Our Stories: How They Can Serve Us, a multi-blog series

   “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” Victor Frankl,  Man’s Search for Meaning

We humans are meaning-makers.  We experience our lives and seek to ferret out the meaning of our experiences.  We do this through the power of our minds, through what I like to call our expanded minds.  Minds expanded to honor our intuition, our imagination, our interpretations.  We tend to call our meaning-making ‘reality’ and thus it becomes our stories become true for us on a deep level.  But they are truly only stories.  They are the stories we live, the stories we tell ourselves to make our lives comprehensible, in fact, sustainable.

Our deepest stories may lie hidden, protected in the shadows our awareness, somewhere in the memory of unknown places of our inner lives.  Some stories amuse us along the way, we may adopt them and let them go with ease.  Still other might give us the courage to step forward towards our future.  Some stories comfort us during dark times while some may keep us stuck in those dark times.

I frequently wonder what story I am running, especially in difficult times of high emotion.  Seeking those stories I also look for their root, the time when that story first became reality for me.  I want to acknowledge how it served to sustain and protect me in whatever situation I was living in that moment.  Finding that seed, no matter how much digging it takes, opens the opportunity to explore the particular story and determine what fits now and which parts might be laid to rest.

Now and then the stories I live are so close, so much a part of my interpretation of events, that I am not able to even see them.  It has become my practice to pay special attention to those times when I find myself taking things personally or when I notice myself flying high, impressed with my own brilliance.  Frequently these are signs that I am running a story rather than living my actual life.

One way I like to approach opening up to our stories I learned from Lewis Mehl-Madrona of the Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation.  I use this strategy with clients and students to begin opening up our attachment to our stories.  Give it a try.  It goes like this.

Recall the events of a typical morning in your life and share them with a friend.  Then ask your friend to re-tell you the story as though it was a heroic adventure or a quest.  Perhaps  it would sound something like this…..

“I couldn’t believe it when the alarm went off this morning I barely get myself out of bed.  The coffee pot seemed impossibly far away.  Getting the kids up and out to school bus was like pulling teeth.  Then the traffic on the way to work totally sucked!’’ You get the idea.

Your friend might re-tell your story something like this…..

“Being called awake in the early hours of pre-dawn, you made your way through stone walled catacombs dripping with moisture from an unknown source.  The drip dripping filled your mind with fear, as a courage you had summoned from deep within you propelled you forward.  At the end of the winding journey you found that dark steaming elixir that called your name.  Hesitating but a moment, you took the first sip and, Behold, life returned to your heart and mind!

"From afar you heard the sounds of approaching dwarves, or might they be gnomes up to no-good?  Armed with your magic elixir you dispatched them with aplomb and within a scant half hour you had transformed them from untamed creatures of the depths into charming elves off to their chariot.

“And then you climbed into your own chariot and facing down all opponents and crumbling towers, you made your way to your destination…..”

You get the idea. Give it a try.  If nothing else, you and your friend can get a good laugh and it will bring a new point of view, possibly a sense of wonder to your day.  Next time I will continue with some of the ways our stories support us.