Who's writing the next chapter of your story?
Image: Ben White
When I work with clients, I base our work around my Sustainable Success model — a foundation of what I also call “dream, nourish, thrive.” It doesn’t matter whether the focus is a complete lifestyle overhaul, a deep dive into what’s next for your career, or developing more sustainable ways of reaching and integrating your goals — this underlying philosophy and strategy gets results.
At the heart of how we do each of these things is story. That's because there are few things more foundational to our experience of life than the stories we tell ourselves and others.
Our stories influence what we see, how we show up, where we show up, what actions we take — even what we believe to be possible.
The problem we often run into is that our stories aren’t facts. They’re narratives, and as any writer knows, every storyline is open to be examined, revised, thrown out, recast, improved upon. I’m a writer as well as a coach, so crafting a story is a metaphor and a way of seeing that naturally resonates with me and my coaching work.
A multitude of research echoes the importance of story to how we see and move through the world. Our brains are always creating stories, trying to make meaning from our experiences. Stories connect us, activate emotion, and as a result can influence behaviors and help us to make positive changes.
With awareness, reflection and intention, we can better understand the stories we live by, take an active role in creating them and ultimately, make them serve us better.
Here’s a four-step process can get us started:
Discover.
Stepping back long enough to question "the facts" of your experience often reveals a web of stories. Once you’re able to open that small bit of distance and awareness, you can begin to sort through them, question them—and ultimately transform what needs transforming. Once you’ve identified a story, it’s important to know that it is not “wrong,” even when it’s not necessarily “true” (as in, backed up by objective facts). That story very likely serves a purpose for you.
Your story might hold clues to an important lesson waiting to be completed or a doorway to upgrading some part of your life. It might have served as protection. It might hold insight into a potential area of growth. It may hold the resolution to a longstanding concern. Always, it has something to tell you.
Dissect.
As soon as you’re able to see your own stories and stuck places for what they are, you have a brand new choice: What would you like to do with that insight? Is there a better, more inspiring story that is equally true? Is there another way to tell it? It's time to dissect it like a reviewer might. Does this story hold up, is it really that interesting? Who are the important characters, the villains and heroes? What’s the plot? With every new story comes new strategies, new ways of being, new possibilities and new action plans.
Knowing which actions, attitudes and ways of being align with the new story allows you to begin to write a new narrative in your life. This is how you create a new vision, a new chapter, a new set of standards. One little story at a time.
Deliberate Response.
It sounds simple, but in reality, living into your new stories takes practice. It takes time. It takes choice. Instead of reacting to a bad day at work with a story about how terrible your boss is and how you need to get out of there, you might instead, stop for a minute, breathe and remember that you are the storyteller. If you’re the victim in your story, your reaction may be a lot different than if you’re the person who overcame the challenge of a difficult day or learned something valuable about the kind of work you now want to be doing and not doing, or how to deal with challenging personalities when necessary.
As you start to unravel your automatic reactions, they can give way to a more deliberate response. Now, you’re equipped to make real choices in that moment about which actions give life to the story you want to be living.
Design.
Seeing your life through the lens of story can open up new perspectives and unexplored possibilities. But how do you become the person who is fully living that version of your life? This is where identifying a clear vision, developing aligned standards for yourself, your mindset and designing action plans, support systems and nourishing environments, all come into play.
This is where you begin to experiment with what it might be like to change roles, write a new chapter in your life, or tell a story that creates an upward spiral into happier ways of being. When you cast yourself into new roles or new storylines, notice how that feels and keep experimenting to find the alignment with your authenticity and what truly matters to you. Positive changes start to unfold as you begin to step into this new story and fully integrate it into your way of being and showing up in the world.
Your challenge
Identify one area where you’re feeling stuck — one area where things aren’t moving in the direction that you’d like. If you were to tell me about it in a coaching session, what story would you be telling? Whose points of views are included or missing? What do you notice about this story? How might the story be rewritten?
