren’t getting much response. How could he improve interaction with his potential clients?

Scenario #2

Jillian had just been promoted to head of a sales team. She knew that each team was like a family here at ABC and she was now the new leader. How was she going to set up her team dynamic? How was she going to create camaraderie, action, and a highly motivated team?

Scenario #3

The Bright and Shiny window company had been around for twenty years. They were well established and had their way of doing things. Now suddenly, when they needed to hire new people they were being asked about company culture. What in the hell is company culture? And why should we care?

I. What is company culture?

Company culture forms, if not purposefully, then organically, by the values (do you value innovation?), management styles (perform or die; Open door support, family style), attitudes and energies of the employees and the perks and benefits that create loyalty, fun, and buy-in with your employees. This culture defines the often unwritten but very real rules of behavior.

How do your employees act when you are not around? What do they expect from the company? Do your employees and your clients feel connected and loyal? Do your programs create space for innovation or are your people highly regulated? Do you provide extra programs like a gym membership or monthly family get together to build relationships of loyalty with your employees or clients? Does your company become a part of the employees or clients story and make that connection? What does the company expect, value and reward from its employees? What will the company provide, incentivize and tolerate?  The answers to these questions can easily outline the company culture.

There is an interesting article in Entrepreneur magazine, from last year, 10 examples of companies with fantastic culture. I want to share this with you because it provides real life examples of what defined and successful company cultures look like. Then, I’d love for you to share with the group what you feel your company culture is…good or bad, undefined, or well defined.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249174

II.WHY CREATE IT ON PURPOSE?

Company culture has always been around, it’s unavoidable, but it’s only been in recent history that successful companies have started to create it on purpose.

Why? For a number of reasons

III.  How does story align as a tool for company culture development and why would you want to use it?

The human mind will engage and stay engaged with a story far more easily and for far longer than any other form of communication. In addition, story gives us a framework for remembering the information longer. We become communities through shared experience.  Story has the mysterious capacity to connect, engage, and bring people together.  Stories build rapport. Stories show how you overcame something difficult, or they demonstrate how we screwed up and they become a warning. Stories are the brain’s most effortless path for parsing information so people will pay attention to them. They are the most potent force for engagement.  The real question would be why WOULDN’T you use story as a tool in business. When you know how to use it you have real power at your fingertips.

2. Versatile Power

These stories are powerful ways to show employees what you expect of them. They are marketing tools to show clients what you stand for and why they should use you. They can be used to get management and investors in-line with your vision and where you are going – all with your own powerful stories. All of these play a role in your culture.

3. Modern Social Media is all about communicating your story.

VI. Lets start with Identity Stories or Origin Stories

Ask yourself –  What does it mean to be us?

This is a question answered every time an American sings the story of the Star Spangled Banner. Every time the Jews retell the story of the Exodus. This is a story that defines for you, for your company, for your employees, for your clients, where you came from and why that matters to them.

What was the beginning of your team or business? What was true at the beginning of the organization that is still true today?

This is the origin story from General Electric:

GE:

“The year was 1876, America’s centennial. It was also the year that Thomas Alva Edison opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Out of that laboratory came the greatest invention of the age — a successful incandescent electric lamp (a light bulb). After a merger in 1892, he called his new organization General Electric. Today, that same spirit of innovation and discovery is still a part of everything we do.”

Starbucks:

Once Upon A Time there were three students at the University of SanFrancisco who became friends. One became an English teacher, one a history teacher, and one a writer.  In 1971 they met a man named Alfred Peet, who showed them his special coffee roasting technique, and the three decided to start a company that sold high-quality coffee beans and equipment. They named their company after the first mate in the book Moby Dick and they threw their fortunes in together for better or for worse because they found a quality product.  That’s what we are about – that’s what we’ve always been about – quality coffee.

Rieger & Co., a Kansas City distillery

Largely known for its trademark Monogram whiskey, Rieger was founded in 1887 and this company was a huge part of local Kansas City culture; the Rieger family even built an impressive hotel that was famous for being one of Al Capone’s regular haunts. The Rieger company’s success continued until Prohibition caused them to close their doors in 1919. In 2014, nearly a century after the business was forced to close, one of J. Rieger’s descendants revitalized the business. Kansas City residents greeted the new distillery with enthusiasm, a great part of Kansas City’s history was restored.

Now, the whiskey company aligns its modern brand to the city’s history by showcasing a timeline on the website with photos of the artifacts from the original business. Being rooted in local history and culture gives the J. Rieger name a unique kind of credibility with local residents, and the Prohibition-era origin story creates a mystique that’s almost irresistible to consumers.

What is your origin story and how can it be used to help define what you’re about? When you share it in sales meetings your employees gain understanding of where the company comes from, what it expects, and it gives them roots, in a way, with the company, as the employee becomes part of the story.

VALUE STORIES

What does your team value? Are you a team that focuses on quality? On customer service? On speed of the deal? On hassle free? On value for your client? On the newest technologies?  To keep these values from ringing hollow in your ears and your client’s ears – to keep there from being a disconnect between your stated values and your actual values, have a story or stories to back them up. These are the “how” stories of your team. These are the stories that set behavioral boundaries for people on your team.

Examples: (Listen for the details)

These were stories that could be used, instead of graphs, charts and propaganda, to show, not tell, what the company stands for to employees and customers.

VISION STORIES

Vision:  Where are YOU going? Typically this comes in something like a vision statement, but to truly invite people (usually your team or investors) into your vision it’s even better to use a story.

WORLD BANK example:

In June 1995, a health worker in a tiny town in Zambia logged on to a website for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, and got an answer to a question on how to treat malaria…This was in Zambia, one of the poorest countries in the world. The health worker used this advanced research, thousands of miles away, to save lives.

The most important part of this story for us in the World Bank is this: The World Bank doesn’t have its know-how accessible to all the millions of people who make decisions about poverty and money making across the world. But just imagine if we did. Think what an organization we could become, think of the growth, think of the influence.

Tools: How to create Vision Stories

Share this vision story often, so that everyone is working to create the same thing!

The combination of these types of stories – Origin, values and vision stories can be the means, the building blocks, for defining, building and sharing your company culture with your employees and management, as well as with your clients or customers.

BONUS:

What does this look like? How do you utilize these stories in real life management?

So, get excited, start digging through the stories that have accumulated while you’ve done business – stories of successes, stories of failures, stories that show your values, and you can even start recording new stories as they happen, deciding later how you might use them – starting a story repository. Our stories are powerful tools that we can learn to work with the many other pieces of running a successful business.

And, if any of you are sitting there saying, wow – I don’t know where to start, I wish someone could help me figure out my stories and how to use them, I’m happy to work with you on a consulting basis.

*Some stories and concepts taken from David Hutchins book – The Circle of the 9 Muses

Adam Chase lives in Boulder, Colorado. He is a professional trail runner, a professional snowshoe racer, a writer, a tax lawyer, an editor, an adventure racer, a mentor, a father, a husband, a brand ambassador, and the President of the American Trail Running Association. He talks to us about how he dealt with the toughest times in his 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, and how we can choose to find the best perspective possible in our story.

To contact Adam:

www.trailrunner.com

#timetoplay

[email protected]

Anxiety – The Ties that Bind and Break

Yesterday I was listening to an episode of the Reply All podcast. It’s a podcast about different aspects of the internet, actually pretty cool because you can sorta keep tabs on interesting digital world things going on. So…. anyway, this episode was titled “Anxiety Box.” The show description goes like this, “Sometimes, on his way to work, a feeling of pressure begins thumping in Paul Ford’s chest. His breaths shorten. They speed up. And, sometimes in those moments of extreme anxiety Paul’s phone talks to him. It tells him everything that’s wrong with him.”  I had clicked on this episode arbitrarily, I hadn’t read the description, but it turns out that Paul created a program called Anxiety Box … stay with us to find out what this is and a sure fire way to break that tie that binds.

Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee and I’m excited about for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. The power of story serves you best when you know how to use it.

So as it turns out, the Anxiety Box is a computer program where you can type in all the things you’re anxious about and your email address, and all day your “anxiety” will send you messages, in the general language of that anxiety voice, to remind you how you’re probably not going to succeed, or live, or get pregnant or whatever you’re feeling anxious about. It sounds like a horrible program, but what it did for him was to dehumanize the voice in his head, the voice of his deep anxieties, and he could see them for the spam that they were.

Now, I bring this up because until I heard his description of what he was going through – about sitting on the couch and feeling like he really had to get on that project, and then the voice saying, “Ya, but you’ll never be able to do it.” And then that sense of overwhelm hits, and then there’s that want to crawl under a blanket and not think about it, or maybe I should subscribe to Netflix…I hadn’t known what that was. My inner voice was calling it “pathetic ineffectiveness,” I explained it to my friends as “hitting a wall,” but once he explained it as anxiety, it suddenly felt more normal, less like a flaw and more like something to be managed. I don’t think of myself as an anxious person, so I could work that through – couldn’t I? The Atlantic magazine calls Anxiety “America’s most common mental illness.” That sounds pretty normal.

For the last three months, I’ve had a list of things that need to be done on this podcast that I am completely inexperienced in. I’m having to learn, every step of the way, how to do each and every little thing, like setting up email campaigns for my listeners, collecting email addresses to start the community, effective social media marketing – not just regular social media marketing – no, effective social media marketing, integration with programs like lead pages, Aweber,  lead magnet construction, and what feels like a hundred other detours along each route. While you guys out there that know how to do all of this are thinking, “What’s the big deal?” for those of us who don’t know how to do all of this there is deep anxiety around figuring it out. In my case, it’s three months of staring at this list – there are actually about five lists now.  I just keep making new lists of things that should be done. Now really, I’ve been watching how-to videos and listening to the more experienced folks who have done this, and then… freezing up. My partner and I have been pushing the items on this list back and forth to each other…. Neither of us knows how to do them.

A few days ago I was talking to my son. I told him that I wished he knew how to do all of this so I could just hire him to take over this segment of the project. He asked how long I thought it would take him to learn it. As I explained that I had all the learning resources available, I realized that because he is incredibly smart and focused when he wants to be, that he could potentially get this all done within a couple weeks. It’s been three months of sitting here and looking at the list in frustration and anxiety and I’m still just looking at the list. It dawned on me that it probably wasn’t as sinister as it seemed, but that didn’t really change the fact that I could only stare at the list and imagine a fairy godmother swooping in with a wand.

I’m sharing this because it’s a real-life story of anxiety. It’s an example of what many of you also deal with on a daily basis, especially if you are leaning into possibility, creating big things in the world, getting in the arena and making things happen. We’ve talked about the one-liners in our heads that complain and remind us why we couldn’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t go do this or that. And, here it is in a bold, blaring, anxiety ridden example.

From the outside, other people’s anxieties often seem minuscule. I mean…I look at the person, I see how capable they are, and it’s hard to believe that they are letting some arbitrary voice in their head scare the crap out them and immobilize them into a space of self-doubt. That’s often how I feel when I’m coaching or watching others – I see all their beauty, all their skill, all their heart and all their desire, and I don’t feel the doubt they feel in themselves. On the contrary, I see their power. I see their possibility. I see crazy success and awesome lives ahead of them, but before they can get there, they have to see that in themselves. And even when we do see it in ourselves, every day we’re still dealing with that voice that Paul Ford refers to as the robot spam voice that creates all the fear and doubt inside us. In the podcast episode, he admits to hitting  “reply” to those emails  his anxiety sends him and tells them to “shut the fu&% up.” Sometimes he sends that email response over and over.

Here’s the obvious irony for me – I’m so afraid of wasting time that I don’t embark on the project because it may not work and I will have wasted the time I spent trying to figure it out. So, I sit and stare at the list of projects that need to be done, completely wasting time, in this case, three months now, because I haven’t jumped into the projects. It reminds me of my second husband, he was so afraid of losing me that he didn’t want me to talk to other people, he didn’t want me to have friends for fear I’d like them more than I liked him, he tapped my email accounts and sent scathing emails to anyone he felt I’d been too friendly to. He put a strangle hold on me in an attempt to make sure I never left him, which of course had the opposite effect. Which brings me to the point -Too often our fears and anxieties create the exact situations we are afraid of.

What are you afraid of right now in your life? What are you anxious about? How are you responding to that anxiety? How is your response to the anxiety contributing to the outcome you want, or don’t want? Think about that for just a second. Go ahead, pause the podcast.

If I answer these questions regarding where I’m at with the podcast right now I have to say that my anxiety about these next steps is causing me to freeze up, freezing up is causing me to waste time and slow down the growth of the podcast and the Love Your Story movement. Solution – thaw the freeze and start moving forward, even if it’s one baby step at a time. Action creates motivation, just a little bit of movement starts to open the doors to possibility and the momentum builds. So today, I promise you, I’m committing to doing the first thing on the list. No matter what. Just because I don’t know how to get there, doesn’t mean I can’t get there. Remember that line – “Just because I don’t know how to get there, doesn’t mean I can’t get there.”

I think of the words from my coach and think – this is a good time to find support.

For some of us, asking for support is harder than it is for others. But I’m going to start asking around.

A few days later I’ve got a lunch set up with Mel the Marvelous. She’s a people connector, and she has sooo many contacts and she is going to give me a little guidance in hooking me up with someone who can help me do all these things I don’t know how to do, and maybe even sponsors for the podcast.

This support thing was a good idea. After I had lunch with Mel I set up a meeting with a social media expert, and Mel started “educating” some of her contacts about the chance for sponsorships and working with Love Your Story. I’ll let you know how all that goes.  But for sure, there was a bite out of the anxiety. Action had been taken.

Chris Ducker, the mastermind of YouPreneur, a community of entrepreneurs, said, “As much as we enjoy hearing about the self-made man or woman, the reality of things is that collaboration and connection will always play a role in our success. Bottom line, without others, dreams remain dreams. And the same goes for you. That means whatever you are pursuing, whatever you’re wanting, whatever’s keeping you awake at night because you can’t stop dreaming about it…you’re going to need to enlist the help of others to get it.”

Do you know who Diana Nyad is? In 2013 she was finally, on her 5th try, did what no one else had ever done – swam from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. It was 53 hours of straight swimming – 110 miles. She had been training and trying for years to make this swim, and by the time she did it, she was in her 60’s.  She gave a Ted Talk after this and she talked repeatedly about the work her entire team did to make this happen, (Insert Ted Talk blurb about the team). A 35 person support team who had worked with her over the years. “I didn’t do it,” she said, “we did it.  It looks like the most solitary endeavor in the world, and in many ways it is, but in other ways, the most important ways, it’s a team, and if you think I’m a badass, you should meet Bonnie.”  From what I can ascertain, Bonnie is her team manager. She had scientists, sports scientists endurance experts, neurologists. She had support, a cheering squad, an entire team working with her. Did she have moments of anxiety – Oh, you bet she did. Swimming in shark infested waters with the most poisonous jellyfish in the world surrounding you, not to mention the pure exhaustion of the swim. I can’t even imagine.

We don’t accomplish big things, or important things without a struggle, without moments of anxiety, fear, and not knowing how to get there – that’s just part of the journey. But the story has more than one character. The cast of the story is not just the hero – the self-made man or woman Chris Ducker was speaking of, we want our stories to have fairy godmothers who bring us just what we need when we need it, and woodsmen who save us from the wolves, and Jiminy Crickets who remind us of the best decisions, and Merlins to work their magic. Anxiety is a real life part of life and making shit happen – and often the answer to breaking that tie that binds us, is to ask for support. Reach out. Pray. Let people know what you need. You might be surprised what you find when you head out looking for support. I’m still always surprised, but it’s also those moments when other people show up big that my bonds with hope, God, and my fellow story characters grow two-sizes. That I don’t feel so alone. That I can keep moving forward. Life is best played as a team sport.

This week’s challenge is for those of you feeling anxious about something, anything. Determine the story around your anxious feelings and then take a step forward in finding the support you need toward the solution. Try it. What have you got to lose, but a little anxiety? Nothing changes until we do something different. Have a good week out there making your stories better. Remember you’re just where you need to be right now. Now head to www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and leave your thoughts and comments on this episode. We want to hear from you.

Melissa Miller; Miller Consulting – Guest Interview  801.529.2905

www.employmentmatchmaker.com

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE DO NOT JUST HAPPEN – A few thoughts on Adversity

Elisabeth Kubler Ross said, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern.  Beautiful people do not just happen.” Join us today for a discussion on those life trials that rip our very hearts out, and how they can also be the stepping stones to our depth and beauty. Stay with us to talk about the hard stuff and why it makes us beautiful.

Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee, and I’m excited about our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. Story power serves you best when you know how to use it.

One thing I’ve come to understand over the years is that all people experience adversity. The ravages of life spare not race, religion, gender or geographic area. Trials, disappointments, sickness, sadness, heartbreak, and loss are all a part of life for everyone, no matter who you are. It’s part of the whole deal: death, taxes, and trails. You can’t escape any of them. But, we do get to decide how we process them; what we do with them; who we become because of them.

Adversity is a bag filled with variation. Trials may come from choices we make that then make our lives harder, like an unwanted teen pregnancy, or an addiction. Trials may come from choices others make that affect us like a spouse who cheats on us, an unscrupulous business scam, or abuse. Adversity may come upon us, such as an illness or death of a loved one, things that are a part of being mortal. We usually get a spattering in all three categories. We all have far more in common than we often stop to realize. There is that familiar saying about being kind to everyone because you never know what they are going through, no matter what it looks like on the outside. Probably a good idea!

From a story perspective, it’s an uneventful story that doesn’t have tension, climax, and a hero who must decide how to engage in the battle.

One of those heroes we all know – Christopher Reeve, said, “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” He was a super man, wasn’t he?!

Today I want to share a story with you about a little girl known affectionately as Lady Bug. I know this little girl personally. Her parents are real estate clients of mine, and her grandparents live next store to me. I’ve watched her run around my backyard with her cousins. She’s a real life story with her cute little glasses and her joy for life. Rylie was born in May of 2012. The first few months of her life were filled with happiness and sleep deprivation for her parents – all the normal stuff. Her mom and dad were completely in love with their beautiful baby girl.

Two months later, at a well-baby check-up, they asked the pediatrician to take a look at the numerous “birthmarks” that were appearing all over Rylie’s body. The Dr. took a look and then left the exam room to make some calls. When he returned he told the nervous parents that he suspected their brand new baby daughter had a genetic condition called Neurofibromatosis. He referred them to a geneticist at Primary Children’s Hospital and told them NOT to Google anything.

Shocked and dismayed, they went home and waited for the hospital to call them back. When the hospital called they told them the wait time was over 6 months to get in. Furious, terrified, completely sad, they turned to the internet anyway to find what answers they could, and the pictures they found terrified them. The happiest time of their lives had just turned into the worst time of their lives.

The next few months were a blur of doctor appointments, specialists, waiting….so much waiting. Waiting to see if their baby girl developed a tumor. The uncertainty killed them, the waiting killed them, the sadness overwhelmed them. The doctor visits ripped their hearts out. No one could give them any answers.

In February of 2014 Rylie was having a routine eye exam, and her mom knew something was wrong. “How in the hell am I going to get a toddler to wear glasses,” she thought to herself. “It seems trivial now,” her mom says. Especially when we found out that Rylie was growing a tumor on her optic nerve.

They were rushed over to the Moran Eye Center for more tests and scheduled for an MRI the next morning. The next 24 hours were a complete blur. They were terrified to hear the MRI report, but deep down they knew what they were going to hear. They had known it was a possibility, but now it was actually happening. And it scared the hell out of them.

The next morning the doctors confirmed that their 19 month old daughter had two tumors growing on her brain. She was officially diagnosed with Bi-Lateral Optic Nerve Gliomas. They were told to expect a call from the oncologist. What!??? Another punch to the gut. An oncologist meant chemotherapy…. They were so scared they couldn’t even ask questions, they just said okay and hung up the phone.

A week later they met with an oncology team at Primary Children’s Hospital- – every option seeming so unfair! She wasn’t even 2 years old and the things they were talking about were things her mother didn’t think she could even handle as an adult. “She’s just a baby!” kept running through her mother’s mind.

Ultimately, two days after her second birthday Rylie began a yearlong chemotherapy protocol. It was the longest and hardest year of their lives.

She said, “Watching your child go through something so traumatic is completely devastating. Your sole job as a parent is to protect your child, but from the day she was diagnosed with NF we felt that control was taken away from us. For 12 long months we watched her get poison injected into her little body. We watched her scream every time they accessed her port. We wiped her tears every time she got sick. We held her hand every time they had to sedate her for another MRI, and each and every time it broke our hearts just a little bit more.”

Riley’s disease ruined the picture perfect dream life they had imaged. The year she went through chemo broke them down day after day. It took their world and it turned it upside down, made life a constant battle. They worry every time she complains of pain. Their hearts sink thinking it may be another tumor, a tumor they will be powerless to stop.

NF took control of many parts of their life; financially, emotionally… their “normal” routine is anything but normal.

Brandie, Rylie’s mom said, “NF has made certain parts of our life very difficult and hard to swallow but it has also made things so amazing. It has helped us find joy in the little things…. the everyday things. We found joy in the first time Rylie learned to take her medications by herself. We found joy when Rylie started preschool. We found joy in going to the grocery store- together as a family after being locked in the house for a year. We find joy in watching her be an everyday kid. We’ve learned that life is messy BUT it’s a blessing and we have to enjoy each and every moment we are given!

When the questions of “Why me? I don’t deserve this.” And “This is so unfair,” are the mantras repeating in our minds we are lapsing into victim mode. We have the choice to complain and become bitter. That’s definitely one approach—easy and often justified, but these questions have the power to dominate our minds. They absorb our energy and our vision and our story begins to spiral into a place of darkness. That’s the only place it can spiral to.

Another approach, which is often much more difficult, but so much healthier, is to ask different questions. To ask the questions like, “What can I learn from this? What action can I take from this point to creating meaning? What am I to change?” “What are my blessings today?” This is the crux of reframing a story. I feel like this is what Rylie’s family did. They found the value of the small and meaningful things. They found the gift hidden in the nightmare.

Our stories are created by the events that go on around us, certainly, but the power we give those events in our minds is where the stories become either tragedies or heroic tales of fighting through the fire swamp and overpowering the ROI – rodents of unusual size. This is the space where the dark side takes over, as it did with Anakin in Star Wars, and Darth Vader is created, or where one overcomes the injustices inherent with adversity by using them for transformation and learning, or finding the gift in the struggle. It’s not always something you can find right away, and that’s okay. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that we won’t feel our fear, disappointment and sadness and just jump right up with a positive attitude to win the day. Traumatic events are by nature, events that take us to the brink of our human capabilities, but in the end, it is up to us how they become translated.

Julia Cameron, in her book The Sound of Paper, describes the process of the creation of a pearl. “…pearls are what happen when an oyster or some other mollusk is irritated by the invasion of some disturbing intruder into its closed shell.  Pearls are layers and layers of soothing nacre intended to insulate the delicate mollusk from the irritant that has abraded it. At root, a pearl is a disturbance, a beauty caused by something that isn’t supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provocation, to intrusion. …The pearl’s beauty is made as a result of insult.”

Different adversity requires different response. For example, when we suffer from the actions of others the healthy response requires broadening of our perspective to understand another and the often difficult task of forgiveness (check out episode 05 for thoughts on forgiveness). A death or an illness may require faith in purpose, patience in suffering, and strength in finding meaning. If we create our own pain and suffering we get to have the strength to change our behavior and live in ways that don’t create misery. If we are abused we must seek help.

I grew up in a loving, Christian home. We went to church every Sunday, and at that time it was implied that if we lived good lives and followed the commandments of God that our lives would be happy and safe. There was the happily ever after painted of joyful marriage and family, and all that was required was to live well and follow the commandments and ritual prescribed by the church and all would turn out rosy. It could have been my misunderstanding or the deep desire of the young women leaders to get us all to live good lives, that these false promises were made, but I had quite a time coming to grips with them as my life progressed and things didn’t turn out that way. I had to learn an important point as taught by Carlfred Broderick, a former professor of sociology and head of the marriage and family therapy program at the University of Southern California, who received his degrees from Harvard and Cornell. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he wrote an essay on the Uses of Adversity. He says, “The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain, it is the resource in event of pain, and when pain comes…rejoice that you have the resource to deal with your pain.” When there are no earthly answers, when our understanding is stretched beyond its limits, when mortality is simply too much for us, there is hope in the atonement of Christ and faith in him.

While this is a non-denominational podcast, meant to inspire and empower people no matter their religious beliefs, I must bear testimony that the atonement of Christ plays two roles, one in wiping away the mistakes we make so that we can start fresh and walk away from the ugliness we often create in our lives –it’s like taking the stones of guilt and shame out of the backpacks we carry around accumulating life experiences; and the second is in the power of his atonement to give us power beyond our own to keep standing up, to keep trying, to enable us to be more than we are alone when the ravages of this thing we call life knock on our door.  I’d like to suggest an equivalent for other belief systems, but there simply isn’t one. The atonement of Christ is the only power by which those things are given. So, I recommend them, because having a source of cleansing ourselves gives hope and propels us forward. The lightened load keeps us from sinking in the swamps of despair. It’s a gift and another beautiful tool given by a God who loves us.

Simon Sinek said, “The most important thing to do before we die is live.” I could use this quote in almost any of my podcasts because it applies across the board to every topic. But I think it applies to this topic beautifully because times of trial are times when living is the hardest. It’s these hard, uphill climbs when we often want to stop – sit down on the metaphorical trail or jump off the cliff. I’ve had moments where I could not see any point in going on. I’ve had times I wanted the whole darn thing to be over with. But I’ve come to realize, that like it or not, living is a collage of beautiful moments, staggering pain, ah ha moments, fleeting peace, uncertainty, fear – in all its forms, accomplishment, joy, love, hate, anger. The woven fabric of our lives contain colors that range from deep purples and brilliant reds to mustard yellows and deep, dark blacks. We don’t see the design in the living, but I believe God does, and I’ve lived long enough now that when I look back I start to see some of the design in the woven pattern of my life, and it’s pretty darn gorgeous!

Michael Jordan said, “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

One day I was rafting down the mocha waters of the Colorado river. It was like a postcard.  The sky that bright, rich blue with a few perfectly placed, fluffy, white clouds that dot and give dimension.  The J-rig (a style of boat) I lounge on, puttered down river and I sat facing backward, watching the waterway expand behind us between the layers of tall, red, western cliff walls rutted and shaped by the desert, brilliant in stark color.  We went, mile by mile, hour after hour, and the time was a luxury allowing me to pull out a reading book, a pen, and paper with which to write.

We passed another raft, the guide pushed and pulled at the oars as the umbrella-protected couple sleeps.  This is the Venice of the West. Our gondola man wore a black cowboy hat, a beard, and the grin of the young.  He lied up a storm, making up facts about history, geology, failed oil projects, and his personal theories on past civilizations.  If there is one thing river guides are infamous for, it is their gift for making up the details and coloring the truth with the same rusty red that colors these Utah rocks.  Cowboy (the name I’ve given our guide) sleeps on his cooler during the lazy water stretches, his tan legs sprawled in devil-may-care fashion.  The entire picture makes me want to write, the weather is great, wish you were here. Instead, I look at my chipped toenail polish, think about how I need to pee, and wish that my camera could capture this scene. As I float beneath the majestic cliffs carved by the river I notice the process of carving that is constantly taking place along the cliffs. Chunks of rock crumble and fall as the water cuts and shapes, more stone is revealed as the water digs deeper, removing more dirt. The canyons become broader, deeper, revealing more as the detritus is washed downstream. And isn’t that a lot like life?

Sending you my love for all your hard stories. And my hope that you’ll find the gifts in the nightmares, the beauty in the carving, the pattern emerging in the tapestry of your life. No matter how messy it looks from your current perspective. Keep hope and share the stories that bring hope to others.

Love to hear from you on our website…www.loveyourstorypodcast. Please head over and share your stories, ideas, thoughts, concerns and suggestions.

Finding Your Personal Resilience – From coping to thriving in the Journey.

Becky Andrews, the clinical director of Resilient Solutions Inc., and a previous guest on our show, shares with us her 10 steps to resiliency. How do you take care of yourself so you can bounce back when life is difficult? Listen to today’s podcast for her professional plan that she has also implemented in her own life, as a woman with a degenerative eye disease that caused her to lose her eyesight. Despite this disability, Becky learned resiliency as she became a wife and mother, a therapist, a community activist, and a marathon runner. She is the author of her autobiography Look up, Move Forward.

To contact Becky Andrews:

Resilientsolutionsinc.com (You can also find her book on her website.)

[email protected]

(801) 259 3883

Thank you for tuning in, and as always, please share this podcast with someone you feel could use it. Share the love!

Building a Space for One Another – Setting the Scene of the Story

Before my children were born I created a space for them. I secured a warm home, set up a new-born bedroom. I painted and cleaned. I made quilts and chose clothing, bought story books and a baby bathtub. Acquired toys and binkies, diapers and burp cloths. We prepared a space for them to come into the world that would provide love, care, warmth, cleanliness, and learning. We created their secure base. Stay with me, we’re going to talk about the power we have to set the scene – set the stage in which our story plays out.

Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee and I’m excited about for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. Storypower serves you best when you know how to use it.

When I was newly married, like really newly married, still unpacking boxes into our first little apartment, I was so nervous about being domestic that I called my aunt to get her opinion on if I should buy this little copper tea pot I had found at a department store in the mall. It was pretty groovy, but I wasn’t sure about creating a home. “Sure,” she said, “You are creating a home, a space for both of you. Your husband will appreciate what you build.” Okay, I thought. And I bought the teapot and I placed it on the stove. It’s hard for me to get back in that 24-year-old mind, I’m not certain what I was so nervous about, but at the time domesticity was not something I aspired to. Since then I have come to love the responsibility of creating a comfortable, clean environment that is filled with things that make me happy and have meaning to me; a place that provides safety and comfort for my children, my friends, and any family that decide to stop by. I keep the kitchen bright, the candles lit, the floors vacuumed and my selection of hot cocoa, tea and cider at the ready. I don’t have that copper teapot anymore, I’m not sure where it went. I also don’t have the nose ring I had put in when I had my first son – also an attempt to fight of domesticity. It’s been a process.

I want to talk about this subject today because I don’t think it gets talked about much. It’s something we do, some of us do it on purpose, some of us just sorta live where we’re dropped, some of us are too busy with life to focus on how we’re living, but I think purposeful living and the power that comes in creating atmosphere and place is something worth a twenty-minute conversation. It’s the basis for many of our stories– scene and set I think can make a big difference in the energy of the story, the happiness of the characters, and the delight in the space that you control.

Spaces of light or darkness

I got to the point where nesting, creating the space for my child to come into the world was rich and purposeful. But it must be noted that as the days of our lives unfolded after that initial preparation of his baby room, we still continued and continue to this day, to create space for one another. Every day it’s still going on. We have the power to create all types of spaces.  Imagine spaces of creativity, possibility, spaces of love and warmth, acceptance and support. Spaces of learning and work, struggle and overcoming. Humans also create some pretty horrible spaces for each other. We so easily create spaces of stress, of unrealistic expectation, of bitterness, of revenge, of depression, of abuse, of chaos and filth, of crudeness…our options range from all the negative influences and emotions we struggle to manage, to the light-filled spaces of love, joy and possibility. Here’s the point of today’s podcast – YOU have the power to create the set your life scenes unfold in.  You have the power to create a space around you that nurtures love and acceptance of the people in your life. You get to set the scene for your story. You do that in lots of ways. It’s not about money and what you can buy to surround you. Most of the really meaningful parts of creating scene are about meaning and purposeful creating. One of the first things to consider is that the things you let into your home also create those spaces of light and darkness. Media is a big one I’ll throw out for discussion. TV shows, Netflix, Cable, music, YouTube, video games– all of these things set a tone, a mood, an energy. You’ve listened to hard, crude music and you know the energy that creates. Compare that with something that creates positive energy for you. TV and movies can uplift and inspire while they can also very quickly delve into crudeness, pornography, humor that degrades and dark themes. Media has power over our moods, over our perceptions, over our life views and we also get to choose what we let into our homes and what we put in our minds. That’s not an arbitrary thing either. What goes in dictates what comes out. You want light, hope, inspiration in your daily living – make sure that’s what you put in.

The Stuff

The American Association for Community theater defines the set designer’s job as: All the scenery, furniture and props the audience sees at a production of a play that make up the set design. The set designer’s job is to design these physical surroundings in which the action will take place.

When a set designer begins to create the layout of the set one of the things they are doing is setting mood and atmosphere. They do this with the layout of the set as well as with the items that are chosen to be present in the set, or in other words the things we place around us. I love fresh flowers, yummy candles, books, music, and dancing. So I place these things in my living space. I buy myself fresh flowers when no one else does. I fill my house with yummy scents that make it a warm and homey place. I have book shelves with books, but I also have a chair I sit in to do most of my studying and it’s surrounded by books, notepads, highlighters, sticky pads. I make sure that my children have access to books, book shelves, library cards. My son loves music so music plays daily and we sing and dance around the house, despite the fact that most of us are in different keys. Alice Walker said, “Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.” Yes….I feel that, do you?

When my children were growing up I subscribed to Kid’s National Geographic magazine for them every year. Filled with pictures of exotic animals, games, and stories they raced to the mailbox when their magazine came every month.  I provided them with reading materials, games and excursions so they had positive options to choose from. This was my choice – something I actively designed and created. I think that’s where the power of this discussion comes into play—the simple realization that we have the power and responsibility to not be passive users of our space, but to create spaces around us that are filled with things that have meaning to us; that reflect our values and the values we want to pass on; that make us smile because we love that painting, that super soft couch, that chai tea that we always keep stocked in the cupboard.

I have a bulletin board built into my kitchen wall. It’s a large cork board and I put pictures up of our adventures. I change them out every season with new shots. –Early on, in my twenties, when my friends and I were setting up our homes, I noticed one friend who put pictures of herself and her husband all over the house. It wasn’t just in the living room, no from the back of the toilet there was a picture of them smiling on some beach. They were in the dining room, they were in the hallway. At the time I remember being shocked but impressed. I think it might have been her home that made me come to realize how wonderful it was to remind yourself daily of adventures and good times. I’ve continued to do this – keep pictures up—because I feel like it solidifies memories. On down days it reminds us we have good times. Sometimes the people in the pictures would be lost in a memory of the past, but since they are on our bulletin board they are more front and center in our lives. We remember the people more actively that come in and out of our lives. This is one of the ways I personalize my home.

Simplicity

In his TED talk, Grahm Hill, a writer and designer and the founder of LifeEdited, makes a case for the idea that simplicity in our living and our ownership of “stuff” and happiness are tied. He talks about how we have 3x the amount of space that we did 50 years ago, but that we fill it up and then branch out into storage units. He points out that our happiness levels also flat-lined in the last 50 years. Early on in his history, he sold a company for 10 million dollars. He was young and he started buying stuff to fill that void that we humans often try to fill. After awhile it started to drive him crazy, so he got rid of it all. He now lives in a super simple 420 sq. ft. apartment that uses the spaces with the precision of expert design that created it. He has fold-down beds and fold-out desks. Big windows and lots of lights set the scene that feeds him. It’s all designed to save space and minimize. Nearly every wall opens up to reveal dining tables, storage or closets. He says, “Our point is less, but better. We’re not saying no stuff, we’re saying have great stuff that’s really versatile and that you really love.”

When he said that last part it clicked with me. Back in the days of that brass pot, I was decorating a home with things that would set an image – we built log furniture and so I bought things that fit with the décor: cabin style stuff like moose candle holders and Indian blankets. But often those things had no meaning. They just matched – it was just stuff. Since then I’ve come to realize how wonderful it is when you surround yourself with things that actually have meaning to you. When the poem on the fridge is one a friend sent in a letter and it means something. When the plant on your shelf is one you rescued when a friend moved. When the pasta bowl set is one you won at a ski race not something you bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond. You get the idea. When you surround yourself with things that have meaning to you, that remind you of people and experiences that are about YOUR life, then the scene you set is all yours.

Like Grahm Hill, I’m a firm believer that less is more. Our energy is tied to the things that we own, that we have a stewardship over. Twenty years ago when we sold our house to travel around the country for a year we dumped everything in storage. No matter how far we traveled I could feel my tie to all those belongings. It might sound weird, but I could actually feel them. And every time I clean out and haul boxes to Good Will I feel a release of that energy. I think there probably is something to Grahm’s argument that simplicity and happiness are linked. At the beginning of January in episode 15: 5 Challenges for 30 Days, one of the challenges was to get rid of one thing a day for 30 days. It’s a fun way to start clearing “stuff” out that you don’t need, and if need be, replacing it with something that you really love.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on creating our living spaces. What’s worked for you? What hasn’t? Go to www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and go to the Contact Us page or leave your comments under this podcast. We can keep the discussion going.

Little Red Riding Hood carefully prepared her basket of 100% whole-wheat rolls, calcium supplements, an all-natural energy drink and some organic sushi for her grandmother. She secured her vibrant red cape around her neck, hopped on her bicycle, and headed through the woods to brighten the day and lighten the load of the elderly matriarch. Stay tuned to find out how the story ends.

Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee, and I’m excited for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. Power serves you best when you know how to use it

On with the story: As little Red peddled out into traffic heading toward grannies house she noticed other women riders trailing feather boas, mini hula skirts, and pink jerseys. Turns out the riders were moms, cancer survivors, daughters, team riders, professional athletes, and a host of other female descriptors. They rode slow, they road fast, they chatted, they stopped at rest stops, they rode singly and in groups. They rode to raise cancer awareness and to raise money for research. They rode for exercise, for empowerment, for achievement.

Red Riding Hood discovered that the non-competitive cycling event was, at the time, the only women-only century in the country.  Though she was very interested in the women she met and the ride that looped through rural and county roads, she cut out early at the turn-off to her grandmother’s. She didn’t get the groovy t-shirt, because of course, she hadn’t registered for the race.

Just before she turned off she saw a dark brown blur from the corner of her eye. She turned to see what had darted across the path, but not before a peloton of 10 women riders rode over the top of what Red recognized as a wolf. Hmmm she thought, “I wonder what a wolf is doing out in this part of town.” And with her cape billowing behind her she dodged a rock and rode toward grandmas for a little generational bonding.

As Red wove into her grandmother’s drive she noticed there were quite a number of other vehicles. A moped, a tandem bike, two cars, a pick-up and a Jesus truck. The later was a local truck with pictures of Jesus pasted all over it and quoted scriptures prophesying the importance of loving your neighbor. It was a neighborhood anomaly. As she stood her bike against the wall she realized her grandmother’s group for the Coalition for the Protection of Animals was mid-meeting and she probably wasn’t going to get much time with her grandmother. I guess there isn’t going to be time for a game of scrabble tonight, she mused.

As she was about to knock on the door, she thought better of it and just turned the knob, and walked in. The door swung open, smooth and quiet, hitting Darren, a local woodsman from the area. He was a real supporter of Granny, as he often stopped by and had lunch with her while working in the nearby woods. There was no hiding that he felt this group was a little extreme, but he showed up every month, probably for the fresh fruit smoothies granny made for everyone. They were renowned around town.

“Hey Red,” he said, rubbing his arm where the door had smacked him.

“Sorry,” Red whispered. Why are you standing so close to the door? Go sit down.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be here. There was a wolf sighting earlier this morning and while I don’t want to announce it to this group, I may have to go assist with animal control.”

Red nodded and whispered, “You’re too late. The ladies in the peloton took care of him for you. He’s road kill.”

“What?” Darren looked at her askance. “The wolf is dead, out on the road?”

“Yup. I don’t mean to sound heartless, but pretty sure it’s seen its day. Those bikers didn’t even slow down.”

“Hmmmm,” Darren said, looking thoughtful. “I guess that takes care of that. What have you got in that basket?”

“It’s not for you,” she scolded as she smacked his hand away from the lid. “This is for granny and you’re not to touch it. What big, snoopy hands you have.”

When I was in elementary school I used to love the “choose-your-ending” books. The story would start and every couple of pages you could decide what the protagonist would do. “If he goes into the cave, turn to page 24. If he turns around and goes back, turn to page 28.” And decision by decision you would take the protagonist to the conclusion of the story. Always with a different ending depending upon the choices your protagonist made, or more accurately, the choices that you made for your protagonist. Never mind that my protagonist almost always died, it was a grand adventure to try and create a story that you could only partially control.

Ha! Welcome to real life. Only now the stakes are higher. “If you break off this relationship turn to page 78. If you stay and try to let him work through his abusive behavior turn to page 47.  If you invest your life savings in Trump Towers turn to page 5. If you bought real estate in 2007 turn to page 72. If you try heroin just once, turn to page 189. If you choose porn over a real woman turn to page 69. If you spend time with your kids turn to page 32. If you spend more time at work turn to page 44.

The other day I was headed to my company Christmas party. I have no idea what I was thinking about, but I turned left on a green light just as an SUV blew through the intersection. I didn’t see him until my lights were within inches of his car, and he swerved, fast as lightning, and I felt nothing. I pulled over, he pulled over, there was a black smear so thin I could still see my paint through it on my front bumper, but I’d felt nothing. He was in his late twenties, had a week-old baby in his car, and his wife. We each drove away unharmed. I went to my party. He got his family home safe. But what if he’d been a second slower? What if we’d hit, him going at least 45 MPH? There could have been death. There would have been injury. There could have been totaled vehicles and life as we knew it might have changed completely. To drive off, 10 minutes later with nothing but a black smear on my bumper was a miracle that could have had any number of other endings.

Sometimes I think back on my life and think what if I hadn’t left my first husband? What if we’d stayed together for the kids? He would have missed out on finding his wife and their sweet little son would never have been born. My subsequent marriages wouldn’t have happened, and that would have been a good thing, but I wouldn’t have learned things – had experiences. It’s also probable that we would have lived in some level of misery that neither of us thrived in. Would we have felt brave or cowardly for not leaving?

It gets complex really fast. Complex beyond what we can imagine because relationships create other people who have impact that changes the world. Choices lead to staying put or moving to new places, and the people you meet in those places would never have been a part of your life path, or you a part of there’s if you’d stayed put. Do you? Don’t you? Which choice do you make at the crossroads of your life?

In my church, we have what is called a patriarchal blessing. It’s a blessing we believe is inspired by God to guide and direct us throughout our lives. Often it gives clues to how life will unfold if we live well. Well, I reread mine and all I can say is that I got off the path somewhere, because my life doesn’t even partially align with that blessing. One day I was feeling really badly about this. Had I blown it? Had I really missed all the things I was supposed to do, missed my calling because I had turned to page 28 and entered the cave instead of turning around….a time or two? Which turn off had been the one to get me completely lost in the woods? Or was it a little of all of them? I called my life coach, who is not of my religious persuasion, and while I was nervous to tell her my thoughts I desperately needed someone to talk it over with. Being single I don’t have a spouse to discuss this type of thing with, and I’m not going to talk to my kids about where my life went off course, so I called her. She gave me words of wisdom that I will forever hold dear. She said, “Lori , God doesn’t need people who don’t make mistakes. He uses people who have experience, who have gained empathy and understanding through living. To touch others you must be able to relate, and life will do that for you.”

Elisabeth Kubler Ross said, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern.  Beautiful people do not just happen.”

In the story told earlier Little Red Riding Hood will never know what it’s like to be eaten by the wolf, because a peloton of bikers chose to run him over before he got into the woods and to grandmother’s house. She will go on to live a life, never knowing how close she came to another experience entirely.

I have no idea what would have happened if my car would have collided with the other gentleman’s on that snowy pre-Christmas night, and I’ll go on living, be grateful for my car and that we are all in one piece, but truly we’ll forget about it soon enough, never knowing what that page might have said.

A few years ago I was riding my road bike and was stopped at a stop light. Right before the light changed my music bleeped out and I stopped to pull out my phone and see what was going on. That five seconds saved my life because without the music blip I would have launched off the line when the light changed and plunged into traffic, just as a man in a huge Dodge truck ran the red light and plowed through the intersection at 60 miles an hour. He would have smashed me between the car on the other side of me and there would have been very little to recover. What if?

As I mentioned earlier, in the choose-your-own-ending stories I always ended up dead. So, I believe my guardian angels are probably working over time, and because of that I have been saved from many a fiasco. There was the time I was dropped 100 feet from a rock climb, but lived. There was the time a drunk driver hit me head on going 65 MPH, and I walked away without injury. There is every time I bike down steep mountain trails and fly over my handle bars, only to get back up and ride another day. Who knows how many times the wolf got killed before he came to my house? Nobody knows.

While there are many things we do not control. There are also many places in our stories where there is no one to make our choices but us. There have been a few times I’ve wished someone else could make the hard choices. That someone else would say, “turn to page 76,” because I’m afraid of making that call. But in the end, we get to choose our own endings, and we do that every day with the decisions we make. And, just like we talk about in episode 8, it’s gonna be messy. There’s no way around that, but we become the “beautiful people” that Kubler Ross talked about earlier, because we get in the arena and we engage in life. We make the best choices we know how to make at the time. We walk into the cave or we walk away. We go into the forest or we chose a different route. But we also get to see ourselves with compassion for those choices that in hindsight seem a lot clearer than they did in the fog of the struggle. A million things can happen to us every day. We get to control some of them, we don’t get to control others. We have no idea how much assistance we are receiving from our guardian angels, and there is no way to know about the “What-ifs.” But what we do get to do is take responsibility for our choices, we get to choose big and exciting options, we get to be brave and sometimes foolhardy. We get to turn the page and see what happens, and when we make choices we regret, we get to show compassion for ourselves in that past moment, knowing we did the best we could, and then trying again.

Real big-boy and big-girl life is a choose-your-own-ending storybook. You are the protagonist. You make the choices. You take responsibility for those choices, learn from them, love yourself through the bad ones, and think big! Create your own adventure. We all end up dead in the end anyway.

This week’s challenge is to consider a life choice that you made, that you have regrets about. Show your past self-compassion for that choice to turn to page 54, when in hindsight you now wish you would have turned to page 72. Be gentle with the past you who did the best you could at the time.

Have fun out there telling your stories and we’ll see you next week on the love your story podcast. Don’t forget to share this podcast with a friend. It’s always a good idea to share empowerment.

Today we have a special guest: Natalie Kristine Burrage - a specialist and coach in loving yourself.

Bio: Love Yoga Flow Studio Owner, Yoga Teacher, and Self-proclaimed Creation Catalyst, Natalie Burrage loves to empower her clients from shifting from the trauma and drama of life into a space of purposeful and fun creation so they can create the life they've desired! Empowering her students with self-love is key as she watches them create the love, the money, the happiness, and the life they've been longing for. She often says that people hire her who are ready to get off the merry go round of self-delusion and temporary fixes and actually step into truth, empowerment, and doing whatever it takes (including fun!) to get the results they weren't previously able to create on their own.

To contact Natalie:

https://www.instagram.com/natalie_burrage/https://www.facebook.com/thenatalieb/

https://twitter.com/NatalieBurrage

https://www.facebook.com/thenatalieb/https://twitter.com/NatalieBurrage

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