I LOVE stories

I LOVE stories- they are stirring, entertaining; we see ourselves in the characters.

What’s also interesting to me is that we have an imagined experience, we vicariously have the protagonist’s adventure. On the one hand, we haven’t moved a bit as we take in a story, but on the other hand we have traveled the world and had a life-altering adventure.

The universe doesn’t distinguish between an ‘actual’ and an imagined experience, so you can say that we can gain wisdom and awareness as we take that inward journey with our stories characters. You will also notice though that nothing really changes for you at the end of the story. Your life doesn’t magically get better and you don’t really gain the gifts that the protagonist does.

But, could you gain from the story? What about the stories you tell yourself?

The stories you hear and the stories you tell yourself are the same, from that universal perspective in which the universe doesn’t distinguish between what’s ‘real’ and imagined. So, let’s lump other stories and your stories together for a minute.

One strong distinction to be aware of is that most stories, in the form of books, movies or shows, are well-written. They may follow the Hero’s Journey, the blueprint to most stories regardless of what culture is telling it, which includes some cool things like a side-kick friend that helps the protagonist, growth, a life-altering challenge… and most significantly there is a rising to the occasion by the hero or protagonist. By contrast, most people don’t tell a good story. We tell stories all of the time, “You’ll never guess what happened to me!” or “I have to call the travel agent, she wrote our names wrong for the trip!” Some stories are short and some are longer, but when we tell stories, our subconscious tells the same stories we’ve been telling over and over. Our stories tend to hold the same patterns, in which we get the short end of the stick, or they regurgitate the same limiting beliefs, in which things never work out for us. Can you imagine if Harry Potter had told everyone he met that he’d been confined to living in a closet under the stairs? Or that he was constantly put down and ridiculed by his adoptive family? Had that been the case, no one would have read the first book, if it had even gotten published.

You may be thinking that most heroes don’t complain and that you do, but that’s not really the issue. A well-written story may start with a worn-out, curmudgeon of a hero that only complains, like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. The difference is that things change for the better as our hero grows. Our hero takes chances, throws caution to the wind and takes a step off a cliff, trusting that he will learn to fly or that a stone will appear under his foot. Does that mean that you should lose it all in order to be willing to change? If you like, but I don’t recommend it! That’s a tough path!

Our Hero Embraces Change

Published or printed stories have the advantage of a hero that is willing to embrace change because they’ve already let go, maybe lost it all, and they are willing to let something new come through the front door. You don’t have to lose it all to be willing to change, especially when you think of it as being willing to let your life rise to the next level.

Tell A Better Story

The reason stories, yours or another’s, don’t benefit you is because you don’t tell your stories or hear other’s stories well. You love the tale, if you are like me, and you want more of them, but you only re-tell your own story or you don’t spend enough time with the stories you find  that resonate with you. In other words, you don’t digest the story long enough to be affected in a positive way. My teachers used to say that you should only read a book a year so that you could absorb the book and apply what you find. Instead your own story tends to justify your hurt feelings “She did this to me!” or we don’t spend time with stories we like. Like a wine-tasting, we sip them, swoosh them around our mouths and then spit them out, never having savored them.

Drink Your Story Like It’s A Fine Tequila

Take your time, sit with and tune into your favorite charter or characters; at night review your day and listen to your own account of your day. For some people just stopping to listen to their own story is a change. People with more power and who live more of their dream life are very careful about the stories they tell themselves and others; they listen to themselves more than they listen to others. Practice the art of storytelling with yourself and find you, the hero, being willing to change. Don’t wait for a ghastly specter to threaten your existence, like poor Mr. Scrooge. Open the windows and doors of your ‘soul’ and find yourself rising to the title of Hero in your own life’s story.