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

Rumi said, “People want to be happy. Don’t keep serving them your pain.” Forgiveness can be one of the most difficult things we get to do. Stay tuned for why that serves us, not the offender. And how holding onto the dark days means that we keep serving up our pasts to everyone we come in contact with.

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 looked at personal narrative research project I did and what I discovered about how we engage with risk. This week we are going to look at some ideas on forgiveness.

At an emotional intelligence conference I attended mid-year 2016, I and a couple hundred other folks from around the country, found ourselves doing work to release old wounds, old stories that didn’t serve us, events of the past that had caused us to put up walls. It was a particularly vulnerable exercise where the lights were off and people were allowed, in fact encouraged, to scream out their anger, to vocally set free and release pains they had carried… always with them over the years. As I watched and listened and participated I wasn’t as wigged out as I thought I was going to be if, as my friends and I had discussed earlier, “there was screaming involved.”  In fact, what struck me so profoundly was how much pain everyone carries. Here was a large room filled with a hundred and seventy-something people from all across the country. Different races, religions, genders, states, socio-economic status, etc… but when the lights are down we are all the same – we are all carrying deep, deep pain. I was so struck by the human struggle taking place in the room when an idea suddenly became phenomenally clear to me, for the first time: Forgiveness is NOT about the other person– The one who hurt you. Forgiveness is about ourselves. When Christ said, in Matthew in the New Testament, that we are to forgive seventy times seven, I believe he was stating that there is never a time when it will be okay to burden our souls with pain, resentment, and hatred. There will never be a time when that will be good for us. No matter how many people do crappy things to us, or how many times a person hurts us, it is never enough for us to give them license to crush out our light and our love, which is exactly what carrying around anger and bitterness does to us. Let me repeat that… he was only stating that there is never a time when it will be okay to burden our souls with pain, resentment, and hatred. There will never be a time when that will be good for you. No matter how many people do crappy things to us, or how many times a person hurts us, it is never enough for us to give them license to crush out our light and our love. He doesn’t want us to have to be standing in that room screaming out the pain we have held onto. He doesn’t want us to carry around pain and anger and hatred that block out the light in our eyes and the lilt in our step.

Isn’t that a clarifying thought! All these years forgiveness was a difficult-to-implement concept that focused on people not being mad at each other and working through things that felt unfair. But this commandment, this practice of forgiving isn’t about allowing someone else to get off the hook. It has nothing to do with that. I know it feels like it, but it’s not about justice or mercy, (those things get worked out later) It’s a practice to free our own energy from the dark emotions that cripple and crush us right now. And even though sometimes it feels like forgiveness is letting the other person off the hook, it’s really getting ourselves off the hook – the hook that’s going to keep us dangling from the end of a line, held by another person, never moving forward.

The Dalai Lama said of forgiveness, “It would be much more constructive if people tried to understand their supposed enemies. Learning to forgive is much more useful than merely picking up a stone and throwing it at the object of one’s anger, the more so when the provocation is extreme. For it is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.

As I sat in that workshop and listened to the pains of all the unforgiven, I came to see the tragedy of not being able to let go of the old stories, the old grievances, the wounds that cut deep and never healed. Right in front of me was the thrashing of people wanting so badly to let their lights shine again in their own lives, and they were fighting for their lives. They were seeking release from the wounds that hadn’t healed so they could start to see with a brighter light and sprout wings.

I have this poster on my bookcase of Captian Jack Sparrow, and it says, “The problem is not the problem, the problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?” Here’s a hard truth: It’s never what happens to us, it’s what we do with what happens to us. Now, I say hard truth, because sometimes it sucks to realize that we are responsible for making the best of a bad situation. On the other hand, it’s completely empowering, because with this “Stoics” mindset – you are always in control of your emotion and your life because no matter what comes your way you get to change your perspective so you can find the beauty, or the joy, or the learning, or the opportunity.

“Our deepest wounds are sacred spaces,” said  Katherine Woodward Thomas – I’ll bring her up again in a minute. I liked how she acknowledged the profound effect of our deep wounds. Our wounds are real – they wouldn’t hurt and wound if they weren’t hitting our vulnerable tender spaces. I find the verbiage of calling them “sacred spaces” as an acknowledgment of the role they play in our learning. They ARE spaces of learning. If you have experienced horrible things, and most of us have, we then have two choices – we are either crushed by the unfairness and the pain of the events, or we become a crazy warrior soul who fights for their life, in which case growth and progression is guaranteed. Those with the deepest sufferings are the warriors… really they have no choice: Fight and grow or be smothered by whatever event you can’t bear to let go of.

Those who hurt us have no control over whether or not we live a life of love and joy. That’s important to remember. We are the only ones who can decide that. Only you, only I, hold that power for ourselves. I saw this quote on-line yesterday: “Never put the key to your happiness in somebody else’s pocket.” While it seems counter intuitive – at least to me it always has, that forgiving someone else is done to save me; it is what it is. Take the key to your happiness out of the pocket of whoever hurt you, put it in your own pocket and start to shine again by breaking free of the anger, hate and pain. Easier said than done….I know.

Do you remember in Episode 1 when I spoke about reframing my victim story and finding a purpose, a meaning for the things that had happened in the past? It was this reframing of my story that allowed me to let go of feeling like a victim, even the little bit I held on to because I could see a potential purpose for my suffering. The wounds of my past didn’t change, I didn’t forget they ever happened. But now I could see that maybe there was either purpose behind them, or at least I could repurpose the events for a good cause. I can use my experiences to understand others better, to lift and carry, to inspire and to guide when given the opportunity. What greater use could we have for making it through the nightmares than to shine more brightly, to be more badass, to have a larger heart? Have you heard the song by Rascal Flatts “Bless the Broken Road?” If not, the words go: “God bless the broken road that led me straight to you.” A little country love song pointing out that he wouldn’t be where and who he is without that broken road he traveled, but it had purpose in leading him to the right place. Give it a listen – can be a bit of a tear jerker.

There is a neat book called Calling in the One, by Katherine Woodward Thomas – this is her work I referred to earlier: In her book, she says, “Our unhealed wounds are invisible prisons capturing us with their iron bars just as surely as if we were locked inside cold gray, concrete walls. Sometimes it seems, no matter how hard we try to escape, that we will forever be prisoners of our own sad stories, doomed to repeat painful dynamics over and over and over again, in spite of our wishes to the contrary.”   She goes on later to discuss how, as much as we profess to hate our brokenness, that we often set up camp and put down roots and build our entire identities around our tales of woe. She then talks about the exact route that I found with my victim story – she acknowledges that we can’t actually get rid of our wounds, but we can find a way to make them meaningful, and when we do this,  THEN we can move on. Move forward. Let them go.

She recounts a story from the classic Man’s Search for Meaning –by Victor Frankl. Viktor was a prominent Jewish psychiatrist who survived the camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Viktor talks of an elderly man who came to see him a couple years after his beloved wife had passed away. The man was distraught with grief and couldn’t move on with life because he was severely depressed. Viktor had been through the worst types of suffering, so he understood pain. He sat quietly and listened to the man pour out his grief and sorrow. When the man finished Dr. Frankl asked him just one questions: What would have happened if you had died first and your wife would have survived you?  Well, the man said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” To this, Dr. Frankl replied, “You see, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering, to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” The man was so moved by Dr. Frankl’s words that he simply stood up, shook his hand, and left, never to return. Dr. Frankl then writes, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”

While these moments that break our hearts are a part of everyone’s life experience, we have the power of choice in how we deal with them. You are the badass hero of your story! You get to find your power. You get to take back the key to your happiness and put it in your own pocket. The struggle with that dragon of forgiveness is often a mighty struggle- I won’t pretend like it’s not. Finding purpose in your wounds can sometimes be more than a one-person job, like it was for me in episode one. Letting go doesn’t happen in a day, but sometimes it does.  For your own life, work with urgency toward this goal, so you can rise from the dark, let the heaviness flow from you, stand in the light and feel it warm your skin. That’s worth it.

And, back to Captain Jack Sparrow – “the problem is not the problem, the problem is your attitude about the problem.” All he’s saying here is that we assign meaning to the things that happen to us. The events in our lives are just events. The meaning these events have to us is created by us, through our lenses that we look through, our life perceptions. We control our perspective. If someone cuts you off in traffic you can decide if that person is a jackass or if his mother has just been hospitalized for a heart condition and he’s pushing his way through to be with her. If someone you don’t know yells at you, you can give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s had a really bad day, and empathize with him and cut him some slack because you too have had bad days, or you can confront and fight, or let the interaction ruin the rest of your day, or any number of potential responses, ….but the point is that you get to create your reality. You get to choose your response, even your interpretation.

There is that story about the man on the subway with his four children. His children ran all over, yelling and annoying other passengers. The father just sat there and let his children run around unchecked as he paid them no mind. When he was chastised by another rider he looked up, surprised, and then explained that they were just returning home from the hospital where their mother had just passed away and no one was dealing with it very well. I’m sure this story has been true in many cities, at many times. It illustrates how different a situation can be depending upon the lens it’s seen through. And, sense we often don’t have or know the whole story, it behooves us to give people the benefit of the doubt that everyone is doing the best they can. This perspective helps us not to create and carry around unnecessary irritation, but it’s also a reality check when bigger things happen 1. What’s the whole story here? 2. I get to choose the lens I see this event with.

Here’s another story. I work in real estate and a few years back I had a good friend who I was helping do a real estate deal. I had helped her purchase her first home, sell it, and we were working on the purchase of her second home. She had recently remarried after a difficult first marriage and divorce and I had been key in helping her to gain back her strength and step into her own power. We had been friends for years and I had gone out of my way to help her through a lot of difficult times. Well, as we worked on finding her a home in a city about a 45-minute drive away, we spent many days driving back and forth and she put in one offer after another on homes that she then backed out of. They waffled between building and she and her husband fought about how new the home should be, he wanted newer, but she was paying for it and she wanted it to be more affordable. Since we had been friends for years I joked that they shouldn’t build because building was hard on relationships and those two didn’t seem to be able to agree on anything. Well a few weeks down the road, and further along in the process, she was pulling out of another offer and asking if she could legally put in offers on multiple homes at the same time. I had a talk with her and we discussed ethics and consideration for the seller’s and I asked her to think seriously before we put in another offer on a home, as she needed to be serious about her desire to own that home. Well, this flipped a switch for her and she fired me, wrote a letter to my broker about why she should be let out of her contract, in which she literally made up a list of salacious comments about my work with her. The vast majority were straight up lies, while some were misunderstandings like my comment to her earlier about suggesting they not try to build a home together. This was infuriating to me. Here was a person, a friend whom I had done a great deal for over the years, a friend whom I had put in hours, days, weeks into helping them with their home purchase and here she was attempting to besmirch my reputation, attempting to provide no compensation for the time I had professionally spent helping their family, and worse outright attacking me in what was a very unexpected way. To say that I was taken aback was an understatement. For weeks I was shocked and for months I was angry. Her betrayal was so unexpected and so offensive, and to me, I could find no justification for it. As I’ve tried to look at this through other various lenses, I have come up with some theories – when she and I first met she was a woman with NO power. She was weak and victimized and her ex-husband was running over her everyday in every way. She was still mothering his children (not hers) and she was fixing his meals because she didn’t want to make him angry. He was pushy and confrontational, and she was a wilting flower. Over the years she found her strength and her voice. I’ve seen this happen more than once, where people who have not had a voice and then they take up their power, they swing to the far left. She went from having no voice to being an unreasonable bitch. She hadn’t found the in between yet. I think she was also embarrassed that I had seen her and her new husband, the supposed and sought after happily-ever-after, fighting so often as she rode over him repeatedly. While I was an indirect party to these parts of her life, this event, that was so unexpected and unrealistic to me, when seen through these potential lenses, at least sheds some light on her actions. Forgiveness to me in this situation is a freeing of the unexpected betrayal I felt by her. She wrote later and said she missed me and was sorry – exactly like that, 2 short lines. To which I so badly wanted to write a two-page tirade. But I did not. I let her go down her path, wherever that may take her and wish her the best on her journey as she figures out her middle ground of having her power and being able to maintain healthy relationships at the same time. I’m not suggesting this was the only course or the correct course; I’m sharing my chosen course and what it meant to me. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we welcome back the perpetrators into our lives. In fact, often times that would be very unwise, but it does mean that we don’t wish them a tortured death, and we let them move on down their path while we move on down our path with a lighter load. I’ll admit, it took me time. Forgiveness is always a process for me, but I’m understanding it better and better, and that’s called growth.

The key to your happiness is in your own pocket, and if you’ve left it in someone else’s pocket, it’s time to go get it back. If you take anything from today’s episode, remember this – there is never a time when it’s okay for us to let someone else crush the light out of us. This is why we forgive – to be whole, to retain our light, to move forward and past the dragons (episode 2) and on to the happily ever after!

Your challenge for this week is to find something you are holding onto in your heart – someone you haven’t forgiven, some pain that needs to be released. Start with just one, and start the process of taking the key of your happiness out of their pocket. Find a purpose or a lesson learned from your experience. Try looking at it through different lenses in an attempt to understand their perspective. Often this process – finding a meaning for your experience, a lesson you can take from it, and then considering the perspective of the other, can help you to honor those sacred spaces that are our wounds, and wash out any bitter infection that still festers.

On that delicious visual, have a great week out there considering your stories, and creating new ones. See you next week.

Title: What Stories Taught me about Risk

Intro: Lezlie Silko said, “I will tell you something about stories…they aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have.” We all have stories. We all tell stories. If I told you how I fell 100 feet off a rock climb, you’d start thinking of your own stories, one you’d like to tell in response. Maybe a bigger/better, or someone you know did X. It’s part of our conversation…how we relate to each other. But stories are so much more – tune in today for the unexpected discovery I made while studying the stories of hikers, bikers, skiers and rock climbers. An insight into how we all manage risk!

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I conducted 16 interviews of people who participate regularly in outdoor recreation – human-powered sports in wild places such as mountains, rivers, and deserts. The interviewees consisted of eight men and eight women between the ages of 22-75 years old. Their sports of choice included: mountaineering, road biking, mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, SUP (stand up paddle boarding), white water kayaking, desert backpacking, and river rafting. Each shared personal stories of exploits, that I then structurally analyzed for risk using Labov and Walestsy’s structural analysis model. What that means, in a nutshell, is that these cool guys – Labov and Walestsy, broke down the personal narrative and found a pattern in the way stories were told. By breaking the stories into the parts L&W defined, you can evaluate different structural aspects of a story. So let me share an example so this will make sense–

Example Story from Alex, one of the outdoor recreationalists that was a part of this study

He said, and I’m quoting word for word, “ I was on a climb for charity, a mountain climb, I’m not a mountain climber, but we were climbing a mountain in Chile called Aconcagua. And, a, it was really, really, really, really, really really cold, like 40 below. Now this is the opening section of the story that L&W call the ( ORIENTATION). The story goes on:  And, on the day before the summit day I was feeling extraordinarily strong and then all of the sudden lost feeling in my feet and literally couldn’t walk. I mean I absolutely couldn’t do it.  This is the second section of the story that L&W call (COMPLICATING ACTION). The story goes on:  It was a small group and so it was a choice, let’s leave Alex and we’re going to go push for the summit. And they got me all set up. My friend Eric decided he was going to stay with me, long time friend, and the short part of the story is, that in 40 below temps, he… we said, let’s give it a shot and see if I can warm your feet up. We didn’t think there was necessarily something wrong, they had just gotten so frozen they had lost circulation. This section is the section L&W call the (EVALUATION): And so, he put my feet under his jacket and into his armpits… … and 10 minutes later after him screaming in pain about how cold it was, I got feeling back and we went for the summit. This is what L&W call the (RESOLUTION).

I said:  Not only did you summit, but you saved your feet!

Alex: I’m not sure. I think it would have… like circulation would have ….. ya, he did a lot of wonderful things for me with that armpit moment… That last final statement is what L&W call a (CODA)

So, why does this breakdown matter? The reason it matters, in this case, was that after I had collected all their stories, broken them into L&W’s structural parts, the result of my analysis brought 2 things to the forefront: 1. Risk was the roving master and was allowed in any and all parts of the stories – in everything from the orientation to the coda – risk could show up anywhere in this group’s stories. And 2. Risk received little fanfare in the narratives and was often quickly passed over.

Now, The scattered, but certain nature of risk within the narratives show that risk plays an integral role in the stories of the outdoor recreation folk group, and WE can clearly identify that the activities these recreationalist participate in involve danger and potential injury or death, and yet, these participants  all claimed they were NOT risk takers, despite the fact that they climbed mountains over 22,000 feet in elevation, backpacked multi-day trips across arid deserts relying only on water within the landscape, skied backcountry icy mountain tops on skis without edges, white water kayaked, and rock climbed 1200 foot pinnacles– to stand on a pizza-box size rock in utter darkness, etc. Despite this they made such claims as: “I’m not a huge risk taker.” or  “I’m a snowboarder and a mountain biker, but I’m very careful about what I do out on those things.” or  “It didn’t feel risky. It felt really safe.”  “I don’t think I would do things that are risky or dangerous, I’m pretty reserved.”—Brittany.  “I don’t think climbing is any more risky than walking to the grocery store.” –Roland  “I’m not a real physical risk taker.” –Tim.

The question then begs: what defines risk for these individuals, and what steps are taken to alleviate risk to the point that these clearly dangerous undertakings are no longer considered dangerous by those who choose to participate in them?

Now this insight isn’t about stories, it’s about how humans deal with risk – but the wonderful, powerful thing is that this information was derived from a starting point of stories. Another situation where we can come to understand the human condition in direct and indirect ways – all through story. So let’s talk about the results:

Risk Identification

Though these type of sports often seem extremely risky to the uninvolved on-looker, the participants engage in 2 steps to essentially manage the risk, the first is a quick and often instinctual calculation regarding a number of criteria in order to determine risk potential. Each person chooses their own variety of issues to analyze. Let me tell you about the 6 that I identified with this study: So when someone asks one of these skiers, hikers, mountain climbers if they want to do a certain climb, kayak a certain river, etc. the first thing they do is quickly go through a mental process of checking off the following 6 items:

Play through Scenarios: One tool for risk assessment was to play through a mental movie of possible scenarios and outcomes to determine whether the reward was worth the potential harm. They also gauged, in their scenarios, how the event had to play out for safety, which brings me to…

How Far Removed is the Risk: If a number of mistakes can be made on a given move and the participant still has a chance for success without harm or death, then the risk is more likely to be considered acceptable. If harm is only one move away, most, who used this evaluation tool, indicated they would not engage. For example, if riding a narrow section of trail on a mountain bike, next to a 100-foot drop off, one mistake can mean death. If, on the other hand, the trail is wide enough that if a mistake is made, falling off is not certain, then the risk is more than one move away and may be acceptable.

Experience of Others: Risk is gauged by the experiences and success or failure of others. For example, when Alex was discussing how he made his decision to move ahead with the climb of Aconcagua, one of the tallest mountains in the world, part of his process of evaluation was to see how many deaths had occurred on the mountain in the past year.  Alli said, “It’s like you can break your hand or your clavicle, but you don’t really hear about people dying (on a mountain bike).”  Talking with other people was often mentioned as a way to gauge risk as well. What experience had others had doing this offered route?

Scouting Conditions and Assessing Technicality: Scouting conditions is an attempt to evaluate risk potential established by the terrain and whether or not they have the skill required for success. For a river rafter or kayaker it is walking the river and assessing the flow and pull of the water, the location of rocks, length of drop off and speed of the water. For climbing a wall it may include looking for anchors, ledges, hand holds, loose rock. For backcountry skiing it may include checking avalanche conditions, looking for terrain traps and checking snow conditions. Incremental Progression: How far is this beyond my skill level? Multiple interviewees discussed the idea of incremental learning. In order to progress in the sport, one must gain skills they don’t currently have, but making big jumps from one skill level to the next possesses too much risk. Risks are acceptable if taken incrementally. For example, one interviewee said, “… how I approach that is taking on class 2 (rapids), then class 3, 4, then 5….”

Control: For those to whom control is an issue, they judged risk according to how much control they would retain in the situation, and how much was left to some other entity, even if that entity was gravity. Are they in control or is something else?

After they had gauged their situation in regard to these 6 items, they then naturally went through a process called Risk Alleviation.

Basically, after risk has been identified and assessed, the interviewees each had certain steps they plugged in, to further reduce risk. This final step determines whether or not the participant will engage in the sport or route. This cognitive equation takes place, sometimes in a matter of minutes, but sometimes much longer if the danger or risk is higher. There are 8 of these

The first is:

Experience: Had they attempted this activity at this level before? Did they have the experience to feel confident that they could succeed without injury? As discussed in Lee Davidson’s study “The Calculable and the Incalculable: Narratives of Safety and Danger in the Mountains,” the mountaineers in his study indicated that one of the ways for survival was to survive the initial phase of participation in the sport. In other words, if you can stay alive through your introduction to the sport, when you have the least amount of experience, then you can gain the experience needed, “learn from one’s mistakes,” and move past it. Once one has enough of their own experience, they can compare future situations with past situations. This was occasionally referred to as “judgment”.

Confidence: One interviewee put it this way, “I think risk is a very personal thing, and I think a lot of risks come from the mental state that you’re in. So, being confident and comfortable in what you are doing eliminates a huge amount of risk.” In other words: Is your head in the game?

Skill: Skill is defined as competent excellence in performance. Each of the sports mentioned require a specific set of skills to navigate the sport successfully. Possessing those skills lowers the risk of injury or death. Beth said, “I ski things that maybe someone else would never ski because that would be scary and you could break a leg, but I feel I’m not going to break a leg because I know what I’m doing.”

Preparation: Limiting risk can be done by prior preparation. Tim explains, “Part of the draw is that they (the deserts) can be very unforgiving…where if you don’t have your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted in terms of preparation, you could find yourself in real big trouble real quick.”  In other words, In the world of outdoor recreation preparation can mean the difference between life and death.

Go With Others:  Safety in numbers.  Those who mentioned this felt that recreating with partners meant that if there were trouble, multiple participants would mean help for the injured or someone to go for help, or that going with others who had been there/done that provided insight, experience, and safety.

Gear/Safety Equipment: In the words of Kara, “If something can save your life, why wouldn’t you wear it?”  Specifically, items like harnesses, avalanche beacons, avalanche backpacks, safe ropes, etc. were mentioned. The need to double check safety gear for tight knots and correct usage was also noted.

Knowledge: Two of the most experienced of those interviewed, one male, one female, both mentioned knowledge as a key to risk reduction.  Roland explained it like this, “…another piece of eliminating risk is making sure that you are doing everything correctly, that all your knots are done correctly…If you’re going to be trad climbing, you know how to place gear correctly, you know how to build anchors….”

Ego: Roland also noted the importance of not letting ego push you to make unwise choices that increase risk. He said, “There have been a lot of climbs and pitches that I haven’t felt good about, or you know, a storm is coming in, or the sun is setting and you’re not prepared for it, and we’ve said, “OK, we are backing off.” We’ve put our ego aside and said, “We’re not getting on top of this today, and we’ll be alive to do it tomorrow.”

Risk vs. Reward

For each recreationalist the rewards they receive from participation in their chosen activities vary. The recreationalists I interviewed unequivocally assured me that their purpose in pursuing these activities did not center around risk. Rather, risk was a necessary part of the process to be navigated, but not the attraction. The things they sought were: the challenge of the sport, the opportunity to connect with the landscape, the release from urban life, healing and rejuvenation, fun, the social connection it gives them with others, a feeling of accomplishment, to conquer their own fears, to learn to deal with challenges, build character, as a tool for keeping them present, to get to know their body, exercise, to learn new things, spiritual connection, and to keep life in perspective. Another research study done of the narratives of 22 New Zealand mountaineers found the same thing. “…While they may have to deal with danger and stress in pursuing their passion, they are not reckless, foolhardy, or adrenaline junkies. Rather, they describe themselves as typically calm, sensible, and analytical in their approach to the potential dangers of climbing.”   Zucherman, in his article, Sensation Seeking and Risky Behavior, notes, “the riskiness of sports is not the sole or even the main feature attracting sensation seekers” (p 91). And, Roberti concludes that “Instead, sensation seekers are believed to be willing to take risks in order to have rewarding experiences; rather than risk being the source of arousal, sensation seekers most actively try to reduce it.” My interviewees made this point very clear. These sports, to the participants, are life affirming rather than death defying.

CONCLUSION

Personal narratives open the windows to the soul of any group. In this case they have led to insights that have allowed me to logically define an individualized process that participants in this group go through in order to remove or reduce risk perception to a space of manageability. So here is the exciting and more widely applicable part – This process, I suspect, is similar, for other groups who encounter risk of other types: relationship risks, economic risks, social risks, political risks, etc. And with this understanding we have gained an  insight into ourselves and others as we need to predetermine where humans dare to go and under what conditions they will engage for their highest chance of happily ever after in their own stories. If we are contemplating a risky move of any time, we can probably watch ourselves go through this process, and with more awareness and understanding of it, maybe even control it, finding additional risk reduction tools? I loved this particular research project because I had no idea what I would find. And what I found was so fascinating. The next time you see someone doing something risky, you can rest assured they have identified the risks, alleviated what they could, and managed them before they began (except for the few folks out there who are disconnected from their self-preservation instinct.) When you see a skateboarder try to slide the rail, he has probably instinctually considered his skill set, put on safety gear, evaluated other’s experiences with the attempt, taken stock of his own experience, and considered the likelihood of his own injury or death. If he feels like he can manage the risk involved, he then proceeds to give it a try. This doesn’t always work out well, as the doctors and nurses in the ER room know, but it’s a process that we use to manage our risky and dangerous choices. Are you fascinated? I am!

Next time you think about whether you should ask out the great looking girl in the coffee line at Starbucks, watch your mind go through the risk identification and alleviation processes. See where you get stuck, and decide if the story you’re telling yourself is fact or fiction and if you should push past it! Can you alleviate one more game stopper so you can move forward?

Have fun out there telling your stories this week. See you next week on Love Your Story podcast.

Intro: Do you own a business, lead a team, manage a family? If so, today’s podcast is going to blow your socks off! How you can use stories to align everyone in the same vision of who you are and what you stand for? How you can use stories to define your brand and your values. Now you can lead with the most enjoyable medium in the human quiver of communication! Stories!

Body: 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 us it.

This month has been a fun and exciting launch for the Love Your Story podcast because each episode has focused on different aspects of the power of stories. In episode one we discussed how stories are fluid creatures and can be reframed to serve us better. In episode two we became the hero of our own stories and talked about the heroes journey. This week we are going to be looking at some absolutely amazing story ideas for leaders. Next week we’ll be looking at one of the funnest research projects I have done, and discuss how story revealed an amazing insight into how we can manage risk.

So, let’s jump right in.

If you lead a company, a team – of any type: business, sports, charity; or if you have a family that you lead, you’re going to love today’s insights. As I talk about these ideas, apply them to you – to the group you lead, and I’d love for you to jump on-line to loveyourstorypodcast.com and share with us how you plan to use today’s information in leading your team to success.

A vast majority of the stories that we share with each other are shared very informally. Talking with the guy in the cubical next to you, or shooting the breeze with a friend at the dog park. The water cooler stories happen all day every day. It’s part of the ritual of exchange between people as we live moment to moment. But once you understand the power of the story you can start to use them deliberately, with purpose. You can use story to accomplish goals and achieve clearer vision among groups.

If you’re a leader of any group of people you know the importance of bringing new tools to your leadership role. You know that leading others is no small task. How do you communicate and create a sense of cohesiveness? How do you create a group vision where everyone is on board? How do you lead and direct your charges in a way that creates clarity, not confusion? Not only will you be able to make your vision clearer, you will also keep the interest of your team members when you’re done with today’s podcast, because we all prefer to hear a story over looking at a page of statistics, or  a well-meant lecture.

The first type of story I want to talk about is the Identity Story! Who is your team and what does it mean to be a member of your team or family? How did you start? These stories are important because it’s the foundation of who you are! This step is often overlooked with the assumption that everyone ‘gets it.’ But if time isn’t allotted to defining this for the team mates, then you have a group of people who are all drawing their own conclusions. These days as new college graduates are heading into the work force, often they want a greater cause – not just a paycheck. They want meaning and purpose behind the company they chose to work for. Being clear on your identity as an employer, a family, a group or organization is keep to stability within the ranks. So we start with origin stories.

These origin stories are fodder for identity!– as a leader, you get to provide this for your people. How did your family start – how did mom and dad meet? How did your team come together? How did your business begin? I’m going to borrow some examples from the book Circle of the 9 Muses by David Hutchens.

The year was 1876 and Thomas Edison opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. Out of that laboratory was to come one of the greatest inventions of the age. A light bulb. After a merger in 1892, he called his new organization General Electric. On their website, after telling this story in more detail, they say: Today, that same spirit of innovation and discovery is still a part of everything we do.

General Electric is using their origin story to communicate a clear picture of who they are, what they stand for, and to provide a marketing vision that exemplifies the way they want to be seen. All with a simple story, they encapsulate that they are a company of innovation and discovery. How much more memorable is that than the statement “We are a company of innovation and discovery?”

Once you discover what you identity story is – the one you want to use to define your group – you have stepped onto the path of a multi-pronged solution. The identity story not only defines you to your team members, it also defines you to your customers, clients, and competitors. If this story is put into marketing, retold at meetings, and used as a tool, pretty soon everyone is clear on what you are and what you stand for. I want to point out that the employee or group member understanding is not to be under estimated here. When everyone is on the same page and has a clear vision of what they are working for – the sense of unity and forward progress, with like minds, blows the roof off. If this is missing in your group, start looking for your identity story.

What might a family origin story look like? My mom and dad met in a small Idaho farm town in the middle of nowhere. Mom had arrived for a summer get-away with her uncle, between semesters at college, and dad saw her at a church event. After a day working out on the farm a cute girl was a welcome distraction. A spark was struck and almost 50 years later they have 6 kids, and 30 grandkids. My dad has 12 brothers and sisters, and that side of the family is hundreds strong when you start counting kids, grandkids, even great grandkids. We have a heritage of family, love of God and hard work; and we all know it.

Your story will be completely different. That’s the wonder of the stories of our lives – so much color and variety, but thinking about which stories you may want to use to define your family or your team, is part of the process. Maybe the origin story is sketchy at best. If the origin story is not working for you, consider the next type

The next story I like is called a Value Story. Does your organization pride itself, yea market itself, as being environmentally friendly? Do you stand behind the quality of your product, or pride yourself on your customer service? Are you the company with the latest and greatest – cutting edge technology, or the top fashions as soon as they walk off the runway? This is another fun one! Find the stories within your company and team that show you living up to these values. Do you remember that old story of Nordstrom taking a return for a tire because a customer insisted they had bought it there and Nordstrom had a no questions asked return policy? Well, Nordstroms doesn’t sell tires, but the story goes that they took the return because the customer was #1. Whether or not it’s true, the story built trust in Nordstrom’s return policy. It showed excellent customer service and spread, as stories do, to accomplish an entirely organic type of marketing.

Are you a family that prides itself on community service and helping those around you? Do you have a fun family story or two that shows your family in action? Sharing and retelling these stories to one another start to define values you’d like to see in your family. Kids love stories, kids get stories, kids understand stories better than lectures!

My father has a story where he was loading bales of hay after an early fall frost, and as a youth, he was excited that they would get more money for the load because of the water in the hay. When he mentioned this to his father, Grandpa looked at him and said, “They aren’t paying for water, they are paying for hay.” This one statement was a lesson in honesty that my dad never forgot. He shares the story occasionally, long after grandpa’s death, but it’s a story that defines family value.

the story you get to choose to use is one where you or other members of the team were at their best! A time when George Washington cut down the apple tree but chose not to lie. Retelling your family’s version of the rise-above story and using it as a definition for future actions is a way to clearly show what your family or team stands for.

Another example from Hutchen’s book was a 2012 customer service call that lasted 10 hours. The customer called to order a pair of Ugg boots from Zappos but in the conversation, the service rep discovered that the customer was about to relocate to the Las Vegas area, where Zappos is located. They spent 10 hours exploring neighborhoods and other details of life in Vegas. At the end of the call, the customer purchased a pair of Ugg boots. Zappos viewed the incident as an employee following protocol – and this was another experience of customer service. The story has proven to be useful in showing the extent to which Zappos will go to serve their customers—for both their employees, as well as their clients. No amount of advertising or print copy can do what a story does.

So, as a leader you want to be clear about the identity of your group – who you are – IDENTITY/ORIGIN STORIES! And, you want to be clear on what you stand for – which values define your actions and efforts – VALUE STORIES. And, you want to be clear on where you are going. This third story opportunity is called VISION STORIES.

What do you see for your team, group or company? What do you want to accomplish – what’s your desired future? Vision statements are popular in business and life coaching. They tell what the end goal is – but you’ve heard the popular adage – Show Don’t Tell – A story allows you to show your vision so you can better guide your group toward it. Vision stories are a little more complex because they haven’t happened yet. But here are 3 approaches you can use to determine yours:

For example, I have a Realtor friend who was just starting out in the business. He wanted to make real estate a profitable career, so he looked at the stories of how other highly successful Realtors had developed their businesses. He found a Realtor who was a top performer and who was willing to share his story of rags to riches – the struggle to the top. It was a realistic tale of success and failures with a grand ending. It provided a clear road map and vision for this man and he used this man’s story as his vision for where he wanted to be and how to keep pushing through the barriers as they showed up, just as this man had done in his story.

Let’s say you’re a small group leader and you can envision your group coming up with the winning ad campaign the company will chose. Create this story. What does it look like? How does it happen? Do you have a story from the past where the team pulled together to win the account and you can hold this vision of team work up as an example? The speech might sound something like this: “Last year when we worked on the Johnson and Franks account, we came together as a team. Remember when Jonah and Elizabeth stayed late and ran into the janitor every night that week and were on friendly speaking terms. And remember how the janitor shared the story about his kids having that condiment fight with the neighbors and it gave us that great idea that we created the winning campaign around!” Team work, ingenuity, outside the box sourcing! This is where we are headed again.

This quick little story shows people working hard, looking outside the box for solutions, and winning the prize.

Craft these stories in as much detail as possible and get the team involved in creating the story. A story circle works great for this — then share the story repeatedly! It takes ideas and makes them real!

Leaders change the world! Leaders lead those who change the world. And stories, the world’s oldest form of sharing, connecting, communicating ideas, intent, identity, warning,…are an often underutilized tool. But now that you know – you can begin to use story, on purpose, with intention and you become influential on a whole new level – a strategic leader with a new set of tools to bring to the table.

Have fun using your new skill set, and telling your stories this week. We’ll see you next week on Love Your Story podcast. Stop by the website and share your stories with us.

Intro: In the Hobbit – subtitled “An Unexpected Journey” one of the favorite lines is: “It’s a dangerous business walking out one’s front door.”

In the hero’s journey one must always leave the known, the comfortable, the normal – comfort zone be damned, this is where the possibility begins. This is where adventure and growth happen.

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.

As we discussed last week, the secret is that the same story has a hundred different ways it can be told. Perspective, lenses, motive, they all change up the tale. Do you decide to see the experience from a space of opportunity? From a space of blessing? Are you focused on what went wrong and who is to blame, or on the things you finally learned from having walked that path – willingly or not? Do you see it from a space of abundance, hope, and responsibility? You get to decide. Look at both. Tell both to yourself. Which one serves our highest self? Which one builds internal space and voices that buoy you and give you power? What story do you tell?

In the Hobbit, Gandalf has a conversation with Bilbo. It goes something like this:

Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.

Bilbo: I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them …

Gandalf:  You’ll have a tale or two to tell when you come back

Bilbo:  You can promise that I’ll come back?”

Gandalf:  No. And if you do, you will not be the same

Does this exchange create any amount of excitement in you? It does in me. The ante has been upped. The danger is real. The choice is there to be made. This is where living big, or living small begins – in the choices.

When Bilbo makes the gigantic leap of faith and steps out, placing his foot on the dusty hobbit path that will lead him away from everything he knows, Gandalf says, “Home is now behind you, the world is ahead.”

Mythical stories always have a hero. This main character is on a journey. Joseph Campbell termed it the “hero’s journey” and it can be broken down into very specific parts. Within the story, there is a hero, a loss or obstacle that must be overcome – a journey that will test the hero. Along the route, there are often animals, magic, other people to help or give clues, but the hero has to conquer his challenge if he wishes to come out the other side of the story with the title of hero, where he then collects the kingdom and reward. While it’s true that the journey is fraught with danger, disappointment, often initial failure or setbacks, it is also true that the big picture is about the hero learning, growing and proving worthy of the challenge and the reward. Let’s bring this home and I’ll state the obvious: You are the hero of YOUR story.

This is a fun perspective. This is a perspective that can help you stand back up when you’ve been leveled. It’s a perspective that can remind you who you truly are no matter what dragon you’re facing. It’s a perspective that can help you create the story you want. So, the parts of the hero story that are so exciting in the movies, in the books, in the theater, are the parts that we hate most in real life. No one likes the loneliness of waiting for Prince Charming, or the depressing sleep brought on by a poison apple, or the blood loss when the unexpected dragon descends upon you. That’s pretty universal – we don’t like to suffer. YES, it is soooo true that having crappy or downright horrible things happen to us sucks. Here’s a reality check for you—when the big fights come that define the hero, in the stories, does the hero stay in the space of the fight (whether he wins or loses) or does he move forward? Can you picture if he stayed in the space, the clearing of trees where he was jumped by the band of trolls that robbed and beat him – and if he paced and cussed them and claimed that they had ruined the rest of his life. And he did this year after year, never leaving the clearing because he had been wronged and dammit if he left somehow this would never be made right? That’s not how the hero stories play out. That’s not how the hero moves on to become the hero.  If you stay in that space, that victim space, that tortured space, that place where the challenge, the antagonist and the obstacle that arrived to challenge you are all you focus on, even long after the event or person has passed, where does your story end? Does it end at all? Do you ever become the hero with the reward, or are you stuck in the whirlpool of reliving the dragon’s lair?

A few years back I spent time with a family who had some rough and life changing abuse as children. The mother of the family had been molested as a child. Now, at almost 70 years old, around every holiday family gathering, was the long going discussion about the past. About how “mom couldn’t be held responsible for the things she said or did because of this event in her childhood.” The event with the creepy uncle that should have been put in prison, was a travesty. There is no excuse for child abuse of any type, but I wondered why it was always the topic of conversation, and found the negative energy they generated, day after day, year after year, family party after family party to be a sad loss of their lives. She had allowed the creepy jailbait uncle to steal huge portions of her entire life, and to define her children’s perception of her and their life together.

Please understand, I’m not making light of our dragons. Not by a long shot. We all have them. Sometimes they are large, fire-breathing, armored things, and other times they are smaller but with jagged claws and sharp teeth. Whatever they look like they are our dragons. They are real. They are mean. They are heart wrenching. But here’s the take….You don’t have to stay there. When the battle is over find the lesson, find the takeaway, heal, move on with more wisdom, insight, and empathy for other travelers in their own stories. Move on toward your happily-ever-after, because one thing is certain – everyone has them, the dragons always show up, and while the path to moving forward is much easier said than done, it still must be done in order to be the hero you truly are.

Now, this food for thought is about choosing the perspective that will best serve our forward progress as the powerful hero of our own story. That being said, as with all things, this does not mean that we hide our stories, our journeys, our difficult times in shame. All the heroes have fights they win and fights they lose. They are heroes because they are out on the quest trying. They stepped onto the path, away from safety (safety of a risk-free job to follow an entrepreneurial dream, the safety of a terrible but predictable relationship to find a healthy love, the safety of keeping ourselves from vulnerability by not being open)  To be whole we must accept what has happened in our lives and along our journeys – we get to accept the fights we won and learn from the fights we lost. But we are both.

Brene Brown, for those of you who are not familiar with her work, is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social work. She’s also the author of a number of NY Times best selling books like “Daring Greatly” and “I thought it was just me” You may know her from her Ted Talk on vulnerability. In her book Rising Strong, she says,

“The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness – even our whole heartedness – actually depends on the integration of all our experiences, including the falls.”

What a beautiful concept. Our hero’s journey is the real thing. It’s got the difficult stuff, the falling down, the spaces before the hero proves himself/herself, the spaces that the hero may want to hide because he/she feels shame or guilt. But who are we really? Aren’t we a true conglomeration of the total of our experiences? Hell Yes We Are! We got bloody in the fight, but we chose not to stay in the dark hours. We chose to celebrate the moments of magic, of learning, of serendipity and of strength. We get to tell our story – accepting the moments when we were not our best selves because without those moments we don’t become who we are now. It’s all a part of the big picture. There’s no shame in the times we miss the mark when we aim and try again.

Now I’m not saying that all the dirty laundry of our lives should be posted on FB. What I am saying, is that we need to be at peace with our own hero’s journey, with the full acceptance that YOU ARE the hero. I am the hero. And we ARE the sum of our journeys, both the good and the bad. Without the times where we are face down in the mud, we wouldn’t appreciate the times when our faces are turned to a blue sky with a summer sun and the cool breeze at it skips across our skin.

Brene Brown also said, “People who wade into the discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses.” And, it’s true. Vulnerability really brings power. Truth brings peace. If your story needs a perspective change so you can leave the victim behind and walk into your power, then revisit the story. Reframing is a powerful tool. Last week I talked about how I reframed my story. This week, take one of your stories that you thought of from last week’s assignment, and picture you as the hero of the story. How does the story change? How does the ending change? How does the perspective change so that the hero learns, triumphs, and moves on down the path of his journey? You ARE the hero. And like the Hobbit, you are on an unexpected journey, and yes it is dangerous business walking out one’s front door, but that’s also the business of living, and YOU are writing the story. I’ll see you next week on Love Your Story podcast.

Episode 001 Story Super Power – Reframing so we can Fly!

Stories are our lives in language! There is nothing that comes more natural in human communication than to tell a story or recap an event that has taken place in our lives. In fact, it is so natural and happens so often that we are usually completely unaware that we are doing it. If it’s lunch time for you, you’ve probably already told 3 or 4 stories this morning. But have you ever stopped to think about their power? Stories are either the source of our super powers, or our kryptonite!

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.

Since the beginning of time and recorded history stories have been the means humans used to informally share experiences, beliefs, identities, and ideologies. It doesn’t matter the culture, the country or the belief system, we are all united by STORY!

During my master’s research, in the field of folklore, I studied the personal narratives of hikers, bikers, skiers, rock climbers…you get the idea. The things I found, like how we use stories to build our reputations (for example, when one tells a story about riding their mountain bike along a knife-edge mountain trail, they are inadvertently sharing that they are skilled mountain biker) to share awe (such as a retelling of falling asleep under a dark night sky, untouched by light pollution and the billions of stars that become visible in that space), to inspire (such as a story of persevering through a difficult snowstorm), to define ourselves, to keep ourselves in a cage, to make sense of events…the list goes on and on. These peaked my interest because it was fascinating to discover the multitude of things that we subconsciously use story for: the sheer depth of ways we automatically use story to define our very lives, our self percerception, the world around us.  As I started working on my PhD dissertation research proposal, I found a new angle that peaked my interest, namely I wanted to research the difference between how we expected our lives to turn out vs. how different they usually turn out. I found in my research an understanding of how our families, genders, cultures, race, economic status, sexual experience and preference, education, etc. set those expectations for each of us; which then went on to highlight how our life expectations and the acceptability of our stories are created by a set of imposed laws that are created by our environment. Do you realize what this means? This means that the very stories that define ourselves to ourselves are actually created from a set of criteria that is completely arbitrary and depends upon where you were born and what that culture defined for you. In one culture you may be considered a goddess of perfect living, in a different culture you might be considered an outcast. And yet, there you are, the exact same person. Should our perceptions of personal value and acceptability be taken seriously in the big pictures?

As is true with most higher education research, we seek answers to things that puzzle us, things we want to make our own peace with, things we want to understand. This was no different for me. I was interested in how others expected their lives to turn out, and if it met their expectations because my life had not turned out as I planned or expected. Born into a family and culture with a prized family ethic, my three divorces have been a source of shame and failure for me. Try dating and telling someone you’ve been divorced 3 times. It never bodes well. I usually tell them 7 times, so that, “No really just 3” makes it seem better. I knew I was a good person, despite these horrible experiences that had caused me so much heart-wrenching pain over the years, but it was so far from what I planned, and I had gender expectations, religious expectations, family and cultural expectations that I had not lived up to. So, studying this topic was personal for me. How do we find peace with our stories, because they ARE our stories, the only ones we have – and WE GET TO WRITE them. As I studied I learned fascinating things about story. One of the largest discoveries was realizing there is no hard and fast truth to an event. Depending upon whose perspective you looked at an event at, the story would be different because of the vastly different lenses that we all look through. Not only is there variety in what our families expect from us, but also in what are religions expect from us, and what we are expected to do if we are male vs. female. What if we are born into money – the way we view life will be vastly different than for those who have lived on minimum wage or struggled for their next meal. All these lenses – and we each have a different set – color everything we see.

These understandings began to make me uncomfortable — the idea that first-person accounts could often not be counted on opened a lot of doors for reality checks. As I did more research into the research others had done on the topic, I found academics in psychology, in folklore, in social sciences, etc. acknowledging the control we have in creating our own stories, I noted the concerns of the legal system regarding such things as the reliability of first-person testimony in court, even the research my thesis professor did on how the mind, over time, can believe that we were in certain places or experienced certain things that we did not, if we hear the story or tell the story often enough. As an example of this –  my professor, Lynne McNeill at Utah State University, told a story in her paper, “It Happened to Me: Motivating the shift from third to first person perspectives in legends and Personal Narratives” of when she was a young girl and she was babysitting. Uncomfortable with answering the door in an unfamiliar home for which she was responsible, stranger danger was a nerve-racking part of the babysitting adventure. One night the doorbell rang and she could see there was more than one person out there. She was really stressed, but she opened the door a little and right in front of her, at eye level, was this picture. They were holding a magazine open to the center spread and she just stood there frozen staring at what she calls a “bizarre picture of green rolling hills and a kid playing with a panda.” It was the Jehovah’s Witnesses proselyting with their WatchTower magazine.

Well, years later she heard her friend tell the story, only when her friend told it, her friend was telling it as if it had happened to her. How was it possible that they both had memories of it happening to them?. Being an open-minded thinker, my professor realized that there was nothing to prove that she wasn’t the one who had created the memory vs. her friend being the one who created it. Had it really been her experience, or had it been her friends? Both swore it was their own.

The plasticity of memory is an uncomfortable idea at best. How many people have created memories of things that never happened, or saw things happen to someone else, or in a movie, and over time adopted those memories as their own? To most people, the idea seems ludicrous. Maybe something only an unstable mind might wander to, but research shows it’s quite real.

So aside from the terrifying idea that the realities and stories we remember are a fluid, ever-changing thing as our perspectives and motives (We’ll talk more about this in future episodes) change, and the fact that some memories can even just be created, the over-arching issue here is that story is not fact. The story of my divorces is told from my perspective. I can focus my story on the good things that each man brought in to my life. I can focus my story on the horrible betrayals and heart-wrenching events, I can focus my story the every popular “victim” mindset or I can focus my story on what I learned—there are a lot of angles I can choose to take with any story. The question I need to ask is: Which one serves me best? Which perception of your stories serves YOU best?

Tears streamed down my cheeks, but the sun had set and my fellow workshop attendees were caught up in their own social circles as our break commenced on the sidewalk outside the Columbus Convention Center.  I was completely unconcerned about my show of emotion because the whole group had been through so many emotional experiences that someone crying was hardly new or interesting. The dark of the evening closing in around us cooled the hot sidewalk, and the warm summer air was downright delicious after the rampant AC in the conference hall. The hot brick of the building, heated by the sun during the long day, warmed by back as I sat, knees up, head back, against the wall.

“What’s up?” a voice said, and I looked up to see my workshop “buddy” looking down at me. Since the past days had been filled with tears and vulnerability as everyone worked to uncover buried pains that had too long lodged in our psyches, I simply looked up at him and said, “I don’t know how to not be a victim.” I didn’t spend a lot of time explaining how I don’t spend time thinking about past grievances and injustices. I’m not the type of person who goes around complaining about how unfair life is, in fact I felt I was pretty well adjusted to the things that had happened in my life, but at the same time there is no doubt that my failed relationships, disloyal friends, deaths and cruel people I had crossed paths with had been key in forming who I was and how I saw my life. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” I said to him, “so how am I not supposed to feel victimized when crappy painful things happen to me due to other people’s choices?”

He spent no time placating me either and simply said, “Let’s reframe it.”

“How would you reframe it?” I challenged, my voice tired. “What other way is there to see it? I’ve spent the last 20 years or more with rampant heartbreak over things other people brought into my life. How do you make that look good?”

“Here’s what I see,” he said. “Everyone who cheated on you, misbehaved, lied, broke your trust, abandoned you, abused you and stabbed you in the back has been extracted from your life. This is their loss–they don’t get to be a part of your life anymore. On top of that, all your experiences have allowed you to become the strong woman that you are now. They have given you an understanding that you did not have, empathy that doesn’t come without experience, and understanding that gives you a depth and beauty that only the trees who weather the storm can claim. On top of that, they have provided you the fodder—the emotion and experience—so that you are able to write from a place that can touch other people. And now the past is over and you can close the door on it and get out of your own way as you move into the future you’re supposed to have, using your past life experiences to inform and inspire, but otherwise letting them stay in the past. You are done with them.”

Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing. But that’s what I got out of it. During that 20 minute break, and that five-minute exchange I finally saw this pile of pain, embarrassment, loss, abuse, abandonment, and all the other crappy painful words that described my past to me, in a way that would allow me to move forward. It wasn’t that it would be easy and that all my problems were solved and my issues of trust were gone, but it gave me a space, a reframe that was honest and real and hopeful, and I could work with that. What if everything crappy that had been a part of my life could be repurposed for good? What if I could see, from my current vantage point, purpose in my years of pain and deep disappointment? What if who I am now would not have been possible without walking the path I walked? And what if that mattered very much because who I am now is a woman with some degree of wisdom, understanding, and empathy? What if I wasn’t a victim, but a heroine of my own story?  The hero’s journey is fraught with deep challenge, or there would not be a hero. What if I choose to reframe my story and find the magic, the fairy godmothers, the sign at the crossroads when I needed it most, the elf that shows up to share a magic word or a riddle I have to figure out? What if, with a little faith, I could begin to see my story from a bigger picture perspective, not just from the current mud bog I am currently trying to get out of?

What if you could too? In the words of Hans Christian Andersen, “Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”

Now I want to be clear. I’m not by any means suggesting that we revamp our stories into lies, rather, we look deeper into our stories to find the deepest truth. If we need to make things right, then we do. If we need to change a way of being, then we do. If we need to acknowledge that a perception is completely false because well-meaning “others” fed it to us, then we do. It’s a serious process that requires a strength of character and a real dedication to working through the lies we tell ourselves that do not serve us.

I propose that when we look at our full life stories – our victim stories, the synopsis of our lives, we also have the power to choose our perspective and reframe the tales into stories that build and bless rather than lock us into a box of anger, hate, apathy, or carefully placed armor. On my upcoming podcasts, we’ll get serious and real about these ideas in much more detail. I’ll start breaking down some ideas for you to consider that can help you come to a place where you LOVE YOUR STORY, even if it didn’t turn out as you expected.

I’m going to end every podcast with a challenge. This week I challenge you to think about your life stories, so you come to the table next week with your stories in mind. Maybe even think about them from a number of different perspectives, just to see how the story changes. I know that your story feels like a fact that is unchangeable, but I promise you, there are other ways to see it. Find a way that serves your highest and healthiest purpose.

Have a great week out there sharing your stories and I’ll meet you back here for the next podcast.

Podcast 000

Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. Before we get started in our weekly episodes I wanted to introduce myself and this phenomenal podcast so you know who and what you’re listening to.

Love Your Story – a podcast about the power of story, how we can use our stories to empower us, and take the prerogative to reframe the stories that hold us back, while celebrating the unique heroic journey we each take.

I’m a professional writer and have been for 25 years. I published my first article in an Access Fund newsletter (rock climbing activist newsletter), without payment, the year I graduated from college and was so thrilled that I persisted beyond the future file full of rejection notices to a space of 25 years later having four books published, over a hundred articles on athlete profiles, how-to cook Dutch Oven, which sleeping bag is hot this season, where to hike, snowshoe, find a good yurt, or tackle the top white-water rafting experience in the state of Utah. How does writing for the outdoor recreation industry have anything to do with stories?

Plenty! Who tells more stories than people who climb wild mountains, kayak running rapids, ski steep and deep powder and travel on the trails and waterways of the wild? Of all the groups with stories the outdoor recreation folkgroup thrives on making and sharing stories to define who they are within their own groups. Stories abound with outdoor recreationalist because they are creating new stories every day. I did my master’s research on the personal narrative and found amazing things – I learned that our conversations are rituals, that our stories are serving functions that we often don’t even consciously realize, that tremendous information about ourselves and our cultures can be gleaned from our stories and so much more! But the more I learned and the more research I did, the more exciting the topic became because it’s so wonderful – it’s the language everyone speaks and everyone understands.  Even more than that, while it comes naturally to tell stories, the average person has very little idea about the role that stories are playing in their lives, or the control they have over them to build empires, live dreams, or more often, to hold ourselves in small, scared places. This podcast is about giving you a tool, and the instruction manual and a broader understanding so that you can use your stories to build, empower, celebrate and free yourself.

We are excited to create a community, to share a broad range of empowering ideas from how and why to reframe a story, to how businesses and leaders can use stories to share their vision, branding, and company values. We’ll talk about the hero’s journey, about getting rid of stories – those one-liners in your head that keep you pinned down. Then we’ll celebrate and explore the stories of successes, failures, losses and growth that define the human experience. We have a plethora of ideas and research that revolve around this powerful language that we all speak – and we want to share these empowering and enriching ideas so that your life becomes bigger and better.

Matt, my podcast partner and I, want to make a difference! We want to help others and ourselves shake off the old stories that don’t work and fly high with the ones that hold us high. We both have families – He has a wonderful little family who will be heading out to travel the country next year and recording and creating stories of their travels as they spend a year on the road. I have 2 sons and a cute little yorky, and we create lots of family stories on the ski slopes and traveling adventures. We have a few harder stories, like my son’s diagnosis with Leukemia earlier this year, and a few bad marriage endeavors, but that’s all part of the bigger story! We all have REAL stories.

To create our community we want your feedback, questions and ideas. Subscribe and review the podcast,  then go to our website often to share your wins and challenges, to give us feedback on the episodes, and ask questions that pop up about this broad and beautiful topic!

We’ll take your questions and ideas as we frame future episodes, and as we create our interactive community of people who come to understand the power of this tool and are excited about the difference this understanding can make in how we live.

Now go and enjoy episode 1