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

Tell YOUR truth. Find YOUR voice. Sing YOUR song. Today I interview Amy Donaldson Brass about what it took to find her own voice in the male-dominated world of sports reporting. Come along and listen to our first interview as Amy tells her story.

Podcast Interview: Amy Donaldson Brass, Sports Reporter for the Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah.

For more information on Amy go to: http://www.deseretnews.com/author/5017/Amy-Donaldson.html

Personal Narrative – How We Reveal Ourselves

When we talk to one another we engage in a ritual. Most people, of course, don’t think of it that way, but there are distinct patterns we follow in verbal exchanges. One type of exchange is the sharing of stories. The way we tell our stories to each other allows us to do so many things: build reputation, share awe, warn, teach, threaten, celebrate and explore, among others. Today we’ll discuss how we use stories to reveal ourselves and to reflect others.

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.

During my study of the personal narrative, I used Erving Goffman’s research and writings on the interaction ritual a great deal. I studied his work in detail because the idea of a simple conversation being a complex ritual was fascinating. As I broke apart his work I marveled that a mind could take apart such common everyday actions and find these patterns. But he was right on. We do follow patterns when we talk with one another, and as he discovered, “face” is the pivot point of the ritual.

Let me share some definitions:

“Face” as Goffman defines it, is the “positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact.” One might consider this your base reputation.

A “line” is a pattern of verbal and non-verbal acts by which he expresses his view of the situation. Something like one’s perspective on a topic.

If a person is “in face” then the encounter allows that person to sustain an image of oneself that he/she is comfortable with and frankly takes for granted. Which means that your reputation is in-line with what you are comfortable with.

If a person is “out of face” it means that information has been brought forth that does not sustain the face being held for that person. Or, in other words, that the person has not maintained their reputation. For example, if someone considers themselves smart, and they are considered smart in their social groups, and they do something foolish, they are “out of face.”

“Face work” is action taken to make whatever he/she is doing consistent with the “face” he/she has established. So, you’re working to maintain your reputation as whatever you are comfortable with by the things you say and do.

“Poise” is the ability to suppress and conceal any tendency to become shamefaced during encounters.

To “Save Face” is a process by which a person sustains an impression for others that he has not lost face.

To “Give Face” is to arrange for another to get a better line than he could have gotten otherwise. So, perhaps to brag someone up upon introduction, which is not something they could have done for themselves.

You get the idea here. Basic concepts we understand and take for granted in our exchanges are actually part of a ritual that we intuitively understand because we have learned it through our cultural upbringing. So why do I want to take this apart? We are always discussing in this podcast how the power of story is a powerful tool. And, as I say in the beginning of every podcast, “power works best when you know how to use it.” Understanding how we use our stories, and what they do for us in these ritual exchanges, every day, allows us to purposefully manage “face” and understand what it means when we share parts of ourselves and our stories. By the time this episode is over you will have a greater awareness of how and why you use your stories in these exchanges.

One of the important aspects of “face” that must be acknowledged is that while everyone varies to some degree in how much they claim to care about what others think, everyone has a vision of themselves they wish to portray. This self-image is deeply meaningful to each of us and emotional responses are attached to it. Goffman points out that when we are in social situations where our “face” plays out as it should, we feel good and confident. But if we have an encounter where our ordinary expectations of face are not maintained we feel bad, hurt, or ashamed. These acknowledgements of the emotional import of maintaining “face” and its impact on our ability to function well establishes the serious nature of this ritual and the ritual outcome.

So, here’s the kicker – while this social “face” can be one of our most personal possessions, it IS on loan from society. It can be revoked by others if we don’t live up to the “face” we’ve built, or we don’t engage in the ritual properly. For example, one aspect of the ritual is that when someone is ready to leave the ritual they will start using phrases or body language to turn away or cut off conversation. It the other person in the ritual /conversation doesn’t get the clues being dropped and continues to talk and talk, it is likely that people will avoid talking to this person in the future if this is an ongoing oversight. Know what I mean? Hence the natural inclination for each of us to carefully and appropriately navigate through our communication rituals. One of the ways this is done is through the stories we share and our ability to live up to those stories.

For example, let’s say a new student arrives on campus and is quite vocal sharing experiences and stories about their successes at the school they’ve just transferred from. The student is in the drama department and they claim many experiences with leading roles and much acting exposure on the stage. The student drops names and techniques and talks the talk, but when it comes time to walk the walk her performance does not match the face she has claimed. She has used stories about her past experiences that show her to be experienced and strong in her field of singing, dancing and acting, but upon performing she is unable to keep this face. In which case, she is now ‘out of face’ with her society. Her reputation then changes to be not only one that does not live up to her stories, but is now also jaded by the shadow of mistrust. This is what face is and how it works. Now let’s look at some other conversational techniques.

In my thesis research, I discovered the fun phenomenon of what I call “plugging into the domino train.” This is where one person tells a story and those listening automatically start scanning the filing cabinets of their minds for links to their own stories. For example, eight of us were sitting in a yurt one evening after a day of biking. We were just kicking back and talking about nothing in particular. One person mentions that he connects well with older people, and how they trust him. I believe he was specifically referring to his grandparents. Another participant finds a story in his stash of experiences that illustrates him as someone who is also trusted by “older people.” He plugs his story into the conversational domino train, so to speak, and takes over the conversation with his tale of how he used to work for an older gentleman who had health issues, and how he became good friends with this man and a trusted family confidant.  While he is telling his story, everyone else in the group has that mental machine running at full speed also. If during his story he mentions something and someone else has a similar story, then upon his completion the person will/can/may try to plug into the conversational domino train with their story. So, for instance, let’s say that during his story about working for this older gentlemen, he expressed that the man was a university professor and had a beautiful collection of old books that the city had asked him to donate to a special collection in the library. Those listening to the story will simply be scanning for points of connection as they listen. Do they have a story or experience with a beautiful collection of books, or the city asking for a donation, or helping the elderly? They can plug in at any point to which they can find a tie, it simply depends upon them having an experience to connect with. It’s how conversation works. This is why when we speak with someone with whom we have things in common the conversation is much smoother than it is with someone who has different interests. I once went out with a guy who did very little outdoor recreation. The date went fine, but I was having a hard time finding common ground for discussion. We stopped by his apartment for him to grab something, and his roommate was there. As I sat and made conversation with his roommate, I found that he was an avid outdoorsman. Our conversation flew. We talked non-stop, with no awkward moments of trying to fill the silence, while his roommate found whatever it was he was looking for. The contrast for me was so stark that I still remember the pretty meaningless event years later. Unless we are skilled conversationalists who are not constantly stuck inside our own heads, and we understand how to ask questions and delve into another’s experiences, the conversation will die upon running out of common ground, or it will drone on as one person talks only about themselves.

So, let’s go back to this space where someone in the conversation is telling a story, our minds are scanning for a way to plug into what they are talking about, and let’s say that your scanning brings up a story about you and the city making a request from you (so you can plug in there) but your story involves a nefarious plot where you were caught stealing a book, let’s say. When this experience/story comes to mind you will automatically scan it to decide if telling this story will allow you to maintain an acceptable “face” with the people who are in the conversation. So, for example, you may be with a group of friends for whom stealing a book would be funny or acceptable – in which case you would choose to share the story because you could maintain the face you are comfortable with within this group. On the other hand, if you were with your parents, for instance, this may not be a story you would choose to tell. So, the mind is constantly scanning for ways to socially engage, but it is also protecting your socially constructed face by sifting through which stories you will share with which audiences. This is managing face with your stories.

Within the outdoor recreation folk group, or in my case, a group of my friends, stories are always being told. We create stories with every adventure and as I started listening closely and dissecting their stories I started to find how our stories create the masks we wear.

In our society, it is not looked upon favorably to walk up to others and begin talking about how cool you are and bragging about the things you’re good at. If you do that you automatically repel the people around you and you lose face for not understanding how the ritual works. It’s a ritually destructive move for your ‘face’ as a competent conversationalist. On the other hand, it IS perfectly acceptable for you to share a story that promotes a positive self-image and provides proof, through action, of your skills and accomplishments.

For example, one day my son and I and a friend were riding the ziplines at the Park City Olympic Park. We were racing and my son and I were teasing each other about who won and who lost. He claimed he lost because a branch hit him. This triggered the “domino train” for my friend who then started telling a story about being hit by a branch while he was riding at high speeds on a trail on the Hawaiian islands. As he told the story of biking, in what sounded like jungle, and the branch that struck out and gave him a vicious bite, he established through his tale that 1. He is serious enough about mountain biking that he will partake of the sport even in remote places. 2. That he has a certain skill set to ride in the conditions he described, and 3. That he was a little extreme because he could claim bite marks by a plant that had actually left scars. He was able to relay information about himself through the story in a form that was acceptable and starts to build his face, or reinforce the face we already know.

Within the outdoor recreation folk group there are a number of sorting processes going on as people talk among themselves. No one ever spells these out, they are the unwritten sorting taking place in our minds. One of these is that as we tell our stories we are imparting information about our legitimacy inside the group. The trails or areas we refer to, the sports we participate in, how often we participate and at what level tell the listener if we are a poser, a beginner, a weekend warrior or an expert. This presentation of self is enfolded in a story that is told to relive the past, share an experience, encourage, share awe, or any number of other functions, but couched in that primary purpose is also a load of information about the teller. We see, in action, that person providing proof as to his/her abilities and interactions with the world. This is one form of self-presentation among many. The stories confirm to ourselves and to others who we are.

So, if this is the case, and we are subconsciously or automatically sorting and editing our stories anyway, what if we managed them?

“McAdams, in his paper Psychology of Life Stories, says, “Life stories are psychosocial constructions, co-authored by the person himself or herself and the cultural context within which that person’s life is embedded and given meaning. As such, individual life stories reflect cultural values and norms, including assumptions about gender, race and class.”

Stories organize and show our motivations. They show us in action. People act for the sake of what they want and what they believe in, so stories show us rather than tell us a great deal about ourselves and others. They also allow us to show others who we are, and they portray the culture and world that we live in as well.

Man, we can sure get a lot of information out of a simple story. And, there’s more, so much more…but for this week, your challenge is to write out a list of your best qualities. Then find a story that provides proof of you exhibiting these qualities. If you feel you are a loyal person, find a story of a time you showed loyalty to someone. If you feel you are honest, find a story that exemplifies this quality in you. If you can’t find any examples, then you get to consider that maybe you are not as loyal or honest as you like to believe, and you can make life and living adjustments accordingly. But as you find the stories of you living up to these qualities you will see how they can be used to define and clarify yourself, not only to others but also to you. You may even want to ask your friends about their most memorable stories with you and then take a look at what those stories show you doing. Our identities develop as a result of our social experiences and our relationships with others. In fact, identity itself is a story.  But, as we have discussed in many other episodes, we get to manage those stories. Our power is in the acceptance of the messiness and realness of our stories (episode 8) because we can’t truly thrive without an acceptance and love of ourselves, and we cannot give what is not ours. But our stories are uniquely ours. Your story is uniquely yours. You have a unique voice and you can only tell the story that you know how to tell, but that’s exactly the story that should be told. That story comes from a complex social construct, but your identity is formed and reinforced by the stories you create and tell about yourself. Manage those stories by focusing on the ones that exemplify your strengths, not the stories that compare or discourage.

Have fun this week out there telling your stories. Remember that what we focus on is what we create. Focus on the stories of your awesome moments! I promise – you have them. See you next week on the Love Your Story podcast.

Holding Hands–Reaching out to the Characters in YOUR Story.

I lay by my son as he falls asleep. He curls his small cherub 4-year-old body next to mine and he wraps his little hand around my thumb. “I love you too,” he says. Then follows it with, “Say that to me.”

As children we come into the world ready to grab hands, but having a hand only large enough to grab a finger – we start by wrapping five tiny fingers around the larger one of a caregiver –we do it without hesitation as we figure out how to reach out and connect, hold on to one another. In the case of my son, we even ask for what we need. As we get older we are much more careful about breaking those boundaries. We are careful to stay in our own spaces and too often we forget to reach out to one another. Today’s podcast is about connecting with touch: it’s about holding hands and how human touch links us, literally closes the gap between people, and how important that is – to all of us.

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.

Last week we spoke about random acts of kindness and the stories we can participate in by keeping our eyes open for small, kind, daily acts. This week, we’re talking about holding hands.

There is a photo of me with my two sons, the youngest sitting on my lap, my hands unintentionally wrapped with his, our fingers interlaced, my thumbs caressing the backs of his soft, sweet, pudgy, three-year-old hand. It’s not something we pay attention to, just something we do.

In another memory, we cut our way across the Albertson’s parking lot and he hollers, “Mom, hold my hand so I don’t get run over.” His voice is high and sweet, and as quickly as I take his hand he decides he wants to brave it on his own and practice stepping over cracks.

A dance takes place as we interact. We reach out, we pull back, we want to know we are not alone, but we don’t want to be held back either. It’s a tricky two-step.

To hold someone’s hand is to connect: to offer friendship, protection, comfort, to make your way undivided through a crowd, to guide, to show affection. The Beatles sang “I want to hold your ha a and.” And the world sang with them.

In a world where we can feel alone in a sea of a million people, the chance to hold another’s hand can be a gift, an anchor, a place where for that moment you are not alone. For that moment you are joining forces. A joining of hands is a human action that allows us to connect, communicate, and exchange energy in a meaningful way. For however long the moment lasts we are unafraid to touch. And that is a beautiful moment.

I sat on a plane, flying home from Ohio, after our final weekend in an emotional intelligence workshop that had lasted 3 months. The people in that workshop had become family, and I lived thousands of miles away, in Utah. There was a good chance I wouldn’t see most of them again.  We spent months working together on projects and learning, through the good and the bad, how to work together, play team, and love each other. After plenty of annoyance, quiet thoughts of frustration, numbers of calls to my life coach, I am proud to say that I finally came to a place of loving each of my team members for exactly where they were, taking them for their good and their bad and loving them in their own space – without judgment.  It’s not very often that one gets to a fully loving consensus with a group of 44 different people – I’d never felt anything like it, and to leave them, like high school graduation, required an acceptance that things would never again be like they had been, because they couldn’t. Remember episode 11 and how we can’t step in the same river twice.  As I felt the wheels of the plane lift off the tarmac it was the official separation from Ohio as I flew back to Utah, into the light-blue fall sky and away from the place, the people, the experiences. I reached across the seat and grabbed the hand of my friend who was sitting next to the window. The center seat was empty except for our hands clasped together as the flight gained altitude. Her grip was firm and comforting as I was present to the moment of leaving and the tears that ran down my cheek. We said nothing, just grasped hands as the wheels left the tarmac.

Human chains have been formed to demonstrate solidarity in a cause. Chains have been created that included millions of human beings, linking hands to boycott nuclear missiles, to call for peace, to seek for independence. Children link hands for a game of Red Rover – when the group is successful the chain in unbreakable. We hold hands during funerals, marches, vigils, and weddings. When the World Trade towers collapsed I watched people leaping from the impossible height, hand in hand. Falling together…together.

A couple months ago Annie Schmidt disappeared while hiking in Portland. She was from Utah, a beautiful young lady who had recently moved to Oregon. I look at her pictures, the gorgeous young woman full of life, and I am devastated. I know a bit about her family and I can’t help but put myself in her mother’s place, in her father’s place, and I struggle to hold back the tears. I think of my son who was diagnosed with Leukemia this summer. He is also a beautiful human being, a gorgeous, strong young man with a champion spirit, a solid heart, and a 5-star smile. He doesn’t complain as he fights. He gets up, eventually, and tries to go about his day in a meaningful fashion. My mind once or twice has looked into the ugly abyss of the possibility of losing him, but I push it away as quickly as it appears because my eyes tear up and my throat closes. I watch the news and the Sioux Indians fighting against the pipeline being pushed through their land, peeling back the plains the wild buffalo still run on in North Dakota. People are out there fighting for the things they love. They are fighting for their children, they are fighting for their relationships, they are fighting for their land, they are fighting for their lives. This world is not for the weak. The journey to create and preserve relationships is not for the weak. The journey of fighting disease is not for the weak. The journey of standing up for your rights and the things you think are important, against often what feels like unbeatable odds is not for the weak. The journey to keep putting one foot in front of the other when someone you love leaves you through death or some other reason. This is not for the weak either.  So as we try to find our strength in the midst of our battles, hold hands. Hold hands because the feeling of having someone’s hand close around your own is the forming of a chain – linking two people together in love, in support, in joy, in being, in power.

Between lovers, couples, family, the human race, holding hands remains a sign of intimacy. Simple, but powerful. So much is said, is felt in a gesture. From intimately intertwined fingers, to the grasp across an airline seat, to a train of people tying themselves to one another so no one gets lost, to crossing the road with a child…there are a hundred reasons to hold hands, but they all come down to connecting, and connecting is why we are here. Thich Nhat Hanh said, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” While this illusion is understandably difficult to break through, reaching out to hug someone, to hold a hand, physically bridges the gap for a moment.

Martha Beck, International Life Coach, said, “Relationships are the most important human experience available to us. I realized in my twenties that the meaning of life is not about what happens to people; it’s about what happens between people. Learning to connect with each other, to experience empathy, to step outside our own experience, and to experience love in all its forms—these, I believe, are the experiences for which we became human.”

In Galatians 6:2 it says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens…”  When we reach out to grasp another person, to touch in a world filled with apparent separation. When we reach out to lift, to comfort, even just to connect with the squeeze of a hand there is an exchange of energy. An exchange that says, you’re not alone.

Driving home from Brianhead after a weekend of painful bliss on the mountain bike, there is a young blond child on her father’s shoulders staring at me from a billboard, her hands raised above her head, the American flag grasped in her pudgy fingers, the words UNITY blaring in black block letters.  I’m listening to the Disney Spirit soundtrack and there is an orchestral crescendo as I speed by.  It is moving in its own way.

I am returning from the Fat Tire Festival at Brianhead where along with seven others I was shuttled to and from some of the best mountain bike trails in the West.  Thunder Mountain, seven miles of intermediate to advanced up and down sequences through and above red hoodoos and alpine canyons, was amazingly scenic, but the hills were kicking my butt.

Jason, a much better rider than I, peddled behind me yelling, “Shift down!  You can do it!  Go! Go! Go!”  So I pushed harder even when I wanted to stop and cry.  I become more because he stayed with me and reached out.

At major junctions and intersections on the trail the faster riders in our group stopped and waited for those in the rear.  It was not required, but it united us in a way where, though at times we rode with no one else in sight, we knew we were not alone.  We were making sure no one got lost, took the wrong path, got hurt, felt left out.

In Sunday School, or was it first grade, the teacher held up one popsicle stick and easily broke it.  She then added five or six to the stack and the pile could no longer be broken.  As I drove down the interstate, four lanes on each side, I wondered how many people were crying?  How many people were excited about where they were headed as they sped along?  How many people were alone or lonely?  How five or six, or even two of us are stronger together than just a single stick resisting the pressures.

In the shuttle van and on the trail there were packets of energy gel and peanut butter shared back and forth as energy waned.  People from the group were taking my photo at scenic overlooks and offering to send copies.  Synergy, the interaction of different things so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of individual effects, is an exponential empowerment. If I give what I have to give, and you give what you have to give, we both have more.  And if I give and you do not, I still have more because I become more than I was before I gave, and we are both richer for it. When I reach out to you, and you reach out to me, and we pull each other up when we are face-down in the arena (remember from episode 7) we become stronger because we are not alone.

Near Ogden Utah there is a billboard of Mother Teresa her hands reaching out to an unseen other, the words “reaching beyond yourself” emblazoned below her picture.  I scratch a note to call my friend that just had her baby and see how she is doing.  I’m thinking about the givers and takers of the world. There are times we will need the help, someone to encourage us up the hill, take us to dinner, call and check on us, take our hand; and there are times when we are lucky enough to be the giver.  It takes both.

There is a beautiful piece of thin navy paper, an iridescent blue-green feather pasted down one side, a poem entitled “The Gift of an Angel by Your Side,” on the other, a small gold and blue pin with the words “blue bird of happiness” attached at the top, a hundred dollar bill and a friend’s handwriting beside the pin that says “Fly!”.  It was handed to me during a difficult transitional time in a plain brown envelope with a hug and the direction to open when needed.

When your butt is kicked and a rider on the trail offers you her packet of GU, you love that rider.  When you’ve taken all you can take and you’re about to bonk, that energy gel is not just a .99 cent package of rice syrup, potassium and caffeine, it’s pure gold, and sometimes it saves your life.  Sometimes just knowing there is someone that cares enough to ride behind you hollering  “You can do it!”  says as much as a billboard. Sometimes the human race shines. And sometimes reaching out and holding another person’s hand says more than words because it says, in a gesture, I am with you, you are not alone, and we can cross this dangerous street together. And sometimes when someone reaches for your hand they are saying “I love you too, now say that to me.”

We come programmed to hold onto one another. We arrive hardwired to grasp hands, and if we are lucky and wise, we don’t lose our grip.

Your challenge for this week is to reach out more than you usually would. Use your wonderful hands to close the gap between you and someone you love, someone who needs you, or just because you want to connect. Bridge the gap.

Have fun telling and creating your stories this week, and I’ll see you next week on the next episode of Love Your Story Podcast. PS – Pass this podcast onto your friends and go to our website: www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and sign up for our weekly challenge/inspiration.

Random Acts of Kindness – Creating a Mystery

The Dalai Lama said, “Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents, and then later on in our life, when we are oppressed by sickness and become old we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since at the beginning and the end of our lives we are so dependent on other’s kindness, how can it be that in the middle we neglect kindness toward others?”

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.

Last week I told a story about floating down the San Juan river and how the people and experiences in our lives become touchstones of meaning and milestones for us. This week we’ll talk about why kindness is more important than ever and how we create our own mystery stories.

In the timeline of the history of the world, our day is unlike any other. The speed at which we communicate and transact business is instantaneous compared with past forms of communication that ranged from only being unable to communicate with someone that was directly in front of you, to currier by horse or pigeon which could take weeks or months depending upon how far away the communication was being sent, to telegraphs, to home phones, sitting in front of the large home radio, television, or computer and eventually the internet and the crazy small devices that we can carry with us everywhere now. This of course, leaves out the eras taken to develop symbols and alphabets in the first place to be able to communicate outside of pictographs and petroglyphs. It’s been a long road. We are so connected now, with so many people, that the common person with a cell phone has a monumental voice to tell their stories to the entire on-line world with a reach completely unprecedented. Social media has given rise to the voice of the masses – to anyone who wants to speak. There is no more silence, no more getting permission, no more waiting for the powers-that-be to approve what the masses know. Today with a cell phone and a computer you are your own publisher, your own promoter. You can be connected to almost anyone, almost anywhere, even someone on the other side of the world. So, here’s the irony: this is also the time the Huffington Post called, “The Age of Loneliness.” There are lots of reports and articles written on this subject, how we don’t like to admit we’re lonely because it’s a stigma associated with losers and loners, how the local community once revered and honored as a place where people knew and supported one another has become instead often a place where everyone is disconnected because they are so busy moving fast, or tapping in virtually to people they will never see. There are numerous reasons our society has become disconnected, all while appearing to be more connected than ever, but without this sense of community and personal connectedness, we are often left feeling lonely and lost. Our stories have more moments where we stand in a crowd and feel completely alone. I have felt this more times than I have tracked.

The other day I was listening to a podcast and the speaker pointed out research that showed that when we leave our cell phones on the table during lunch or during a conversation, that people will not delve into deep discussions. Conversation stays on a surface level because all participants know that they can be interrupted at any time, and sharing on deep personal levels is a vulnerable and personal space that requires one’s full attention. This is just one example of the many, many ways that technology creates a lack of connection.

So why am I talking about our disconnection, our loneliness, our lack of community… not because I think we should all throw our phones away or disconnect our internet, but because there are little things we can do every day to change the disconnect, one act at a time, one generated story plot at a time.

Gandhi said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Thomas S. Monson, Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said, “The Savior taught His disciples, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke [9:24]).

He goes on, “I believe the Savior is telling us that unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives. Those who live only for themselves eventually shrivel up and figuratively lose their lives, while those who lose themselves in service to others grow and flourish—and in effect save their lives.”

Or in other words, to write the best possible life story, where the hero’s life is saved in the end, that hero’s journey is going to need to be filled with a lot of looking outward, with kindness, with service, with moments of creating goodness for the sake of another. This is what makes the hero, and apparently, what saves his life in the end.

Did you know that Random Act of Kindness week is coming February 12-18? Neither did I, but I found the countdown clock and it’s drawing nearer with each passing second. On Randomactsofkindness.org they have lesson plans and calendars with RAK ideas for every day of the year. They are the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. Who knew there was such a thing? But thank God there are people who are out there wanting to pour kindness into the world. Are you one of them?

I remember the first time I heard about RAK as a thing. It was in the 80’s and someone had gone around putting quarters in parking meters so folks wouldn’t get parking tickets. “What a great idea,” I thought. “So simple, so fun, and it has a really big WOW factor.” I’d never heard of any such thing. It was an ah-ha moment. I’ve grown to really like RAK’s because it’s become a bit of a game where the results are unknown. I pay for the guy behind me in the drive-thru – I have no idea how it will affect him. But I can bet, at the very least,  he’s going to feel a little warm and fuzzy, and that’s going to translate into better thoughts and actions on his part. Maybe he’s had a hard day at work and he’s tired and grumpy. Maybe my $10 secret donation will change how he interacts with his kids or his wife when he gets home. Maybe he’ll pass it on by doing something nice for someone else. Maybe he was down to his last $10 before pay day, no way of knowing any of this, but you can bet that it’s adding joy to the world and you get to imagine what your butterfly effect might be.

On the About Us page on Randomactsofkindness.org it says:

“We know how important kindness is because we’ve all felt how important it is. But that’s not the only reason we know. Scientific studies have shown that random acts of kindness are good for you! They improve your life satisfaction by increasing your sense of belonging and self- worth, and they improve your health by decreasing your anxiety, depression and blood pressure. And here’s the best part: these benefits apply to the giver of kindness, the recipient of kindness, and anyone who witnesses the act! Every act improves the lives of at least three people.”

Looking beyond one’s self is sometimes not the first thing that comes to mind. When things are going well for us for we are often caught up in doing what we want. When we hit hard times it’s usually not even on our radar, because when we are suffering we are in a space of self-involvement. We hurt, so we focus on ourselves and what we can do to relieve our own pain. Ironically, sometimes (in fact, quite often) the best medicine is to look outward. To quit thinking about ourselves and to focus on others. It has a high success rate for getting us out of our own heads. It’s exactly what Gandhi and Christ were talking about.

I have another quote on my fridge from John Wesley, it says, “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”  Even reading this quote makes me happy because the idea is a simple thought that breaks through any barriers or excuses why kindness shouldn’t be the response to any given situation. Every time I read it I smile, I get clear, and I think about what kindness I can show.

I’ve been trying over the past 3-4 months to really focus on random acts of kindness and sometimes it’s really hard to find one. So, I changed it to just ‘acts of kindness.’ They didn’t have to be random–that’s a little easier. Then my son proffered the idea that nothing is random according to his V-sauce research, so we called it, “unplanned acts of kindness.” But then I started feeling like in order to count them that they needed to be a kindness we wouldn’t usually do, and things like smiles and holding doors are things we would usually do. So it got more complicated and more complicated. When we’d had a hard day of finding random or ‘unplanned’ acts of kindness we began reporting back on simple things like going out of our way to have a more involved conversation with the checkout lady at the grocery store, or rushing to fill one another’s glasses at the dinner table so we could count that as an act of kindness. Suffice it to say, we are a work in progress…but what I think matters most, is that we pay enough attention, every day, to being just a little kinder and looking for that opportunity to add something kind to the world. It probably doesn’t matter what you name it, how big it is, or what it looks like, what matters is the way of living that it generates. A space of looking outward, of staying aware of who needs help, a habit of being thoughtful. Now I’m not saying I’m remembering every day – I’m not. I keep a little list on my phone so I can get excited when I look back and see all the good I’ve done, but also so I can track when I lose a week or two because I haven’t been paying attention. Like any good habit it takes practice. I think the key is like Rudyard Kipling said, “Delight in the little things.” Realize that by “small and simple things are great things brought to pass.” (Book of Mormon; Alma 37:6) Don’t let the idea of random acts of kindness overwhelm. One day I was walking my dog and I found a man trying to transfer a bunch of Halloween balloons from his car into a church. Instead, the balloons were blowing across the church lawn dancing and popping. I helped him round up the strays and secure them in the church. On another dog walk, there was a young man trying to stuff arm-fulls of raked leaves into a garbage bag he had hanging from the tree. He couldn’t get the bag to stay open the leaves just landed at his feet, all his hard work undone. I had the opportunity to hold his bag for him. It was a simple five minutes. I didn’t have to create it, I just had to be present and take the opportunity. There are probably more of those around us than we realize once we start paying attention.

As I mentioned earlier I often have a difficult time finding RAK ideas, so when I found Brad Aronson’s102 RAK suggestions on his web page, I stole some of them to add to my own list. Feel free to adapt any of these so they work in your world. Here’s a dozen ideas to get you started.

Once you get started on this wonderful game it can get exciting. Often when you do an act of kindness to someone, they are inspired to pay it forward. What is your kindness creating in the world? It’s exciting to think about because you can’t know the specifics. It’s wonderful to imagine the affect one act can set into motion, the stone thrown in the pond, the domino tipped into the domino line, but you can’t really know what story you are writing. What you can know is that you are becoming a person who lives with more kindness, a person who creates kindness, a person who might just touch a lonely soul that was feeling desperately disconnected in a culture where far too many of us are lonely.

One day as I paid for the man’s dinner behind me in the Taco Bell drive-thru (a Chalupa is my one fast food indulgence) I realized that the attendant to whom I gave the money could just pocket it and no one would know the difference. When I brought this up with my coach, with whom I was reporting my RAKs to, she said, even if the attendant pocketed the money, you put the intent into the world to create a kindness – you affected the attendant, you put kindness into action. It doesn’t have to turn out the way you plan, but your intent, your energy, your giving has gone out into the world. This made me feel a little better about the idea that I couldn’t control all aspects of the game. In fact, it added a whole dimension to the idea that we cannot know what events a RAK puts into motion.

Kindness as a way of being. A mysterious game of fun and giving. One small effort to combat the age of loneliness. However you look at unplanned, or random, or planned and completely unrandom acts of kindness, there’s not really a downside. It’s like writing a mystery novel and you will never know all the details of the story, but you will be the force for good.

This week’s challenge, yup, you guessed it, try to find an act of kindness every day this week and see if you can’t start a new habit! Log in to www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and share with us what you did and what stories you created in the process. We’d love to hear about it. Have fun creating your stories and we’ll see you next Wednesday on the next episode of the Love Your Story podcast.

River Touchstones – A story from the San Juan River

Heraclitus said, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Today’s story takes this very literally.

One thing I do not realize the first time I head for the river is that the person who steps onto the raft will not be the same person who steps off.  The water washes not only grains of sand from the belly of the rock; it washes from me my routine, takes me to a momentary place, a liminal space, where so many things cease to matter.  The consequences of the step onto the river are as opaque as the red silt water.  It is a time and space where, like the rock, I am carved… we are carved, yet added upon one grain at a time.

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.

Last week we shared stories of serendipity and miracles. This week I’ll share an award-winning story about how we collect the touchstones of meaning in our life travels, and why those lovely, meaningful stones matter.

A warm breeze hums through the screens along the top of the palapa-style hut. Grass walls swing like skirts as I stroll in, unintentionally late, my Chacos picking their way across the dirt floor scattered with peanut shells. My navy sarong wisps around my tan legs, natural air conditioning in the hot, dry desert air, and the pre-trip dinner fills with the chatter of strangers. “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “What brings you to the San Juan?” “Have you been here before?” I see him then. But at the time it means nothing. He means nothing. Instead, I glance at the lady wearing the red and blue Hawaiian shirt with naked surfers on it, and the two older gals with funny sun hats and drooping skin at the first table. A pudgy rocket scientist from Colorado and a newspaper owner and his wife chatter as their verbal exchange disappears on the San Juan breeze. I am the journalist-on-the-job and I plop down by an artist from New York and him, the writer for the New York Times at the corner table. We introduce ourselves and make pointless chatter about the wonderful week ahead. We have no idea the difference seven days will make.  In our mid-thirties, we claim the title of “youngest in the group”.  It’s the night before we launch. The energies and gestures, some indifferent, some intense, have started to intermingle between everyone; the beginning of our metamorphosis from single to collective.

Tonight we will sleep in our B&B’s, our motels and lodges; tomorrow we will pile, one on top of another, into cargo vans, our torpedo-like gray dry-bags filled with too few clothes and a shortage of sunscreen.  Tomorrow we will begin to share more than we ever intended–the river requires intimacy.  You cannot live for seven days in the wild without in some part, meshing with those you bathe, barf, sweat and eat with.  There are not many circumstances in which you find yourself peeing in public with recently acquired acquaintances, but river running is one of them.

It’s only been a few months since I took my children, divided nine years of belongings and left my husband to try and find the happiness I was certain I deserved. Loneliness is a multi-sided space. There is the loneliness when one simply wants companionship; there is the terrible loneliness one can have despite being with another person; and then there is the compound loneliness of being untouched, unappreciated, unconnected. This is the loneliness I carry on my back as I step onto the river.

At 6:00 a.m. we struggle to push the rafts from the shore, the sun filling the desert with color and warmth, the blue bulk of the rafts scraping the sand, the trailer, our legs and hands. The water laps at us, pulls us in, and we find our place in the sun. Eyes locked downstream, we scan the silt-laden waters of a prehistoric desert river that has held its course for a thousand lifetimes and watched 12,000 years of human use and occupation.  When John Wesley Powell passed the mouth of the San Juan River in 1869, he barely acknowledged it.  Powell and his crew of archaeologists and geologists spent the next decade exploring and mapping the last blank spot on the United States map –the Colorado Plateau.  Like others before and after, Powell could see no practical use for the river, and so the San Juan stayed a terra incognita, difficult to access and even more difficult to harness.  Our first days and nights on the river reveal snatches of history, give the tiniest peek, just enough for us to wonder at those brave and hardy pioneers who made their lives at its sandy flanks.  It is along these sandy flanks that I begin to pick up stones.

Our first day we raft to Riverhouse. River House claims status as the most extensive Ancestral Puebloan dwelling on the San Juan between Bluff and Clay Hills Crossing.  With 14 storage and living rooms, a kiva and petroglyphs along the upper reaches of the alcove, this dwelling has given up secrets and clues to an ancient people we will never know.  The 1,500 dried corncobs, hundreds of potshards, a sandal and fragments of cloth and yucca date the site at 700 A.D. – 1300 A.D.  Hiking west we climb Comb Ridge, a 700-foot wall over which the Mormon pioneers struggled to pull their wagons.  The effort was so extensive oxen died in the yoke and stumbling horses left blood on the rocks.  Our efforts require nothing more than sipping our Gatorade® and at the top we peer across the vast muddy swath washing through the desert; burnt rocks lined in millennia with chocolate browns, frosted oranges, burnt sienna and buff.  James, the journalist with the New York Times, banters with me as we hike. He and his brother-in-law are out for their annual trek to a Utah river and I think little of his attention. It’s no more than I would have exchanged with anyone else…but quietly, in my own mind, I am enjoying his verbal sparring, his company.

As night falls we wrestle our tents, despite the wind, flapping and colorful onto the sands below River House. Here I learn that sand does not hold tent stakes, and only large stones–inside my tent–will keep me grounded.  The cooks make the futile attempt at using their suntanned hands as sand shields over strips of sirloin sizzling and popping for fajitas, while the monochromatic browns surround us: the water, the sand, the cliffs in their patina and lichen clothing.  Before I learn of stones, my tent lifts into the air, a green kite on the wind, my river mates catch and secure it for me. George and Nancy, my tent neighbors, go about my business while I sit unknowingly, by the coursings of the muddy river in my Therma-rest ground chair watching the river flow with a quiet, but startling power. These two have known me only hours, but my tent now sits staked—7-mm rope and river rocks.  When I find out what they have done, how they saved my only shelter, I am touched.  We have floated only one day together. I put this small touchstone, rubbed smooth by the river, in my pocket to remember their kindness.

The first night is the last night I sleep in my tent.  Too much sun. Not enough water.   Day two surrounds me like a gorgeous blister: chocolate desert water, the friction of my swimsuit clad body perched unprotected on the baby blue tube of the raft, forgetting the sun holds the power of gods. I spend my second night curled next to the coolness of the river my head a throbbing mass I’d like to tear off and send downstream.  I don’t go to my tent, the stuffiness a prison, but more importantly, it is too far from the river and I need quick access as I repeatedly hurl into the sienna current as the night passes. I lie still, curled in fetal position on my sleeping pad. Late, dark, but desert warm with a solid black sky of screaming stars. I expect nothing from anyone. It’s my own fault I wasn’t more careful—I know better—and the flat desert night spins around my head, around my body.  And it is here, in this scene that James comes, sits next to me, brings his sleeping pad out and lies by my side.  He tethers me, keeps me from spinning away.

“I’m sorry,” I grumble. “You don’t have to stay here.” I’m embarrassed.  I hardly know him. He keeps his hand on my back all night, does not leave me to the loneliness of being sick with no one by my side.  I think I shall love him forever simply for that comforting hand.  My first year at college I found myself kneeling on the floor over a cold apartment toilet, the first time I’d been sick without my mother to bring me water or soda and brush the hair from my face.  I cried, not because of the wretchedness of being ill, but because of the realization of the solitary aspect of growing up–the pang so stark I remember it 13 years later.  James becomes a touchstone.  At critical times what seems small to the giver makes all the difference to the one who receives.  That night something invisible happened. His hand on my back, his body sleeping by my side through the darkness and heat of the desert night, the kindness. It wasn’t a gift, it was a tie–invisible, unspoken, and from that night on I always knew where James sat, walked or swam, and I could feel him watching me in the same way.

Heat stroke sends me to the river’s edge, lays me out under the stars, shows me how it feels to sleep under a black sky of delirious, glowing orbs unfettered by human light, unblocked by tent mesh, but James showed me connection. Of all the stones I collected, these touchstone of the freedom of the dark desert night without filters; and the kindness of strangers, are always ones I return to.

In the morning when I groggily force my eyes open, I find we have slept beneath a towering red-rock structure that resembles a man’s face so completely no one has to point it out or describe it.  It is simply there, across the river, looking down, a guardian.  Guardians surrounded me. And so now does James.

In 1965, in Down the Colorado, Robert Brewster Stanton wrote, “The red is not in itself brilliant, but the effect of the morning and evening sun shining upon the cliffs through the peculiar atmosphere of that dry country, produces a most startling effect, till the whole side of the Canyon seems ablaze with scarlet flame.”  Rafting the 83 mile stretch of meandering river from Sand Island  to Clay Hills takeout, takes us through a history from which we lie so far removed it is hard to fathom the eons that have passed in forming the faces and layers revealed.  Shortly after the initial launch, the river runs by Navajo sandstone walls lined with thick black streaks of desert varnish where minerals from the dirt atop the cliff have bled down the face year after year after year. The cliffs have the look and name of “Tiger Walls.”  We pass through the Honaker Trail formation dated 290 million years old, we pass through the Triassic, Jurassic and Pennsylvanian eras.  And yet the San Juan is famous for the Goosenecks, a tight twisting path the river has cut into the rock where it takes eight river miles to cover one mile of land.  A prime example of an entrenched meander.  When taking the path of least resistance the route is seldom direct.  James and I become an entrenched meander. We talk on the back of the raft mile after mile. His vocabulary astounds me. I want to have him just for the words he knows.  I’m kind of ashamed to call myself a writer next to him. Shit, I need a dictionary to keep up, but it’s gorgeous on the ears. The river cannot claim independence of the larger landscape surrounding it; it has evolved as a consequence of the land.  We are the same.

The sun catches up with me despite wet draped towels across my shoulders and a wide brim hat. My skin screams in vibrant red and yet tomorrow is more sun that I can’t avoid. Nurse Lynn takes me to her tent and pulls out a bottle of soothing after-sun burn relief. I can’t remember the brand, but when she sent me out with the bottle in hand and told me I could keep it, again I was surprised at another personal kindness. The lotion smelled tropic and clean and I slathered it on, day after day, cooling my skin and blessing nurse Lynn. I picked up another stone, this one speckled, and added it to my pocket.

The river guides have two inflatable kayaks referred to as Duckies.  Each day we choose to either ride the big blue rafts while a guide rows, or to row ourselves in these bright yellow banana boats.  Near the beginning of the trip Joan and Jean, the two older women, carefully scoot their bodies into position in the Ducky. Joan, in back, her face lost in her lifejacket, becomes nothing but a hat, a life vest and two arms.  Jean, in front, seems less secure with this idea, though the two have rowed together off and on over a forty-year friendship.  Each day they choose the Ducky.  They have discovered their place on this trip like I have discovered my place under the stars.  Their second day we notice the Ducky rocking.  Jay guides our boat toward them. “I was just trying to hang over the side to pee,” responds Joan matter-of-factly with a bit of a sheepish grin. “Courageous,” says Jay, “but your technique requires refinement.”

On the last day, when Duckies are being divvied, Joan adamantly stakes her claim.  “We are going to die sooner than the rest of you,” she says, “so you will all have another time to row a Ducky.  We are not getting out!”  I thought of offering to wrestle her for it, but am afraid I might lose. They do their thing. We do ours.

The days and the nights pass and the older crowd says “the younger generation just likes to spend time together,” but I know this is how they let us save face, how they justify his attention to me when the sun glints off his wedding ring. Fun, gentle, intelligent and the tension between us is a tightly woven spring.  It’s day five of seven and the guides paddle the bulging blue rafts toward a sandy beach take-out. As the rafts slide ashore, rubber grinding sand, everyone scatters like candy tossed at a parade, finding space from each other, putting up our tent city; but somehow James and I gravitate like magnets to a desert waterfall just south of camp. It is hot and wet and we rinse the grit from our hair and feet, the water splashing from us in joyous hops, reflecting in the sunlight. I languish in the pool beneath the falls, water splashing off my upturned face, and he slowly sits down next to me. “Are we going to do this?” he whispers, as he looks me straight in the eyes, water running down his cheek, the air alive with tension, with the unknown, with the hopes of the body. In one sentence James, with his words, transforms what is visceral, unspoken attraction into something concrete. Into a stone.  I look back, into his blue eyes, needing him the way the desert needs this waterfall, and say, “No. I won’t do that to you…or your wife.” The words are a stone in my throat, I swallow hard. It has become real. It has become words. And I have let go of the tether I so badly wanted to hold on to.

At week’s end when the rafts slide into Clay Hills landing, one tan leg, then the other slides over the hard, bloated muscle of the raft.  Our feet touch a concrete ground that leads us away from the river.  Only then does leaving become real.  Only then do we realize we will never step into the same river twice. Only then does the liminal space disappear and the reality of leaving him, the river – wide and fast, dark and powerful, hit me hard in the stomach and the panic rises.

Washing the red desert silt from our clothes cannot be done; washing it from the soul proves equally difficult. This is the way water carves. The way of creation. I have filled my pockets with worn river touchstones, and as I reluctantly step from the river to the cement launch pad, I dig my hand into my pocket to make sure I haven’t lost them.  I want to turn around, get back on the river, but I know it is gone. The river we stepped into has swept past us.

This week’s challenge is to think about your touchstones – the moments in your life, the stories, that have been meaningful, rich with moments of learning or insight, people who have grounded and blessed you. I suggest you write them down. Start a touchstone story journal, because when you don’t write them down, sometimes you put your hand in your pocket to make sure you haven’t lost them…..and they are no longer there.

Until next week – have fun telling your stories. See you next Wednesday same time, same place, and pass on the link to this podcast to one of your friends!

Allow for Miracles – Serendipity Stories

Miracle comes from the Latin word miraculum (mirroraculoom), meaning to wonder or marvel. I believe in miracles. Today I’ve got some stories to tell you…yes, stories about unlikely happenings happening.

In the mornings I say an abundance prayer. I learned it from my friend Tony and it goes something like this: “Thank you for the joyful abundance in my life and in the life of my family and friends. Thank you for the abundance that will come into my life today. And thank you for the abundance that I can bring to others today.” Every time I say the part about “thank you for the abundance that will come into our lives today,” I get excited. I’m like a kid waiting for his birthday, waiting to see what abundance and wonderful things will show up as the day progresses. It’s an exciting way to live – always waiting for the next generous miracle to show up.

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.

Last week was our second leadership episode where we talked about how to use the archetypes of the hero’s journey as a strategy tool for getting your team headed onto their next adventure of accomplishment. This week I’m going to share some stories, that as far as I’m concerned, show us that the universe has our back.

You’ve heard the word Serendipity? The word comes from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip. It is the phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. In the story the three princes regularly discovered pleasant things that they weren’t searching for. I once had an acquaintance suggest that another way to think of serendipity is that it is the phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things in a way not before envisioned. In other words, things work out as they should, but more often than not, not as you thought they would. There is a space of allowing there.

Miracles go beyond serendipity. We often beg for miracles, search for miracles, or manifest miracles by our faith. Christ said before he did any miracle, “Be it unto you according to your faith.” I find that fascinating. So, according to this, I might draw the conclusion that first one must believe before miracles occur. Do you believe God can do miracles? Do you believe you can create miracles because you believe strongly in a course of action? That belief in God, in ourselves, in the power of Universal law and power being willing to bend for our good, despite  our current limited understanding, seems to be crucial toward the manifestation of the miracle. But often, with things of a serendipitous nature, it simply appears that the Universe is looking out for us with little thought from ourselves.

In 2004 I started a project collecting serendipity stories. Everyone has them if they pay attention, but there are many who do NOT pay attention. I figured if I collected serendipity stories, and shared them, that we would all become more aware of how there are forces in the universe, angels, God,  that truly have our back. These moments of magic are not distributed according to religion or region, color or culture, gender or gentry. They are across-the-board human experiences and they are crazy cool.

I want to share a few because I believe in miracles and I believe in serendipity, and I still believe that if we share these stories we will all become more aware of the wonderful miracles that go on around all of us every day. And, if we start realizing how many magical coincidences, serendipitous experiences, and downright miracles are constantly around us, we are bound to have hope, to feel less alone, and know that someone/some force has our back.

As I share these stories I’ll use their initials instead of their names.

M.B. from Golden Colorado was debating about whether or not to get Lasik surgery on her eyes. She was pretty much blind without glasses and had started having problems with her contacts. Leading an active lifestyle had become more difficult, but there was a giant problem to having the issue fixed. To even consider someone touching her eye was enough to make her sick. She had an inexplicable fear of her eyes being touched and when people would suggest she get Lasik she would seize up with panic. At the time Lasik cost $5000, and this was a sum she did not have, so she came up with a grand solution. When others recommended it she said, “if $5000 fell out of the sky, I’d do it in a minute, but I just can’t afford it.” This kept the well-wishers at bay and MB in her comfort zone, but it certainly didn’t solve the problem with her eyes. A few weeks of using this splendid excuse passed by, and soon she had herself believing that if she got $5000 she would surely jump right into Lasik. Well, a few weeks later her 94-year-old grandmother passed away. When the will was read she had left her $5000 with the instructions to spend it in a way that would always remind MB of her grandmother. “I can’t think of a better way to remember my grandmother,” she said to me, “than to wake up every morning with 20/20 vision. Every morning when I wake up, I think of her.” Her grandmother had never heard her excuse of not having the money for Lasik. But her angels had her back.

L.H. lost her watch. She kept thinking about getting another one, but she put it off and put it off. For months she was watchless, but it never seemed like the right time and it just became something that needed to be done. One day she and her friends were hiking in the eastern Sierras. They struggled up a 2000 foot climb, and tired and hungry they found a spot to pitch their tens near a chain of high mountain lakes. It was a difficult approach and the area was not highly used. The second night in camp, after a nice dinner and tantalizing scattering of ghost stories, LH put on her headlamp and headed out into the woods for a bathroom break. As she rounded a bend her headlamp caught a glimmer that startled her, especially after the ghost stories. She started to turn and head back to the campfire, but instead thought better of it and braved the unknown, turning back to the large boulder. Perched on top she found a beautiful watch sitting there, unharmed by the elements. She looked at it in wonder, picked it up, and of course at the trailhead the next morning she looked for any postings put up for a lost watch. Nothing had been posted. “This treasure was meant to be on my wrist,” she told me. There was a reason she hadn’t felt urgency in replacing her watch. I say this, because many a time I have pushed forward getting things done that “needed to be done” only to find later that if I had gone with the flow that I had felt, instead of surrendering to the pressure of the checklist, things would have worked out better, and as they needed to.

C.L. from Salt Lake City, Utah was starting her own fishing skirt company. She and her husband were bonefishing at Boca Paila in the Yucatan in Mexico, the place where the inspiration for the Macabi skirt was actually received. The idea for her skirt had been conceived on her first trip here, and back for her second trip, she had brought 3 or 4 prototypes. She asked her friends to use them and give her feedback, and after a day of fishing one woman returned and enthusiastically explained that a good friend of theirs, a photographer, would be flying in the next day. She felt he might be persuaded to take some photos of the new product. While everyone else, CL included, was planning to leave early the next morning, there was little hope this fabulous idea would come together. As it turned out, the photographer got in early, CL and her friends got out late, and this professional photographer was willing and able to bless CL with what became some of her favorite product photos. “I was just amazed at my good fortune,” she said.

J.A. was an accomplished ocean swimmer. For a time he was a lifeguard on Maui and he had experienced many types of eddies, currents and mild riptides. Often he used them to his advantage, where he let them pull him in the direction he needed to go. One beautiful, sunny day J.A. found himself on one of his favorite beaches in Kauai, but he found himself in an unusual situation. He was stuck in the water. No matter which direction he swam, he couldn’t get out. The water wasn’t pulling him out very quickly, but even with the aid of flippers he was unable to break free of the water’s control. Wearing his snorkel gear, he wasn’t panicked, but certainly uneasy and a fit frightened. “I can remember how loud it seemed as I was breathing through the snorkel. It amplified every breath. Then I noticed movement in the water below me,” he said. “My curiosity caused me to forget my current circumstance for the moment, and as it moved toward me I felt confused. It looked like a rock or a piece of the reef floating toward me. Then I could see it clearly. A very large sea turtle with a chipped beak. I had seen turtles before, but never this close, and it was amazing. I had completely forgotten about my predicament and instead only wanted to touch the turtle. He came up to me, less than a foot away. I dove down the extra foot to meet this beautiful creature. I grabbed onto both sides of his shell.”  Well, this is when the next adventure began. J.A. said, “I had seen turtles move gracefully through the water, but I had no idea how powerful they were under the water. He took off very fast, with me holding on. My snorkel gear peeled from my face and I road for a period of time until I needed to resurface to breathe. I let go and the turtle surfaced as well and looked back at me. Perfect eye contact, almost communication, and then, was gone. It was amazing! It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized I was some distance closer to the beach and no longer in the dangerous waters.”  He swam safely to the beach. It was one of the most sacred experiences of his life.

There are more of these, lots more, your mom, your sister, your brother, your neighbor….they all have them.

One time a girl told me how she had run out of money and had to live in a trailer. She found $5000 that had been hidden in the stove at some point by an unknown party.

Another gal was trying to save money to go to Porto Rico but was falling terribly short of what she needed, until she realized that she had a certain type of mushrooms on her land that had begun to grow abundantly. She found she could sell them, and came up with  just the right amount of money she needed for her trip.

After I got my contract for my first book, Wild Weekends in Utah, a multisport adventure guidebook, I was preparing to head out on months of weekend adventures. To be honest, I knew my way around many places, but not all of the wonderful Southern Utah canyons that were to be a big part of these adventures were familiar to me. I was willing to head out and figure out the lay of the land, but I also didn’t know what I didn’t know. There were a number of incredible adventures that were completely off my radar. I found this out when serendipitously I met Spence. Spence was an experienced Canyonlands adventurer, and he’d worked as an editor. Just when I needed him, he showed up. Together, we embarked on canoe trips, backpack trips, and canyoneering trips that he introduced me to. His advice and companionship, editing and ideas were exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. He was a miracle that showed up to play this crucial role, and then he moved out of my life. But his presence made the book significantly stronger.

Other stories are told of events and circumstances aligning so someone ended up in their dream home, or getting their dream job. Sometimes the miracles are big, sometimes the coincidences are small, but isn’t it fascinating that so often we are blessed with just the thing we need, right when we need it?

Of course, this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the things we want most we don’t get at all, which just makes the unpredictability of the magic even more entertaining. What will show up today?

Martha Beck, the revered life coach and columnist for Oprah magazine, talks about something similar in her book Steering by Starlight. In her comments on how things unfold when people get started on the right path to living their best life – fulfilling their destiny, she says, “Circumstances beyond your control will begin aligning as if to facilitate your actions. I’ve see this so often it should no longer surprise me, but it always does. I have no explanation for the magical things I’ve seen happening as my clients begin making maps of their future lives.”

Do you remember in episode 7 when I talked about the events that come together to propel me into the long-time dream of getting my master’s degree. There is no question in my mind that it would have been nearly impossible for me to wrap my mind around making that happen had my friend Sandy not come into my life and showed me how to do it. Our paths and approaches are different, but had she not showed up in the way that she did, with the information that she did, I would never have stepped on that path at the time I did. I look at it as a miracle; as if I were being guided down a path that was desired, but also meant to be. In hindsight, I can clearly see how my masters work on the personal narrative was key to all this work I’m doing with story. It was the foundation, and in a way a legitimizer for me, to do what I’m doing now. That is pretty amazing and it makes me feel like I’m on the right path. And, that is the reason why noticing the miracles and talking about the serendipity is good for the soul. Dog on it – suddenly we feel like there are forces supporting us, that we’re not just here to make it happen or die trying, we aren’t alone.

When I was in the process of creating this podcast, I was starting from scratch. I had no idea what type of equipment I needed, I had no idea how to edit, how to launch, how to record. A series of declarations had led me to the path, and I was ready to walk it, but I had been working long, long hours for a couple months and was hitting my head against a thick, heavy brick wall when it came to the technical side of the production. One day the thought crossed my mind that I needed a partner. The idea was actually a pretty good one, but where was I going to find the right person who would get my dream and be as invested in making this happen – someone that I would trust enough to let them in on the project. I dismissed it, but on a coaching call the next week I ended up telling my coach about the idea. “I can hear it in your voice,” she said. “It’s going to happen. Declare it!” By the time I got off the phone I was excited about the idea. I declared it and to be honest, had NO idea or expectation that it would really come to pass. It took only one week. I was walking my dog and my neighbors were walking their kids to school. We passed on the sidewalk and I stopped to talk to these dear friends who I see only occasionally. Matt started telling me about the project he was working on called Story Trek, where he travels all over the country as the camera man for a TV show recording people’s stories in random towns across the U.S. “We have to talk,” I said, not sure how our paths were going to cross, but figuring he’d have some fun and interesting information about what he was doing. The idea of him being my partner was way in the back of my head, but when we eventually met up the following week it unfolded in minutes, as if it was meant to be. I said, “I don’t know what this is going to look like, maybe I’ll hire you to do videos, or,” I threw in, “I’ve been looking for a partner…” as I said it everything seemed to align.  His wife looked up and said, “I’ve been saying he should partner with you.” I looked at him and he shook his head in the affirmative. And, just like that we were on the same path. This was far more than serendipity, this was a miracle; an answer to prayers; even a sign I am on the right path, because I hadn’t believed I would find him…he was a gift.

Wayne Dyer was a huge promoter of manifesting miracles. In his book Wishes Fulfilled, he says, “I’ve seen firsthand how virtually every wish or desire I’ve placed my attention on has transformed from a mental thought into an objective fact.” Dr. Dyer was a manifesting genius and spent his life speaking, writing, and living the art of manifesting, of creating miracles by his belief in himself and his ability to use the god within him to literally create what he wanted. His life is a prime example of his teachings – he grew up as an orphan and at a young age deciding he wanted to guide others. He  manifested a life even beyond his imaginings, and he guided and taught so many, many others in this way of belief, manifestation, and creation.

We can create miracles – we come from a universe that is based in abundance. If it were not, life would not regenerate as it does on all levels. We were created by a creator, and thus we are the children of a creator, that means we are also creators. What if one of the big things we are here to learn in this life is how to use those powers? The power of belief is key to any act of creation. If you didn’t believe that putting ingredients in a bowl, mixing them and baking them would create a cake, you would never embark on the mission to bake a cake in the first place. Belief is first, then action.

In the case of Serendipity, I believe those moments are just gifts. A kiss from God, a slight nudge in the right direction, or just a tiny hug to let you know you are not alone in the Universe.

So, here’s a question for you – to what do you attribute serendipity? Go to www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and go to the ‘contact us’ page and tell us your thoughts. While you’re at it, if you have a story of miracles or serendipity, will you share with me? Your assignment for the week is to watch for your daily miracles and feel the arms of love around you. Start to pay attention to the universal support, to God at your back, to just the right thing, at just the right time.

Have a great time telling your stories this week, and if you know someone who would enjoy this podcast, please pass it on! We’ll see you next Wednesday for the next episode of Love Your Story podcast.

Team leaders, life coaches, team coaches, parents, teachers, strategy planners, anyone who needs to get people on the same page working toward the completion of a project – today’s podcast is especially for you. Episode 003 was our first episode for leaders, teaching you how to use story as a tool for defining origin, values, and vision. This is our second episode, especially for leaders. Stay tuned for a breakdown of the archetypes within the Heroes Journey and how you can use them to make perfect sense of where and how you need your team, family or group to move toward your final goal. In other words….leadership using the oldest and most reliable tool – story.

When you are a leader you know how challenging it can to lead a group of individuals toward a goal. There are different ideas, personalities, viewpoints, skills, and agendas. Not everyone has the skill to lead, but those who do, and do it effectively, know that it takes skill, judgment, patience, planning, and tools. Today I’ll open the story toolbox and put a new tool in your hot little hands.

Where do you need or want your team to go? Decide that first…then it needs to be communicated to your team. Along with this information you need to show them what to expect, what they will be up against, what it will take to get there, and why they want to embark on this in the first place. This is how it’s done. Get out your notepad, you’ll want to take notes.

Today I’m going to breakdown the hero’s journey into six parts. These six parts, when taken separately, allow you to use the archetypes within the typical hero’s journey to build an effective and exciting leadership approach for your next big undertaking. It will allow you, as the one leading others to the end of the rainbow, to help your team, group or family get excited about what’s ahead, understand the goals they are striving for, breakdown tasks and develop strategies for success, pinpoint the obstacle or dragon to be overcome, and get excited about the reward at the end of the accomplishment. Let’s jump right into these six parts and how to use them.

First, any good adventure starts out with an invitation. This is the Call to Adventure.

The Call to Adventure: In Star Wars Princess Leah sent out her invitation, or call for help, through a hologram in R2D2. In the Hobbit, Gandolf extends the invitation to Bilbo through a visit to his front door. In Harry Potter, Harry receives a written invitation from Hogwarts. In the Hunger Games, the Capital holds the reaping. The call to adventure is big, real, and those involved know an adventure is beginning. This is the place to start – a clear, bold invite onto the path of your adventure toward self-improvement, a family vacation, a service project, getting a new sales account, beating out the competition, taking state with your school team. Whatever adventure you and your team are starting out on, it starts with a call to action. Make it fun, make it clear, make it bold.

The second part of the hero’s journey is an explanation of The World we are In: Once you’ve invited your team members to place their feet on the rocky path of adventure, you, as the leader, must then ground your team in their starting point – the world as it is now. Talk about the current reality and what needs to change. Are the hungry in your community suffering and you want your youth group to help hand out burritos to the homeless? Has the high school across the valley held the state title for too many years? Is it far past time to change the company’s image of being environmentally insensitive? Let’s start with a look at the way things are NOW. The realities of the world we stand in today, and why that’s not okay anymore.

The third part of the hero’s journey is  The Hero enters the scene. Who is going to save us? We’ve discussed the problem to be solved – there’s been a call to action. We know the state of the status quo. Who can we turn to in order to overcome this dark and dreary space? To fight the dragon? To free the archetypical maiden? To save Middle Earth? Well – you are! Your team is the hero. This is where you discuss how to extract your greatest strengths, how to stack your team for a win, how to minimize and overcome weaknesses and capitalize on your assets. This is where your team gets to feel the urgency, the power within them, the excitement of what they can do! This is where we do the chest pounding and the bragging. This is where you help them see the heroes they really are and the heroes they can be.

Enter The Bad Guy: What stands between your team and the better world you are after? Is it the competition? Is it old ways of thinking? Is it laziness? Is it not sharing the same vision? Is it bad habits? Is it Sauron? The Orks? The Dark Side? Voldemort? The Capital? Donald Trump? Discussing the obstacle or obstacles to be overcome is part of the process. What are we up against? Let’s say the name out loud, narrow our gaze, and find the weaknesses in the armor that we can exploit to overcome the antagonist. Without this fourth part of the hero’s journey, there’s no guarantee that everyone knows who the bad guy is, what you’re trying to overcome. Talk about what stands between you and the prize. Discuss approaches for overcoming the menace. Name the opponent loud and clear.

The fifth and most in-depth portion of the hero’s journey is The Journey itself: It’s a good idea to talk up front about the journey you will all take together. The expected ups and downs, the long days on the path in the hot sun, the cold nights on the mountain ledge, the joyful moments around the campfire or moments in front of the sunrise. While it’s not a good idea to preach too much gloom and doom, it is a good idea to acknowledge that journeys push you, test you, and try you. It’s okay to know there’s a good chance there may be moments of breakdown – but these can lead to breakthrough. Here’s the space to discuss plans, and the strategy you want to implement as you step out onto the trail of your adventure. This is the place where you discuss the mountains you get to prepare to cross, the battles you see yourselves stepping up to fight, and the approach you want to take in attitude and energy. “Today we will step onto the path, each with their assignment to do X, each with a new attitude and heart about Y. Our motto is Z and we will cross our first bridge next Tuesday.”

The last and final step in helping your team strategize is The Better World: So when you get to the top of Mount Doom and throw in the ring, then what? When the Capital has fallen who takes over leadership? What happens after the Death Star blows up? This is the better world you and your team are working for. What is the real life equivalent? Is it the new account you want to land and all the rewards and promotions that will come along with it? Is it the championship medal around your neck? Is it a closer family spending time and creating memories? Is it a dream realized? A job landed? A million dollars made? A new community event created? This is the part where you get to show, not tell the team what lies in store after the perseverance through the swamps of the journey, what they get when they break through the breakdowns. This is the carrot dangling at the end of the stick! This is where we talk about why we are headed out on this journey in the first place. This is what they will think back on during the hard times, so make it clear and exciting.

It’s a simple idea when it’s all broken down. Its power comes in the vision setting, the strategy, getting everyone on the same page without pulling punches! When we watch movies or read stories it’s pretty normal to put ourselves in the role of the main characters. It’s why we cry or feel melancholy when sad things happen in a story because we are automatically experiencing vicariously what the characters are going through. Getting to approach a potentially difficult project with the ideas of the hero’s journey fueling your perception of the challenge, really isn’t all that far-fetched. It may even be a shot in the arm instead of the usual boring approaches that perhaps haven’t worked so well in the past. Whether you actually tell your team how you are mimicking the hero’s journey is up to you, but following the same pattern still works, even if you don’t tell them what you’re doing.

Let me share an example of what this might look like in action. I’m going to have fun with this approach and play it up. Again, you can present it to your team in any way that works for you. This is just an example.

Today there is a real estate team meeting. It’s the end of December and time for their annual planning meeting for the coming year. Each team member strolls in, joking a little with one another, and take their seats around the table waiting for the team leader to start.

But it’s not the usual beginning everyone is expecting. Instead, the team leader passes a sealed envelope to each person around the table. The letter reads as follows:

Dear Insert Name,

As you know 2016 was a strong year for our team, but we came in third place in sales missing our mark by $5M in gross sales. This year, 2017, is going to be different. We need 10 additional clients this year with an average home sale price of $500,000 and we have 12 months to do it. You have been called to take this journey, as a team, into the lime-light of the top sales team in the Helter Skelter Board of Realtors. Do you accept?

As they finish their letters the team leader starts a video. As the video fills the screen with music, information on the current lending climate, current interest rate trends, the real estate projections for 2017 and the strengths of the buyer’s market they will be experiencing in the coming year flood the room. As the video concludes the team leader looks at each one of them. “You!” he says as his fist comes down on the table, “You are the men and women who are going to make this happen.” Music swells in the background as the video transitions into superhero music. “Our team is one of the strongest sales teams to work in this market. We have a buyer specialist (he points at Jean). We have two listing specialists (he points at Tyler and Stacy). We have our marketing specialists and Tim, who keeps us all organized and the paperwork filed. We are a fine-oiled machine. YOU are the heroes stepping out to set records and bring home awards. We provide top client service and are trained with everything we need to walk away with top sales team this time next year.

He mutes the music and his tone changes…”Last year,” he starts off, “Sweeden and Blakely took top sales team. They’ve got nothing on us, but they are lean and mean and hungry. If we’re going to out sell them we’re going to have to step up our follow-up game, take customer service to the next level, and I think we should put some focus into grooming referrals. What are your thoughts?

When the group has finished talking about the ways to out-pace the competition, the discussion changes to the Journey. The team leader talks about the potential ups and downs, the check-in schedules, how to overcome hard days, and what role each will play moving forward. They plan milestones and meetings. Set up stretches.

When they are clear on their strategy for the year the team leader asks them to close their eyes and envision the glass winners plaque sitting over their desk. He walks them through the things they can buy with the extra commissions earned, and equally important, he helps them visualize the relationships they will build with clients old and new as they improve their levels of service. He finishes off on an exciting and fun tone that guides them to a vision and celebration of what they are going to get, where they are going to be, and the feelings involved with those rewards. Before they have finished the vision is clear in their minds and they can see and feel the success.

Unbeknownst to the team, the team leader has just taken them on the hero’s journey. For you and the group you lead, this approach can look however will best serve your team. Play it up, play it down. Call it the Hero’s Journey or never let on that you’re following a pattern. You get to make it work for you and your situation.

When a person is in charge of taking a group of people from point A to point B there are a few things that are crucial to the process. Helping those people to get the vision of what they are working for, getting them on board and excited, empowering them in their roles, helping them to know what needs to be accomplished and either letting them know how it gets to be done or using the team expertise to determine how it gets to be done, and then getting excited about the rewards that can be gained from their efforts. The hero’s journey archetypes set a perfect pattern for being able to lead and achieve these goals.

As you implement this tool into your leadership I’d love to hear about your stories of how this works for your team, family or whomever you are leading, and what you learn in the process. Please share your stories with me by going to www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and going to the Contact Us page and sending me a note. If you are interested in learning more leadership tools through the use of story, drop me a line also.

Thanks to Circle of the 9 Muses by David Hutchens for some of these great ideas.

Perhaps life is not about having all the answers, but about the journey of discovering them.

Martha Beck, nationally renowned life coach, said, “No part of your experience is wasted. Everything you’ve experienced so far is part of what you were meant to learn.”

When life is messy that’s a darn good thing to remember.

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.

Last week we talked about how we make big things happen and this week we are going to talk bluntly about the messiness of life, and how that messiness is perfectly right.

When I was really young, a child, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I couldn’t picture myself doing any one particular thing, but I did know that someday I would meet the love of my life and we’d create a family. I had no idea then that 36 years later I’d find my life potentially half over, my youth gone and have 3 ex-husbands, 2 great kids, and that I’d be doing it all alone playing provider, nurturer, home manager, video game monitor, yard maintenance woman, house repair, cook and so on and so on. I didn’t know anything about porn addicts, love affairs, emotional abuse, abandonment, betrayal, heart-break and utter exhaustion.

Sometimes, okay, most of the time, life doesn’t turn out how we expect, it’s generally a lot messier, but that’s just the way it is. If you’re feeling picked on, you don’t know enough people intimately. Life is just messy. There may be meaning in my mess, or God may just make the best of a bunch of people’s various decisions, or perhaps shit just happens and we live, try to learn, and move forward. Honestly, I don’t know which it is, but these are the reasons I’ve decided our messy stories are okay.

We are in good company.

What if we looked at someone as sacred and revered as Christ? That’s a jump to the top, but he is noted for living a perfect life, and yet his life is one of the most heart-wrenching of stories ever recorded.

Christ created chaos wherever he went. He turned over the tables in the temple when the money changers were disrespecting the temple grounds. He turned water into wine – I’m sure that was a shock. He healed the sick, which caused people to congregate, causing their own forms of chaos as they followed him around. And what about when he healed folks on the Sabbath – the religious leaders were none to happy about that. He talked to women who were shunned in the community. He associated with sinners and cripples. He rebuked religious leaders who were too caught up in the letter of the law. He upended people’s lifestyles changing fisherman into disciples. His friends fell asleep when he asked them to keep watch at the most crucial time of his life – in the garden of Gethsemane. His best friend denied knowing him 3 times in the heat of the moment. He was betrayed by another of his closest friends. Of course there is his call to atone, to die on the cross– he asked repeatedly if that cup might pass from him – that was not part of what he wanted to go through. Christ, the greatest of us all, knew intimately what a life of chaos and mess looked and felt like.

A revered personality from out time, Oprah Winfrey: Billionaire, American television host, actress, producer, philanthropist and entrepreneur.  Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, to an unwed mother in Mississippi. After a troubled adolescence in a small community where male relatives and friends of her mother all sexually abused her, a pregnancy at age 14 after which she lost the child, and severe poverty, she moved to Nashville to live with her father. If anyone could have found a list of stories to show why she didn’t have a chance, it was Oprah. She rose above her difficult childhood of poverty and abuse to be lauded as the most influential woman of her generation. She knew what messy was, but as she stated in an interview, it was her ability to be real, to understand real, that made her the media icon that she became (I’m paraphrasing again).

A national icon: Abraham Lincoln was raised in humble beginnings. His story started to stray from his plan when his mother died when he was 9. A woman he loved in his early 20’s also died before they could be married, and he was heartbroken. Eventually, he married Mary Todd and they had 4 children – 3 of which died before they made it to adulthood. And then, if you know anything of the intense struggle Lincoln had during his political career as he stood up against one of the most trying times in the history of the United States. His entire life was messy and filled with great loss, risk and bravery. He had to be exhausted by the time he died. These are the heroes – the ones who rise above the mess and soldier on. The great ones who change the world.

We could pick any hero, any public figure that we revere, and with even a cursory look into their past, we would find the messiness and trials of being human. We are all in good company with our messy lives.

So let’s get personal. When it comes down to it, your peace, with whatever life looks like to you, is between you and God (whatever God looks like to you.)

Let me tell a story:

When I was a young child my siblings and I would toboggan down the back three-quarter acre of our snow-covered alfalfa field. The hills rolled in the crystal white blanket, the sun sending a million shards of crystal glitter to blind and delight. I would pull my bright blue toboggan, one slow step at a time to the top of the field where I would tumble in, my bundled body ready for the thrill of the down-hill.  One day a storm started to blow in and my mother called us all into the house. I left by blue toboggan out in the yard and only as the wind picked up did I realize I was about to lose it forever. The fields were wide open and stretched for miles, once the wind caught her I wasn’t going to see her again. I stood at our sliding glass door, still a bundled little girl, staring hard at the toboggan, willing it not to move, but the wind picked up and so did my only sled. I prayed then, like only a child really can, and begged Heavenly Father to stop the wind. “Please,” I begged, “I don’t have another sled, I want to be able to play, don’t let me lose it.” And the wind stopped. I ran outside as fast as my legs would churn, pounded across the yard and out into the field where it had blown, grabbed the rope on the front end and pulled it back and into the back door safe and sound. As I closed the door the wind started back up in a frenzy, and suddenly God became real to me. I know there are those who say, “that was a coincidence” but often the things we know spiritually are small to others, but large to us because we felt them spiritually, while outsiders do not have that insight into the experience. It was not coincidence.

It was the start of what has been an authentic relationship. In the years that have followed, I have been afraid of him. I have loved him. I have gotten to know him better and refused to be afraid of him. He and I have shared jaw-dropping landscapes, views from the top of mountain peaks. We have sat next to streams and lakes. We have talked in my car, in my sleep, on my bike, on my couch, and a hundred other places. We have cried together the tears of the broken, tears of utter sadness, tears of loneliness. We have not spoken for days and weeks at a time. He has waited on me, and I on him. I have called and he has not answered. He has called and I have not answered. I have pouted and demanded I be allowed to do things my own way. He is always okay with that. He’s always been there to pick me up at the end when I find myself face down in the mud. But he’s never removed the experience.  We’ve argued over principles, discussed things that I don’t think work. I’ve begged for help and he’s left me on my own sometimes and other times he’s instantly given help. He’s warned me, directed me, comforted me. He has whispered in my waking hours to remind me he is with me. I try to find my way around the commandments that don’t make sense to me, and certainly, the ones that don’t seem to work. It’s an on-going, sometimes tumultuous relationship, but it’s our relationship, and that’s what counts. Maybe it’s a little messy too. But it’s all between me and him. Sometimes I’ve felt my problems were so unfair. I mean I try really hard to live a good life. And I, like many a God-fearing folk, have exclaimed “why me,” when we are doing our best.

Scott Peck said, in The Road Less Traveled,

“Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.”

Did you hear that? Mess is part of Creation.  Embrace it. Love your mess. Love your story! It’s the only one you have. And, let’s not forget the whole point of this podcast…the idea is that we get to decide how we interpret, use, and accept our own messy stories. Maybe even celebrate the Pollack style canvas of our lives.

A predominant backdrop to my life story is nature! In nature I find peace, beauty, meaning, but also a crazy messiness of death and birth, the ruthless and heart-warming, the raging wildfires and the sun-dappled meadows, the ice-encrusted mountain peaks and the blue water and white sand beaches. There are droughts and earthquakes, storms and tidal waves, and there are Giant Redwood forests and migrating whales. There is supreme organization and ruthless destruction. Let me end today’s podcast with an essay and a few lessons from nature:

I washed my face with a Kleenex this morning. Strange as it sounds this is one of the things I like best about outdoor living – wiping my hands on a rock, or on my shorts because they will inevitably get dirty anyway. I can farmer hanky (which I would never do at home) and if it’s not exactly clean I can wipe it on my sleeve. I wear a hat or bandana because doing your hair out here would be ridiculous, and my only make-up is sunscreen. Of course, there is also the reflection of the sun on the water, the heat on my skin, the prickles across my legs on a cold night, the smell of campfire in the air, the mesmerizing stars and the utter chaos of nature itself.

Deep in the marrow of my bones I am connected to the land. It is something I could not remove even if I wanted. Quality of life is dependent upon this tangible intangible for me. It is required for peace of soul, like food and love. Sometimes it requires time to understand this type of connection, and some people never will, but for those of us who are drawn back to caress the face of the rock, to hold the trees against our own bodies, to give our sweat on the next ascent, wilderness always calling us back, it is as if all that mattered so much before we came, no longer matters and we are suddenly home. It is the beauty of nature in all its raw uncaring, it’s crazy chaos, it’s death and birth in the same place at the same time, its colorful pallet of textures and colors, and the way that so much of what we try to recreate was first created here. Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, “Earth is crammed with heaven.” Amen to that!

Riding in a hot air balloon over Park City, Utah I got the unusual view of looking down upon a river. I studied its crazy path as it scooped, hooped and meandered forming odd mushroom spire shapes as it found the path of least resistance down the face of the land. We do that too sometimes. Man’s general tendency to avoid pain, find the easiest way forward, and to minimize energy output effects our decisions and we wind our way through life creating crazy designs with our life path.

Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at, but what you see.” On some occasions I see nothing but the river, the tree, the flowers, the stars and the underbrush; they are nothing but what they are. At other times I look at the shining mirror-dimples the sun spreads across the surface of the water, and hear the rumble as it runs toward the ocean and I learn lessons – life lessons.

After climbing the Grand Teton without stopping, one agonizing step at a time, I came to realize first-hand the oft-used metaphore that life is like climbing a mountain. When things get tough you just keep lifting one foot after the other. Even if you have to use your hands and manually lift your leg; just keep moving and pretty soon you’ll be sitting at the top, signing in at the register and looking at the sunrise and the view. The reward for the journey is not only the rich flow of life on the way up, it’s not just the reward of the summit, it’s also the things you learn about life such as ‘keep on truckin’, and ‘sometimes you have to wait it out in the rain,’ then there’s: ‘preparation is NOT overrated’, and ‘life is in a constant state of deconstruction and rebirth’.

Because of my time in nature I have a healthy understanding and respect for it. It is perfect in its systems of growth, sustaining, regulating. If you carve out a path and don’t maintain it, the plants will reclaim it. If you take some life form out of the food chain, out of the circle of life, you upset the whole. It doesn’t matter how much you love nature, if you’re out on a mountain top caught in a storm it can kill you without remorse. It is a space of utter chaos and utter organization.

Here’s a thought. Our lives have these same aspects – moments of ruthless chaos, and days where you’ve got it under control. Nature is perfect in its brutality and beauty. I suspect life is also – and if today isn’t the day you can see the big picture, don’t despair, trust the process, embrace the beautiful horrible mess of your life, and love your story. What’s your other option?

Thanks for tuning in today. Love to hear your thoughts and comments on today’s podcast. Go to www.loveyourstorypodcast.com and share. This week’s challenge is to choose one aspect of your life that is particularly messy and write a list of 5 reasons why it’s okay. An exercise that may help is to determine one of the things you are most grateful for and then step by step go backward into why you have that blessing in your life. Almost always you find that it was something difficult or messy in your life that eventually brought you to a beloved blessing.

Have fun telling your stories this week and I’ll see you back here next week on Love Your Story podcast.

Thomas Edison said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

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.

Last week we talked about those devastating one liners and weeding them out. This week we’re telling stories about how you really get to have the things you want most. What it means to do what it takes to make something happen.

When I was 18 I launched my own little hand-made jewelry business. I strung beautiful handmade beads on leather and I sold to ski resort gift shops. This was well before jewelery making was cool, or Michael’s a had a whole aisle of jewelry making supplies. I was working my way through college, and my entrepreneurial yearnings created this business as a side venture to working at Fred Meyer between college classes. I had 5 or 6 orders from various resorts, but it never got any bigger than that. When I was a stay-at-home mom I launched a fun business of designing personalized candy-bar wrappers for birthdays, weddings, any party or event – I designed the custom wrapper, printed the wrappers and wrapped the candy bars. Shipped them in ice-bagged insulated boxes so the chocolate wouldn’t melt. I put all the money into the software, the design training and the production, but fell short of putting in the marketing dollars needed, so my return on investment was a handful of orders from neighbors and friends, a new-found skill of design, an iMac, a high-end paper cutter and cases of candy bars. A few years ago when my newest hiking guidebook came out – Best Hikes Near Salt Lake City, published by Falcon guides, I put together a gorgeous plan for week-long hiking retreats that involved mountain lodgings, massage, yoga, an in-house cook and daily guided hikes in the Northern mountains of Utah. Same thing happened, all the planning, designing, arranging for providers, and when it came time to persevere through the swamps of finding clients I got bored and wandered onto the next thing caring a sense of failure at not pushing through and taking it all the way. I ended up guiding day hiking trips, but it was nothing like I had pictured. I could have put in the time and effort to market it, for sure, but if I have a wonderful idea and a snazzy product shouldn’t clients come to me? I hated to have to sell people on anything, and so these business “failures” made a tidy little stack in my bookshelf of stories.

One of the stories I started telling myself, that was not serving me well, was that if I put time and effort into a new venture that it will all be a waste of time and resources because in the end it will fall flat. I mean it’s happened 3 times. There is this fear monster that pops up when I contemplate doing something that might make a difference, to me or the world, and I am flooded with a fear of failure, a fear of wasted time, and a fear of wasting money on something that in the end won’t launch.

Now, like all our stories, there are reasons I have this fear. Namely my past experience. While sometimes our fears seem to pop out of nowhere, they often do originate from some disappointment that we don’t want to relive. But the past doesn’t have to define the future.

The other day I was looking through a post that Lewis Howe’s, a popular podcaster and NY Times best-selling author wrote about how he got his book on the NY Times best seller list. It was a tremendous list of hard work, networking, selling, finagling, up-selling and going the extra mile to market his own work. As I read his list of “how he did it” I felt a little sick. Holy cow, it was a tremendous amount of work. I always leave it up to my publishers to promote my books, I mean really, isn’t that their job? But I couldn’t deny that reading about all the work he went through to get his book to go big was a price he was willing to pay to reach that milestone. I began to realize that if you want really big things you don’t drop the ball when it comes to promoting your idea. That seems like a no-brainer, but I saw it in a way that shed the light of responsibility on me. Whatever that idea is. It’s not up to somebody else – I get to support my own idea. I get to carry it through to the end. And if I’m not willing to do that up front, then I get to wait for an idea that I’m willing to work for.

My stories of failure were suddenly challenged by the realization that I dropped the ball and I didn’t have to. It was something I could control. Now, if I can control it, then I don’t have to be afraid of it. I didn’t have to be afraid of investing in myself, or looking silly, or wasting time, because without the fear you just keep pushing it through to the top. You push, as Thomas Edison said, one more time. And he would know. Story has it that: As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Find a new outlet, a new resource, a new contact. It’s up to me, up to you, if we want our ideas to go big. We don’t get to give up on ourselves.

Here’s my question to you: What is the story that is stopping you from taking your idea, whatever it is – your ideal romantic relationship, your own taco truck business, your vision for your career as the next great physicist, your community garden, the bike race you want to organize, the friends you want to make…what is the story that is feeding your fear and stopping you from going for it – pushing past the “I’m going to fail so why bother” voice that tries so hard to keep us all in a space of mediocrity and smallness? I know, it feels real – the story feels like truth. But what if that excuse wasn’t there any more? What if?

Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”  What if the stories you gave space in your head for were stories and visions of you accomplishing this thing you really want? Maybe it feels impossible right now at this moment, but today’s ceiling is tomorrow’s floor. One step at a time we create. One step at a time we create. And before we will take that step we have to believe, or have faith that our efforts will bear fruit. All creation starts in the mind with an idea, and then with a belief in that idea, and then with enough faith we begin to take that first step, and then that second step, and then that third. That’s how everything man-made was ever created. You see your refridgerator? Your car? The building across the street? Your favorite coffee shop? The book you’re reading? All these things were created in this way. First as an idea, second as a belief in the idea, and third with the steps to make it happen.

One of my favorite sayings – I have it taped to my fridge —  is “Tomorrow begins today.” I’ve become a fan of looking at large projects in steps. It’s the idea of eating an elephant one bite at a time. Today we get to plant a tomato seed and tomorrow, with enough care, we get to sow tomatoes. But to get that tomato harvest we have to plant, and one day at a time we get to water, weed, and fertilize. It’s possible, it’s doable, so start…if you want tomatoes.

Mark Twain said, “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” Then there’s the other saying that showing up is half the battle. There is a funny cartoon of two warriors in their battle gear facing a whole army that is ready to attack. They are clearly outnumbered and about to die, and the one soldier says to the other, “Anymore words of wisdom, Mr. Showing Up is Half the Battle.” Yes, you’re not going to get ahead unless you get started, AND if you don’t show up you’ve got NO chance, but in my case, it’s that other half of the battle that I’m learning about. The half where you push through the road blocks, and where you promote your own dreams, and you try 1000 times using different approaches if your past attempts aren’t working out.

Thomas Edison was speaking to me when he said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

I know that we all have that voice in our heads (like we talked about in episode 6) – some think of it as the voice of reason, some know it’s the devil on their shoulder, some don’t recognize it at all because they just thinks it’s their earned wisdom, but today you get to listen to the voice.

Write down what the excuses are that you give yourself for not doing that thing you really want to do. Then do yourself a favor and realize that the voice is a STORY. Without that story what could you do? Find your way around that story, blow it out of the water. It might hurt to make that stretch, but you wouldn’t want the thing you want if it weren’t worth having, would you? If you don’t do it today, when will you? The stories don’t change until we decide to work through them. Until WE CHANGE THEM and start to allow for real possibility. They are our stories.

One of my big life dreams was to get my master’s degree and my Ph.D. I had put that on hold after I got divorced from my first husband because I had small kids and I needed to support them and focus on other aspects of living. But always when I thought about what I wanted to do before I died, my continued schooling was incredibly important to me. I had lots of reasons I couldn’t do it – I didn’t have the money, I didn’t have the time, I couldn’t relocate with kids who needed to stay in their schools. Well, let me tell you about one of the most difficult and magical things I have ever done:

I think it was Facebook. I get a message from a high school friend, a dear friend I hadn’t seen for many years, and she’s inviting me to be her +1 for her high school reunion. She’d recently been divorced and didn’t want to go by herself, so I was the lucky gal to be her escort. We spent the night catching up and she told me she was working on her masters degree. Wonder of wonders, she was in the exact program, at the exact school, that I had planned to apply for. I had no idea we had this similar interest, but the more we talked the more our studies and schooling goals strangely coincided. When I asked how she had done it, she explained that she had received a fellowship of twenty thousand dollars to the program. I got all the details and as I pondered on the idea I felt certain I could get that fellowship for the following year because I had 20 years more publishing experience than any kid fresh out of college. With that money I could see a way to make it happen. One by one she helped me work through all those stories that stopped me. I didn’t have to spend a year studying for the GRE because I could take the GMAT which one could not really study for. It relieved a great deal of pressure for me to go that route. So, step, by step I filled out applications, took tests, wrote letters, put together referral contacts and submitted my application for grad school. She had arranged her classes in such a way that she only had to be on campus once a week, and I could see that being doable, so I forged ahead with a plan of 20K fellowship and once a week on campus. Well, I got accepted to the program, but when we got the award letters, I had been invited to teach at the University, but the fellowship was not awarded that year. I was surprised and dismayed, things were not working out as I had planned, but I was sorely tempted because of the teaching position. I’d always wanted to teach at a university and this was my chance. It had all happened so fast, and the reality of it was not in the shape or form that I had envisioned and thus dared to move forward with, but one thing led to another and before I knew it I was making the final decision about whether or not I could devote the next two years of my life, with two teenage sons, to a masters degree that would require 3 hours a day of commute through all weather conditions, while teaching at the university, while carrying a full graduate class load, and while continuing on with my career in real estate that kept food on the table and a roof over our heads. While any sane person would have said no way, the dream was so big, and here was my chance. So I did it. I plunged in and every day for the next two years I counted minutes. If I stopped for gas at the gas station 5 miles before the university, I could pee while the gas tank filled and then I could hit the road, and if there was not traffic I would arrive on campus, if I could find parking, with just enough time to walk up the hill and arrive at the English Department building with 2 minutes to spare. My whole life was scheduled this way. How many times did I wish that text books were on Audible so I could listen to the 100 pages of reading, per night, while walking up that hill and across campus. On warm fall days I brought my bike so I could get across campus faster, and I found apps that allowed me to scan real estate documents from my class room on campus, instead of working from my real estate office. I graded papers til 3 a.m. and got up at [6:00] to be to my [8:00] class. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I did it, and I graduated before most of the other 20somethings that started the program with me, who did not have kids, or jobs, or commutes. I pulled a 3.95 GPA and won writing awards for poetry, non-fiction and research both years of my program. I kicked ass. And do you know why? Because I wanted it! I wanted it. And when you really want something, you find a way around the obstacles. I look back at the whole thing in awe. In complete wonder at what a determined soul can do. Was I afraid of failure? I had no idea how I was going to pull it off. It was a complete act of faith. I believed in myself, I knew of my intent and desire, and on the first day of school, as I’m driving my 1.5 hour drive I’m having an internal freak out about. My thought was God is just waiting for me to make a mistake and all of this is going to get pulled out from under me. I don’t even know where that thought came from, but it was quickly replaced with another thought that said, God is not about waiting for you to fail so he can take things away, he is your support, he is here to help you do what is not possible for you to do on your own. And I knew that was true. But I still had no idea how it was going to unfold and what price I would pay.

When the voice pops up and says “what about failure?” Well, life is messy. I don’t know anyone who likes failure. But what do you think of the idea that failure is a portal. Yes a portal. Failure is a window into what to change, how to do something different in the future, a window into our own strengths and weaknesses, a window to the world around us.

Brene’ Brown, I’ve mentioned her work here in episode 2, is a researcher and NY Times best-selling author on the topics of shame and vulnerability. In her book, Standing Strong, she often refers to the people who are in the “arena” falling flat on their faces as they tackle challenges, try new things, and pick themselves up, lick their wounds and try again, as the “badasses!” The folks on the side, safely watching and criticizing, those are the cowards, the ones not living. You can find a dozen Ted Talks and podcasts on why failure is ok and in some cases encouraged. Why it is necessary if we wish to progress. I reiterate the words – nobody likes to fail. It hurts. It sucks. It can be embarrassing. But no one really lives big without getting in the arena and getting dirty, and no one gets in the arena without falling down a time or two. So the fear of failure doesn’t get to stop you from making things happen – because it will, stop you.

I get to look back at my failed business ventures with forgiveness for myself and the things I didn’t yet understand about myself, with a greater understanding of the work I need to put in if I want to go all the way.  I see through my portal a clear picture of what Does Not work. I also hear and recognize the voices that try to stop me everyday – yes, everyday – but I use what I’ve learned and I fight them off, even when I’m terrified. But that’s the struggle in the arena. That’s where the champions are born. You get to be a champion by looking at the stories you tell yourself that stop you from living the life you want to live, and you get to get rid of them completely, or rewrite them so they serve you – reframe (episode 1) those failures so you can see clearly through the portal. And that’s how you become the hero of your story (episode 2), by fighting off the things that hold you back. By not staying in the dark moments. By standing back up when you fail, because you will sometimes, and that’s okay. All the real heroes do.

Your challenge this week is to think about that one thing on your bucket list that you’ve never done but really want to – and then list out all the excuses why you haven’t – find the stories. Then you get to find a way around everyone of those stories. Log onto our website: www.loveyourstorypodcast.com….and tell us how you do it!

Have a great week of creating and telling stories. Get rid of the ones that hold you back. Retell the ones that build and empower you! See you next week on the Love Your Story podcast. And, if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you subscribe and give us a review!

Little stories – one-liners, are sometimes the most powerful kryptonite in the story arsenal. Kryptonite had the power to drain Superman’s strength – it was the one thing that could bring him down. His Achilles heel. In fact, in the original comic it was suggested that he was a boring character because he had NO weaknesses. That was the point that Kryptonite was introduced into the story. We humans are anything but boring. Complex and filled with beautiful gifts, we also all have this voice in our heads that speaks to us, most often in derogative, critical tones, if not outright comments about our worth and our abilities. Let’s talk about this voice, these powerful one-liners, because they do the same thing to humans that kryptonite does to Superman. They take away our power, leave us weak and unable to use our strong and capable gifts. It’s time to get rid of them.

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.

Last week we talked about forgiveness – how we do not give anyone the right to smoother our light. Today we are going to talk about one-liner lies that eat away at our souls. Sounds dramatic, but it kinda is.

The swimmer pulled his body from the pool as the water slid from his sleek physique. He grabbed a towel and dried his hair relishing the time of his last set of laps. He smiled to himself as he turned to head to the locker room, and just that quickly he heard the familiar voice in his head whisper, “Well ya, but you’ll never hit the next goal. You’re just too slow.” His momentary success was lost, that quickly, under a pile of words that played across his mind every day while he trained. As he walked toward the locker room he hardly noticed the smile on his face disappear, or the lilt in his step slow.

Across town a woman in a red dress, who loved to sing and dance, even dreamed of doing it on stage, shuffled around at her coffee shop job, singing when she closed in the evenings because daring to dream for anything more was just silly. Whenever she toyed with the idea of trying out for a production at the local theater the voice in her head reminder her that she was nobody. “Why would you be able to do that?” it queried. “Who do you think you are?” And so she shuffled and sang to the walls and the expresso machine, and the paper cups as she stacked them next to their paper sleeves.

The teen  walked with his friends down the long hallway at school. The sign taped to the gray locker caught his attention. Tryouts for the soccer team were next week. He’d love to play. He’d been toying with trying out, but he knew his skill was somewhere in the middle of the road, and what if he made a fool of himself. What if he tried and didn’t make it? It was so much easier not to stand out because then you could fly under the radar. “you’re not that good,” the voice in his head parroted as it did every time he thought about trying. “It’s safer, not to try.”

These three examples are simple, standard, happen over and over every day, in a 7 billion individual ways. You’re not alone. I don’t know why, but it seems to be universal that everyone has this voice in their head. I’ve often wondered, what if that natural voice in our head was a cheerleader instead – a voice that told us we are wonderful and can be and have wonderful things. What if the little nit-picky voice wasn’t nit-picking and amplifying our fears and was instead creating possibility for us. What would the world be like then?

Well, this is the point where the powerful take control. And, yes, YOU are powerful. Today’s podcast is an awareness rallying cry. The first step is awareness, right? Let’s talk about these one line stories, give credit where credit is due and realize what they do to us, then let’s use our power ever day to shut them down when they start prattling on in our heads.

Have you taken one of the myriad personality tests? There are plenty to choose from as we seek to understand ourselves and others better. They pinpoint and categorize behavior patterns so that people can choose a career that aligns with their strengths, or learn how to get along with people who have different behavior patterns, or to understand oneself and why you do what you do. They are used for all kinds of reasons, and I dare say that most people have taken one or two.

I’m a predominantly Red personality. Depending upon which personality test you take, I’m a controller, a Type A, a get-things-done sorta chic. Type A personalities are the folks who make things happen. They lead, they create, they follow through, they want respect, they prize freedom. There are so many great things about this personality type. As with all of the personality types, there are also things about Reds/Type A’s that irritate others.

Over the years I have accumulated the occasional comment from a client, friend, family member that I’m too controlling, too opinionated, too strong. These comments, some of them from people I loved and felt loyalty too, were often hurtful. Over time I took these comments, these one-liners, ignoring all the positive comments from other sources that lauded my strength, that celebrated my ability to achieve, that praised my authentic and honest nature, and instead focused on the friend who abandoned me, or the boyfriend who didn’t like to be challenged, and the folks who didn’t want to hear the truth, and I internalized a story about myself that I was difficult.  This story had a profound effect on me. I felt like it was truth because it was based in real life experience (granted, I have learned, a very limited aspect of my experience), and the repetition of this one liner I said to myself – Your Difficult– affected my self-perception. Once loving, outgoing and excited, I eventually started to stay inside my house and only chose to go out with people with whom I felt safe. I had great relationships with these friends; we had fun and created great memories, and who I am was something they loved, but I knew I was playing small. My world had become a select group of people that it had taken me years to truly trust. In my heart I realized this smallness was not serving me. I realized I had come to a point in life that was tired and protective, but I felt I was there for good reason and I just didn’t know how to get out of it, or frankly if I wanted to. It was unsatisfying, but it was safe. And after a few arrows in my back safety is important.

As I came to learn more about how we create our own stories, and I took an emotional intelligence workshop that I’ve referred to in other episodes, I worked with personal coaches who helped me get back in touch with the authentic me—the me that loves, and skips,  believes in myself, and even dares to be vulnerable. It is a process, I’ll be honest, but I see the stories now. I see how I let a handful of experiences with people whose perception of an experience with me was negative, through their lens, take precedence over the hundreds, thousands of other comments over those same years where I was praised, applauded, loved and enjoyed by so many other people.

We all do this – Think about the last time someone criticized you and how much credence you gave this comment – how much it bothered you – how much power you allowed it to have. I can stew on a good insult for ages because it’s hurtful. Then think about the last time you were complimented, and how you brushed it off.  Sometimes I don’t even acknowledge compliments I get, and afterward, I’m wondering to myself why I ignored the woman who told me she liked my outfit. Often times I  can’t even remember a compliment, or won’t for long, because compliments tend to roll off our backs. There’s an actual evolutionary reason for this – in a nutshell, it’s because we are programmed to remember things that hurt us so we can stay away from them. The hurtful things get larger memory space to help keep us safe. We simply aren’t programmed to spend hours, days or weeks ruminating over the lady in the grocery line who told us we had darling children or the congratulatory comment the boss gave us after our big presentation or the time a dear friend told us how amazing we make his life. We’d be far better off spending time on that though than spending that time thinking about the person who told us we needed to lose weight, or said we were difficult, or insulted our taste in paisley pants. You hear me?

Here’s a truth: The stories we create about ourselves can become immensely heavy. Criticism from others builds up in our hearts and minds, and before you know it you are seeing yourself through the lens of the haters. The hater’s information can be completely inaccurate – their perception, not your authentic self, but that doesn’t matter to us when we repeat their stories. We eat it up and pretty soon we are telling a story about our unworthiness. We are too fat, too thin, too stupid, too difficult, too damaged, too unworthy to be the amazing person we came here to be. These stories are so powerful because our perception is our reality, and what we perceive as reality can make or break us. The story we repeat to ourselves gets assimilated into who we are, and pretty soon we are hiding, or living small, or ready to give up, or unable to engage in a productive life.

A lot of these stories are assimilated from childhood. What if your step father told you you’d never be good at anything? The thing we don’t realize as children is that this comment was a reflection of the person who made it, it had nothing to do with the reality of who you were and are. Those peers, parents, teachers, aunt or uncle who undervalued you, or put on too much pressure, or neglected to tell you about your strengths, criticized you or actively tried to tear you down, their words are about them, not about you.  First and foremost, we must realize their comments are by no means reality. They are not the special truth about who we are –our authentic self. They are comments that come from hurt and damaged people reflecting their own insecurities. Everybody has an opinion – but we don’t have to listen to all the opinions, and we certainly don’t need to take their opinions as fact. Haters will always be out there – especially if you try to do something big. But just like the Olympic athletes who have to drown out the noises of the crowds, we get to learn how to block out the noise and the one-line judgment stories that don’t serve us. Other’s opinions only have the power we give them. That’s real stuff people – the game is in our own heads, and if we first realize their comments aren’t fact, and second, stop listening to the doubters, they got no way in baby!

What story have you made up about yourself? Think about this seriously. For me, I didn’t even realize they were stories – I saw them as fact. I am getting older, but did that really make me too old to find love? I had put on a few pounds since turning 40, but was I really unacceptable because of it? I am strong, but that strength helped me to survive an emotionally abusive husband, it helped me to survive traumas like my son being diagnosed with Leukemia, it helped me stand up and try for love a ridiculous number of times. We are not unworthy. We are not small. We are not powerless, so shut those voices down. If there is a voice in your head that is holding you back, then it’s not serving you. Your authentic self is wonderful and filled with potential, no matter who you are.

I know it’s not always easy to change our stories – especially these one-liners that feel simply like things we know–, but once you can see that they are false, that older people are always finding love, that all shapes and sizes of bodies are gorgeous and worthy, and that different people are attracted to different body types, that being a powerful woman is not something to be ashamed of…then you begin to wholly accept yourself!

While the hater’s comments still sting, cause no-one likes to be criticized, you come to know your authentic self and you can shake off the haters and their own small spaces, and the false stories that you repeat to yourself every day. Even the flaws you consider yourself to have are only flaws because you tell yourself they are. My son is often looking in the mirror complaining that one eyebrow might be higher than the other, or one nostril is not shaped like the other, or one ear sits higher on his head. None of these things are noticeably true, but if he continues to obsess about them pretty soon he’ll genuinely think there is something wrong with the way he looks. He’ll be self-conscious and concerned about things he’s created.

So, first and foremost accept your whole self. See your own beauty, your own potential, reconnect with the dreams you once thought you might create. Believe in yourself and check the voices in your head and the stories they tell you every day when you look in the mirror, when you try for something hard, when you need to stand up for yourself. Check the voices and the stories and weed out the lies, so you can fly!

I have a friend whom I will call Bonnie. As a young girl, she was filled with life and joy and fun. She danced and played and wasn’t the least self-conscious of her darling round body. As she got older and comments were made about her weight, she became self-conscious. Each segment of her life, adolescence, college, adulthood were marked mentally for her by her perception of her weight and what others might be thinking. The voices she listened to told her that somehow she was less than those who fit the magazine cover image. It’s a tough culture we live in when it comes to body image. There is no doubt about that. It’s an uphill battle. But what difference could it make if the voice in your head wasn’t saying “You’re too fat,” but “You’re beautiful.” How would she have lived differently? How would I live differently? How would you live differently? Who do those voices in our head serve – the one-liner kryptonite that cripple us from the inside out, or do we shut those down and replace them with one-liners that we create on purpose. One-liners like, hell ya, I’m awesome. I got this. I’m a beautiful woman. I am filled with love. I have gifts to share. My voice matters. I’m amazing.  Whatever you need to hear.

So for those of you thinking, well, if I get repeated feedback and I never listen to it, then how do I improve? Or I only tell my sister she needs to clean her house because I’m afraid her kids are going to get a disease from the stagnating fast food wrappers all over the floor. Let me say that when we get feedback from others it can definitley give us insights to consider. For instance, I understand a little more now about how some personalities feel challenged or embarrassed or run over by people who come across bold and in charge. I am working to improve and refine my skill sets. I’m working on learning how to be more supportive with souls for whom directness is too much. I’m learning to allow instead of insist my children do things my way.  I have learned that there are lots of other leaders and I can stand back and lead only when I’m needed, or feel strongly about an issue. We can use repetitive feedback from multiple sources to inform and guide us, but never to define us. We are not the interpretation of others, we are always worthy, always enough, and that’s the place we need to work from, because that belief in our authentic self, the self we all need to get in touch with, is the space from which we can love, without judgment. Get rid of the judgment, celebrate your beauty! Celebrate your beauty!

My challenge to you this week is to write a love letter to yourself. Remind yourself of your greatness, your potential, your talents and charms. Love yourself first and foremost, it’s the foundation for greatness!

Have fun out there telling your stories, and I’ll see you next week on Love Your Story Podcast.