April 2, 2024 • 34 mins
Do you ever get the feeling like you’re telling the same story over and over again? The details may change (new boss, new partner, new hometown) but the cycle of the story stays the same. In today’s episode I talk about what to do when you seem to be stuck in the same frustrating story on repeat. I’ll share my own experience with finding myself in this rut and talk about how to move when you’re ready to finally make an edit.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's time to let
them out and write them down and cover what it's
all about and write your story. Write, Write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about how to write a news story. Essentially,
what I mean by this is sometimes we can write
the first draft of a story and we think that's
really the story that we're trying to tell, and there
is an element of truth to that. I'll share a
few examples from my life today during this episode. But
(00:49):
there's some element of truth to the fact that this
first draft of our story is the truth of the story.
And sometimes it can even feel like the truthiest truth,
you know, like the most true thing I could possibly
say about this. I had to dig deep, I had
to be vulnerable, I had to say the thing that
I was scared to say, and there is some element
of truth to that. It can be helpful to tell
(01:09):
the grittiest part of the story, or to pull back
the layers and tell the most vulnerable part. And also
there's often a second evolution of the story, or a
third evolution of the story, or even a fourth evolution
of the story that is a higher truth. It's a
more all encompassing truth. It's actually a truthier truth when
you boil it down. So how do you know if
(01:29):
the story you've written is the most true version of
the story or if there are other versions of the
story that are to be told. Hopefully you will be
able to answer that question for yourself and for your
story by the end of this episode. This episode is
not really for everybody. Not everybody is ready to go
to the second evolution of their story. But I'll tell
you how you know you're ready to go to the
second evolution or third or fourth. How you know you're
(01:51):
ready to go to the second evolution of your story
or the next evolution of your story is if you
have been telling a story for a long time that
feels like maybe different details, but the same story that
you've been telling for years and years and years, and
maybe you catch yourself telling the story and you're just like, geez,
I'm sick of this story. I don't want to be
telling this story anymore. I'm over it. I'm ready to
move on to a new story, a different story. So
(02:13):
maybe you've been in a variety of romantic relationships. For example,
this was true for me before I met my now husband.
Pretty much every relationship that I had been in, even
though they were all with different partners, had all had
the same kind of quality to them. So they all
had this really codependent nature. They were all really kind
(02:36):
of fiery and passionate in the beginning, and then would
fade quickly after the early stages, after the honeymoon phase
were off, they all were pretty toxic. It would be
big fights, slamming doors, leaving the house, just not really
fighting fair, not having great boundaries, same kinds of dynamics
would happen over and over and over again. And also
(02:56):
another pattern that I saw take place in my romantic
partnerships was in fidel. That was something that happened in
virtually every romantic relationship that I experienced leading up until
I met Matt. And this is one of the reasons
why when I went through my divorce and I sat
down to write about that experience, which I've talked about
many times before, but I'll talk about again on today's episode.
(03:18):
It's one of the reasons why that period of time
in my life stood out to me because as I
was writing about what had taken place in my marriage,
I realized, oh, my gosh, I've told this story a
thousand times before. This is the same story that I've
been telling for my entire life. So I would catch
myself saying phrases or making statements about the relationship and realized, like,
you could literally remove his name and add another name,
(03:40):
it wouldn't matter. It's the same dynamic. In some ways,
the dynamic inside of the marriage was amplified. In many ways,
it was amplified. So it was like if the volume
had been turned up to four in my dating relationships,
it was turned up to ten inside of my marriage.
But you know, that's one of the things I learned
from the experience too, is that a lot of times
that's what happens is that I am that are present
(04:01):
even when we're dating our partner. Then when you increase
the level of commitment or intimacy, that dynamic stays but
just gets amplified. So that's exactly what happened in my marriage.
It was like same dynamics as always in dating. And
then when we got married and moved in together, then
the stakes were higher, and so the intensity got bigger
(04:21):
as well. And so when I sat down to write
about the story of what had happened inside of the
marriage and some of the things that had taken place
that were really traumatizing for me and very dramatic, I
was reading back these stories to myself and just going like,
oh my gosh, like this is the same story that
I've been telling for as long as I can remember.
I'm sick of this. I don't want to tell this
story anymore. And it prompted me to write the next
(04:45):
evolution of a story, to upgrade the story, to try
to tell it in a different way. And I've talked
a lot about this. I don't want to beat a
dead horse here, because if you've listened to all of
these episodes, you've heard me tell this story a thousand
times before. But just for the sake of context, I
do want to give a brief overview of what this
looked like. You've heard me say before that one of
the main things I did during this time is I
(05:06):
put myself in the position of the hero of the story.
I realized the same story I was telling over and
over again, although there was a lot of truth to it,
as in, the details to the story were true. This happened,
and then that happened, and then this happened, and then
that happened. Those details I'm telling are true, and so
in some ways you could go like, well, I have
to tell the truth, this is really what happened. Or
you could go like, I'm being vulnerable. I'm telling you
(05:28):
what really happened. But the fact of the matter was
I wasn't really being vulnerable because inside of the story,
I wasn't putting myself in the position of someone who
had a lot of choices. I was telling the story
as if I didn't have much of a decision to
make about who I dated, who I married, how that
person treated me. And I guess if you would have
asked me at the time, I probably would have said
(05:49):
I didn't feel like I did have much of a choice.
But what happened as I began to put myself into
the position of the hero is I realized, oh, I
have a lot more agency than I thought I did.
I actually am able to set boundaries. I'm able to
initiate the arc of the story. I'm allowed to choose
where I want this story to go. I'm the main
(06:09):
character of the story. This is about my transformation, and
so the arc of the story is set around how
I'm going to change. So I had to start asking
myself questions like that, like how do I want to
evolve as a person? Who do I want to become?
How do I want to change? Who do I want
to be at the end of this story. And the
other piece is I started thinking about my story from
(06:29):
a more objective perspective. So this can be a really
helpful tool for anyone who's engaged in the activity of
writing about their life. It's easy when you're living your
life to be very subjective about everything that happens because
it's happening to you and you have strong feelings about
everything that's taking place. It can feel like you're inside
(06:50):
of your story, and, for lack of a better analogy,
like you're trying to read a label from the inside
of the bottle. You just can't see very clearly. You're
reading upside down and backwards. And so one practice that
can be really helpful is to remove yourself from the
story and almost pretend like you're watching this story unfold
on a movie screen. You can ask yourself questions like
what would I want the main character in this story
(07:12):
to do next? Like how would I want her to act?
And it can give you some clarity about how you
actually want to act or react. So, for example, with
my abusive, toxic marriage, when I'm inside of it, I
feel like I don't have a choice. Feels like the
right thing to do is to stay married and to
(07:32):
work on this and have compassion for him and have
grace for him, and have grace for our dynamic and
keep going to therapy and continue working on this. And
if I think about watching that take place on a
movie screen, even from who I was at the beginning
of a story, so even if you rewind to like
twenty twelve and meet the version of me that I
was in twenty twelve, I would still tell you that
(07:54):
if I'm watching a woman be physically abused on a
movie screen, I'm really wanting her to give that abuse
the middle finger. I'm not necessarily her partner in like
a mean or aggressive way, but I really am wanting
her to say nope, no more. I'm closing the door
on this. I refuse to be treated like this. I'm
setting a new standard for myself. I'm raising the bar.
I'm moving on from this relationship. I'm unwilling to continue
(08:17):
engaging in this dynamic that we have together. So as
the viewer of the story, sometimes you can have a
little bit more clarity or objectivity about how you would
want the hero to act or react or move forward
in the story to shape that narrative. Ark So these
are the kinds of things that were taking place during
that time when I was sitting down to write about
(08:38):
what was taking place in my life. Of course, it's
absolutely vital that I write the story the truest way
that I possibly can. So you know, I'm not going
to remember every detail perfectly, but yes, do tell the
details the way that you remember them. Do tell the
truth as it relates to how you felt about those
things in the moment. And you reach a point in
(09:00):
the process of writing your story where you realize that
you're ready to tell a new story, that the old
details to the story, the old way that you would
have told it, they're just not taking you where you
want to go, and you're ready to upgrade your perspective.
So I want to tell you a story about how
this happened to me in literal, real time this week,
and I'm going to share with you some really vulnerable
(09:21):
details from my life that I've not talked about here
on the podcast or on Instagram or anywhere publicly. And
I just want to share with you how this all
unfolded because I think it will be a really helpful
tool for you, despite you know it does. It reveals
information about my life that feels really personal and vulnerable.
But I'm sharing not because of that. I'm sharing because
(09:44):
I really believe that this will be a helpful tool
for you as you think about how to take your
story from the level that it's at to the next level,
from draft one to draft two, or draft two to
draft three, wherever you're at in the writing of your story,
the draft that's on paper usually has an upgrade, an
upgraded option. And if you're feeling that way, if you're
(10:05):
feeling like man, I've been living the same story on repeat,
over and over again. I've been in the same job
with the same boss, even though it's ten different workplaces,
it's like the same job, same boss, over and over again,
same feelings of being unappreciated, same feelings of not getting
paid enough, same feelings of working my ass off and
never being recognized. If you feel like you've been living
(10:25):
that same story over and over again, maybe it's time
for an upgrade to your story. And I hope that
my sharing this personal experience will help you to access
that upgrade that you're looking for. Okay, I'm actually going
(10:45):
to tell you the story exactly how it unfolded, and
then what I'm gonna do is read you my draft
one of the story that I wrote, and then my
draft too, and have a couple of these that I'm
going to read to you. Basically, what happened is last
week I saw that there was a trend to happen
on Instagram where people were sharing personal details from their
life that you wouldn't typically share on Instagram. So you
(11:06):
may have seen this trend, but essentially, in the first slide,
it would say something like Instagram isn't real or social
media isn't real. Here are some things that I've never
shared here before, or here are some details from my
life that I've never shared on social media before, something
like that, and then you would swipe through and there
would be several slides of details or information from this
influencer's life, this person's life that they would be unlikely
(11:29):
to share on Instagram because it's not kind of glitzy
or glammy details that we like to share about our
lives on social media. So I saw this trend, I
was instantly drawn in by it. I thought, like, how
cool this is really in alignment with what I teach
with write your story, that there's power in telling all
of the details of the story. The details, in particular,
(11:51):
the details that we tend to hold back or hide
are oftentimes the most powerful details of our story. They're
usually the most interesting to the audience, they're the most relatable,
they have the most leverage inside of the story. And
so the minute that I saw this trend, I thought,
this is so cool. I'm going to sit down and
do this. So I sat down to write my list
(12:12):
of things that I would share on Instagram if I
wasn't trying to hold anything back, and it just flowed
out of me, actually quite easily. There were like eight
or ten things that I wrote down that were really
vulnerable and personal details that I've never shared on social
media before, about things that have been going on in
my life for the last couple of years, and it
felt really good to write them down, which it does.
It feels really really good to tell the truth about
(12:36):
your life. You may have had this experience, you may
have sat down to write about something and it just
just so cathartic to just tell it the way that
it is, without any edits or adjustments or any kind
of like positive thinking or rainbow washing coming into it. Like,
just tell it exactly the way that it is, the
most honest way that you can communicate it in the moment,
(12:58):
and it feels really really good to do that. That's
what I did. I sat down to write those details
from my life and I was going to share them
on Instagram later that day. Well, when my husband got home,
I said, Hey, there's this trend happening on Instagram. It's
sharing details from your life that are really vulnerable and personal.
I wrote my own list of details that I would
love to share, but I really would like for you
(13:19):
to read them first, because many of them include you
talks about us in our relationship, and I was like,
I just really would like for you to take a
look at these first, just so that you don't feel
like I'm sharing these without asking your permission. Well, my
husband is a little more private than I am, and
so maybe that's one of the reasons why I felt
prompted to ask him. I just wanted to make sure
that he felt really respected in the way that I
(13:41):
shared the story, and that it didn't feel like I
was throwing him under the bus at any point. So
he sat down to read what I had written, and
he said to me, you know you're welcome to share
these on Instagram. That's fine, he said, I don't feel
disrespected by any of this. You know, it's your information
to share, your sharing from your perspective, and you're more
than welcome to He was like, it's very, very vulnerable,
and you're giving people access to a lot of information
(14:03):
that's really personal. So that's up to you if you
want to do that. But he said, I don't have
any issue with it. Well, his hesitancy kind of got
in my head because I started to feel really kind
of like, oh, I don't know, I'm not one hundred
percent on board with posting this yet, so I'm just
going to sit on it for twenty four hours and
think about it. So I gave myself a day to
sit on it, which is a practice that I use regularly,
(14:24):
and by the time the next day came around, I
was still just not one hundred percent on board with
posting it. And I have a rule for myself that
I have to feel in one hundred percent alignment with
doing a thing before I actually do it. I don't
always abide by that rule, but I like to try
to abide by it, and in this case, I didn't
feel a hundred percent aligned with posting it. So I
just kept sitting on this and meditating on it and
(14:44):
thinking about it and just asking myself, like, what do
I really want? Do I want to share this information
on Instagram? Does it feel too vulnerable to share? And
the more that I thought about it, the more I
realized it doesn't feel too vulnerable to share. But what's
happening for me is part of my own hesitancy that
popped up when I talked with not about it, is
that I'm feeling ready for an upgrade. In other words,
(15:07):
the things that I had written, which I will share
with you here on this episode, the things that I
had written, the ten things I wrote or nine things
or whatever it was, were true, like They're true, and
I don't feel embarrassed to share them with anybody. And
there's a higher truth, a bigger truth, a more all
inclusive truth, another angle in which to see the thing
(15:29):
that is also true. That is the second draft of
the story. And I'm just ready for an upgrade. And
so that's what I realized as I meditated on this.
It's like, it's not that I'm embarrassed to share this
on Instagram. It's that I don't know that I want
to put this out into the world, and not even
the world of Instagram, but like just the world energetically,
Like I don't want this to be the same story
(15:52):
that I'm still telling, because these are stories that I
could have told from ten years ago, and you'll see
when I read them to you, like they compass every
aspect of my life, Like I talk about money, I
talk about being a mother, I talk about friendships, I
talk about my relationship to Matt everything, And they're all
old stories, every single one of them. And so I
(16:15):
took myself through an exercise where I sat down and
rewrote the story. I just gave it a second draft.
And it's not every time that the second draft of
the story is more true. Sometimes it's just another angle
of the same truth. Like you've heard the phrase there's
two sides to every story, there's actually one hundred sides
(16:36):
to every story. There's infinite sides to every story, and
it's just a matter of which direction you're looking at
the thing. In fact, my therapist when I was going
through my divorce used to always say, there's a thousand
ways in which to see a thing. Make sure you're
looking at it from more than one angle. And so
a second draft of the story isn't necessarily more true.
In other words, you could just tell a story, the
divorce story, for example, from my side of things, and
(16:58):
my ex husband could also tell the story from his
side of things, which would be another truth that isn't
necessarily more or less true. But then there's this other
higher truth, like a more all encompassing truth, a truth
that feels better to tell, even better than the original
kind of gritty truth, because it's just a more loving
way in general, to see the entire situation. So what
(17:22):
I want to do is I want to read to
you what the first draft of my story was, and
then I want to read to you the new story
that I wrote, and these are all works in progress,
like this is happening in real time. I literally just
sat down right before I recorded this episode and wrote
the new versions of these stories. So I'm not standing
by these new versions as if this is the ultimate
version of the story. But what I want you to
(17:44):
see from witnessing this experience happen for me is I
want you to see that there are many different ways
you can tell a story, and that you get to
choose when you'd like to upgrade your story, or when
you'd like to edit it, or when you'd like to
adjust it, or when you'd like to tell it a
different way. At LEAs literally any point in your life,
you can make that decision. It's only your decision to make.
And it doesn't mean that the first draft of the
(18:07):
story was a worst draft of the story, or that
it was a less true draft of the story. It
doesn't mean that at all. In fact, the first draft
of each of these stories that I'm about to tell
you needed to exist, or I would have never gotten
to the second draft. And the second draft needs to exist,
or I would never get to the third draft, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. And the same is true for
your story, whatever story you're telling from your life, the
(18:28):
first draft of the story, that's the bitter, resentful, angry.
I don't know whatever yours is. I'm talking about. You
know my divorce story. That was the first draft of
my story. That version of the story has to exist.
It's the only way that we get to the next version.
And if you see your story as fixed, like once
you tell it one way, there's no way to rewrite it,
or to edit it, or to see it with a
(18:50):
little bit of a different light. If you see it
as fixed, then you see your life is fixed, and
you see yourself as fixed, and you aren't able to
witness yourself evolve and transform into someone new. But if
you're able to see that, every story can be upgraded.
Every story can be rewritten, every story can be edited,
every story can be seen in a different light, every
story can be told in a different way. Then you
(19:10):
become infinitely powerful because you can always change your perspective,
and you can always change the way that you see
your life. The same exact details can be seen through
a different light and they look different. So that's what
I want you to see from this experience, From what
I'm about to read to you. I want you to
see how you can edit and upgrade your story. So
(19:36):
what I'm going to read to you right now is
the old story and the new story. The old story
is each of those little slides that I wrote for
the Instagram Isn't Real Post, and then I rewrote each
one of those or edited them or upgraded them, and
that's the new story. So I'm going to go back
and forth between old story and new story, and you'll
get to see in real time how I upgraded each
(19:58):
of these pieces of my story. So for the Instagram
Isn't Real Post, I wrote the first slide says the
past five years have been some of the most financially
stressful years of my life. Between COVID and Matt's new
business venture that we've invested in. I've felt afraid at
times for our financial security and wondered what would happen
if we lost everything. That is true, I have wondered
(20:18):
that at many points. The new story I wrote is
the past five years have been a massive and unprecedented
expansion for me. I've had to face fears that have
been with me my whole life, including fears about running
out of money, and despite spending six figures a few
times over to learn this lesson. I've never once gone without. Okay.
The old story, my two kids came into the world
(20:38):
back to back, and while they're perfect in every way
and I have overwhelming love for them, I've really struggled
with transitioning into this new role in my life. I've
felt overwhelmed and overstimulated at points, and just generally not
up for the massive task that is being a mom.
That's the old story, and it's true. The new story says,
my two kids came into this world back to back
as co creators and collaborators and conspirators in my expansion.
(21:02):
They never once expected me to be a perfect mom
or to come into a life with perfect conditions. They
just wanted my presence and my love, which they are
getting more and more of each day. What a gift
it is to share this experience with them, the old
story says, despite desperately wanting to give my kids the
best of myself, I haven't been the best of myself
for much of these past few years. The new story,
(21:23):
my overwhelm with the task of being a mother is
mostly irrelevant. It reflects both cultural standards of motherhood that
don't align with my values, and also a nervous system
set point that is ready for an upgrade. My capacity
is growing every day. The old story, I'm an introvert
and I like spending much of my time alone, but
being alone with young kids has felt much more lonely
to me than I expected. I've often wondered where the
(21:44):
villages that's supposed to help me raise my kids, and
if I'm the only one who feels isolated in this role.
The new story. Being a mom has shown me the
places inside of myself where I've relied too heavily on
others to make me feel good, and where I've judged
myself for doing things my own way. And this time
of isolation has prepared me to enter or re enter
relationships in a new way, with more security and sturdiness,
(22:07):
more of myself to offer. I'm grateful the old story.
Matt and I have an overall peaceful and loving relationship,
but it's my experience that couples tend to have the
same conflict over and over and ours in the past
four years has been about money. Matt wants to conserve resources.
I want to give our kids and myself the best
life possible coming to harmony on that has taken a
ton of challenging, honest, humble work, and we're still doing
(22:29):
that work even today. The New story, I'm so proud
of the way that Matt and I have navigated the
difficult conversations about money that our life has brought to
the surface in the past few years. Most or at
least many couples go their entire relationship without coming into
alignment on these topics, and that would have certainly been
us if the flow of resources hadn't shifted in twenty twenty.
But I'm proud of us for taking this opportunity to
(22:50):
move with love and grace toward more alignment around finances
in the past several years. We're reaping the benefits of
that in our ever more loving and sturdy partnership. The
old story, Matt and I both grew up evangelical, and
our faith have evolved significantly in the past decade. While
I've never felt more alive in my faith, sometimes it
feels lonely or even confusing to be outside of the
predictable structures of church life and Christian ritual. We're finding
(23:13):
a way forward and leaning into the mystery of life
and God. But sometimes I miss the feeling of certainty
I had back then. The New story. I've never felt
more alive in my faith than I do now. I'm
finding new rituals, routines, teachers, friends, collaborators, and communities that
enrich me and contribute to my expansion. Life and God
are a mystery to me, and it feels good to
admit that to myself, rather than to grab onto a
(23:35):
false clarity for a temporary feeling of stability. I actually
feel quite stable, knowing there's still so much I don't
know the old story. Life changes have meant friendships in
my life have had to shift and change. Sometimes I
wonder if I've been a bad friend since I haven't
been able to keep up with so many people I
love the new story. Life is always shifting and changing.
(23:55):
It can feel sad sometimes to let go of something
that brought so much joy and light into my life.
And my circumstances have shifted, so have my relationships. I
feel immense joy and appreciation for every person who has
come into my life, and I wish them nothing but
happiness as they go their way. I am a good friend.
The old story. I'm learning to let go of the
predictable patterns I call my personality to discover more of
(24:15):
the truth of myself. This is an invigorating process, but
also terrifying. I'm less certain of anything than I have
been before, and I hold very loosely to the things
that I love the most. I had no idea life
could feel this tender and exquisite. The New Story. I
had no idea life could feel this tender and exquisite.
Each day I have more reasons for gratitude and joy.
Life is getting better and better, and the better it gets,
(24:37):
the better it gets. The Old Story. I teach writers
to write what's calling to them without worrying about how
perform in the marketplace, but I still worry every time
I release the book about how it will do. Even worse,
I feel like I have to pretend I don't care
so I don't look like a hypocrite. The New Story.
It's normal to wonder about how your art will do
in the marketplace. But at the end of the day,
(24:57):
I know it doesn't matter what others say about the
things I make. What matter is the joy I feel
while I'm making it, and when I release my tight
grip on the things I make they're able to find
their way to those who need them with very little
effort on my part. What I hope you're able to
see as I read these and as you think about
them and reflect on them, is how one or the
other story, the old story or the new story, are
(25:19):
not correct. There's not one story that's correct and the
other one that's not correct. It's two versions of the
same story, and you get the opportunity to choose which
one you would like to put your focus on. If
you think of it like a pie chart, like the
entire pie is one hundred percent of the pie. You
can either focus on one small sliver of the pie,
(25:40):
or a different small sliver of the pie, or a
different small sliver of the pie, or one bigger sliver
of the pie that's over on the other side of
the pie. You get to choose which part of the
story you want to focus on, and by placing your
focus on that part of the story, you're actually rewriting
the story or rewriting your experience of the story. Another
thing I wanted to address is is that upgrading your
(26:01):
story is not about spiritually bypassing what has actually happened,
and it's not about rainbow washing or deleting aspects of
the story that are uncomfortable, or hiding them, brushing them
under the rug, that sort of thing. There's a very
different energy that comes when you're hiding parts of your
story because you're afraid to share it, versus when you're
(26:23):
just ready for an upgrade. And that's why I sat
on this Instagram Isn't Real post for so long before
deciding to post it, because I really wanted to know,
is this happening because I'm afraid to share these details
of my story? Am I afraid what people are going
to think of me? Maybe there's some shred of that.
Am I afraid of what other people might say or
what they might make up or the story they might
(26:44):
tell themselves. Maybe there's some shred of that. But genuinely,
at the end of the day, the reason that I
didn't want to post just the original story that I
had written is because I felt really ready for an upgrade.
I was reading back on the story I had written
and just kept thinking, Oh, my gosh, I've been telling
this story for decades, particularly the story about money, but
so many of the other pieces too. I was like, Wow,
(27:06):
I've been telling the same old story forever and ever.
And I can only imagine that for each of us
there's one aspect of our life where we feel that way.
Maybe one aspect of your life feels that way the most.
For me, it would probably be my money story, where
I feel like, Wow, I've been telling the same story
over and over and over again. I'm sick of this story.
(27:27):
No matter what circumstance I'm put in, this is the
same story that I have chosen to tell. I'm really
ready to upgrade the story to something new. And it's
not about hiding the story or denying details, or rainbow
washing or covering it up or spiritually bypassing the story.
It's really about a readiness to begin to see the
(27:47):
story from a different angle. You are the only one
who can decide which one you're doing, and I want
you to, as much as you are able, remove yourself
from the idea that there's a writer or wrong way
to do this. You could even practice with upgrading your story.
And if you don't feel ready to go there yet,
if you still feel like there's actually more of these
(28:08):
gritty details to my story that I need to tell,
I just need to get it out in the most
honest way possible and kind of sit on that or
meditate in that for a minute until I feel ready
to upgrade it. Then trust that and go with that.
Like I said, maybe you practice with it for a
minute and then and you go like, no, I'm not
ready to do that. I'm ready to sit with the
details as they stand and really meditate on them. But
(28:29):
maybe as you're listening to this, you realize, oh, yeah,
there's an aspect of my life. There's a story that
I've been telling in the same old way for a long,
long long time, and it's just the same old stinking
story over and over and over again, and I'm really
ready to upgrade the story. Then I would challenge you
to see if you can look at the story from
a different angle and upgrade the story in the way
(28:51):
that I did with each of these pieces of my
story today. See if you can see the story in
the way someone else would see it. See if you
can see yourself as the hero of the story. See
if you can see the story as if you were
watching it unfold on a movie screen. What would you
be hoping the hero would do in the story. How
would you be hoping the hero would react or respond,
(29:11):
what sort of perspective would you hope the hero would
have if you were watching this unfold in someone else's life.
Let's imagine that whatever you're going through, it's actually your
best friend that's going through. What would you hope that
she would do? How would you hope she would react?
How would you hope that she would move the plot forward?
Maybe the different perspective that you're needing inside of your
story is not another human perspective, But maybe you want
(29:35):
to zoom out from the story and see it from
a thirty thousand foot view. Maybe you want to look
at the story from the perspective of God, whoever or
however you understand God to be, from the perspective of
the part of you that has not always been just
this physical being here on earth. Maybe you want to
kind of zoom out and think about this from your
broader perspective, and maybe thinking about it from that point
(29:57):
of view will help you to write this story story
in a little bit of a different way. Whichever you
decide to do, know that tiny, tiny shifts to your
story can make a massive impact. Like little little shifts.
Notice how some of the lines in my new story
were repeated from my old story, because the old story
is not total crap. It's not like, ooh, the old
(30:19):
story was this lower base or part of me, and
now I'm so enlightened, and so I write this new story. No,
some of the lines are literally repeated from the old story.
Like in my old faith story, I write, I've never
felt more alive in my faith, and that's the first
thing I say in the new story. I've never felt
more alive in my faith than I do now. So
what you see happen from the old story to the
(30:39):
new story is I just put more attention and focus
on that positive aspect instead of waiting until the middle
of the story to tell that part. I start with it,
I open with it. I use it as the hook
I've never felt more alive in my faith than I
do now. I hope you find this useful. I again,
am sharing these details from my life, not as a
(31:01):
way to linger on them and stand by them, and
specifically not as a way to get sympathy. I actually
think I'll say this small tangent and then I'll sign off.
But I think a lot of the reasons why we
avoid putting the real story or the juicy story or
the gritty story or whatever on Instagram is because we
actually don't Most of us don't really want the inevitable
(31:25):
sympathy slash advice giving that comes when we tell a
really difficult story in a platform like that with relative strangers. So,
if I'm to tell a story about how I'm struggling
financially or struggling with money or whatever, the inevitable response
I'm going to get is like, Oh, I'm so sorry,
I feel so bad for you. But the fact of
the matter is like, the true part of me doesn't
(31:47):
need that sympathy. The true part of me knows that
I'm writing the story and that I have all of
the power and agency to rewrite the story in whatever
way I choose, And so I think we avoid oftentimes
telling the gritty details of the story in a setting
where strangers are going to read it. Sometimes maybe because
we're scared of what people will say or how they'll
(32:08):
judge us, But I think a lot of times it's
more about really knowing deep down that we don't need
other people's advice. We don't need anyone else That input
is actually one hundred percent unhelpful to our situation. The
input from outside people even if those people love us.
But the fact of the matter is on Instagram, most
of those people are strangers. So I think that's a
(32:29):
lot of the reasons why we avoid sharing these stories
in that context. The emphasis I want to leave you
on is that rewriting your story is not about whitewashing
your story. It's not about rainbow washing your story. It's
not about skipping over the more difficult parts. It's not
about deleting the more difficult parts from our story because
we're embarrassed of them. It's actually about just being willing
(32:50):
to see our stories from a different perspective. And you
have the power to do this. You have the agency
to do it one hundred percent of the time. If
you feel ready to do this, today is a great
time to do it. You could do a similar version
of what I just did. You could write, like, here's
ten things that I probably wouldn't share on Instagram, or
that I'd be really scared to share on Instagram, and
then here's the new story. Here's the new version of
(33:11):
the story that I would prefer to tell. You could
also do this with just one thing in your life.
You don't have to do it with ten. That's just
the way that it happened for me in this particular circumstance,
But actually the way that it happened for me when
I was going through the divorce was I wrote one
story about one thing that was happening in my life.
And then when the first version of the story was
(33:31):
written and I felt like I'd gotten it all out
and that energy had been expended and expelled from my body,
then I felt ready to leave that old story behind
and to upgrade it into something new. And that's when
I started to think of myself as the hero of
my story and think about the kind of transformation that
I wanted to achieve, and for the most part, remove
this person who I had called the villain in my story,
(33:53):
more or less remove him from the story unless there
were pieces where it was necessary to talk about him.
So I hope you find this very additive. I hope
you find this really cathartic and healing. This is the
crux of why I teach people to write their story,
because it is truly this powerful. It will change the
way that you experience your life. It will change the
way that you feel about being in your own body
(34:15):
every day. It will change the way that you feel
about your relationships, about your finances, about every single thing
that happens to you, when you learn to write your
story as honestly as possible and then upgrade it little
by little, bit by bit until it feels better and
better and better to be you. I'll see you next
week on the Write Your Story podcast. Until then, happy writing,
Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's time to let
them out and write them down and cover what it's
all about and write your story. Write, Write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about how to write a news story. Essentially,
what I mean by this is sometimes we can write
the first draft of a story and we think that's
really the story that we're trying to tell, and there
is an element of truth to that. I'll share a
few examples from my life today during this episode. But
(00:49):
there's some element of truth to the fact that this
first draft of our story is the truth of the story.
And sometimes it can even feel like the truthiest truth,
you know, like the most true thing I could possibly
say about this. I had to dig deep, I had
to be vulnerable, I had to say the thing that
I was scared to say, and there is some element
of truth to that. It can be helpful to tell
(01:09):
the grittiest part of the story, or to pull back
the layers and tell the most vulnerable part. And also
there's often a second evolution of the story, or a
third evolution of the story, or even a fourth evolution
of the story that is a higher truth. It's a
more all encompassing truth. It's actually a truthier truth when
you boil it down. So how do you know if
(01:29):
the story you've written is the most true version of
the story or if there are other versions of the
story that are to be told. Hopefully you will be
able to answer that question for yourself and for your
story by the end of this episode. This episode is
not really for everybody. Not everybody is ready to go
to the second evolution of their story. But I'll tell
you how you know you're ready to go to the
second evolution or third or fourth. How you know you're
(01:51):
ready to go to the second evolution of your story
or the next evolution of your story is if you
have been telling a story for a long time that
feels like maybe different details, but the same story that
you've been telling for years and years and years, and
maybe you catch yourself telling the story and you're just like, geez,
I'm sick of this story. I don't want to be
telling this story anymore. I'm over it. I'm ready to
move on to a new story, a different story. So
(02:13):
maybe you've been in a variety of romantic relationships. For example,
this was true for me before I met my now husband.
Pretty much every relationship that I had been in, even
though they were all with different partners, had all had
the same kind of quality to them. So they all
had this really codependent nature. They were all really kind
(02:36):
of fiery and passionate in the beginning, and then would
fade quickly after the early stages, after the honeymoon phase
were off, they all were pretty toxic. It would be
big fights, slamming doors, leaving the house, just not really
fighting fair, not having great boundaries, same kinds of dynamics
would happen over and over and over again. And also
(02:56):
another pattern that I saw take place in my romantic
partnerships was in fidel. That was something that happened in
virtually every romantic relationship that I experienced leading up until
I met Matt. And this is one of the reasons
why when I went through my divorce and I sat
down to write about that experience, which I've talked about
many times before, but I'll talk about again on today's episode.
(03:18):
It's one of the reasons why that period of time
in my life stood out to me because as I
was writing about what had taken place in my marriage,
I realized, oh, my gosh, I've told this story a
thousand times before. This is the same story that I've
been telling for my entire life. So I would catch
myself saying phrases or making statements about the relationship and realized, like,
you could literally remove his name and add another name,
(03:40):
it wouldn't matter. It's the same dynamic. In some ways,
the dynamic inside of the marriage was amplified. In many ways,
it was amplified. So it was like if the volume
had been turned up to four in my dating relationships,
it was turned up to ten inside of my marriage.
But you know, that's one of the things I learned
from the experience too, is that a lot of times
that's what happens is that I am that are present
(04:01):
even when we're dating our partner. Then when you increase
the level of commitment or intimacy, that dynamic stays but
just gets amplified. So that's exactly what happened in my marriage.
It was like same dynamics as always in dating. And
then when we got married and moved in together, then
the stakes were higher, and so the intensity got bigger
(04:21):
as well. And so when I sat down to write
about the story of what had happened inside of the
marriage and some of the things that had taken place
that were really traumatizing for me and very dramatic, I
was reading back these stories to myself and just going like,
oh my gosh, like this is the same story that
I've been telling for as long as I can remember.
I'm sick of this. I don't want to tell this
story anymore. And it prompted me to write the next
(04:45):
evolution of a story, to upgrade the story, to try
to tell it in a different way. And I've talked
a lot about this. I don't want to beat a
dead horse here, because if you've listened to all of
these episodes, you've heard me tell this story a thousand
times before. But just for the sake of context, I
do want to give a brief overview of what this
looked like. You've heard me say before that one of
the main things I did during this time is I
(05:06):
put myself in the position of the hero of the story.
I realized the same story I was telling over and
over again, although there was a lot of truth to it,
as in, the details to the story were true. This happened,
and then that happened, and then this happened, and then
that happened. Those details I'm telling are true, and so
in some ways you could go like, well, I have
to tell the truth, this is really what happened. Or
you could go like, I'm being vulnerable. I'm telling you
(05:28):
what really happened. But the fact of the matter was
I wasn't really being vulnerable because inside of the story,
I wasn't putting myself in the position of someone who
had a lot of choices. I was telling the story
as if I didn't have much of a decision to
make about who I dated, who I married, how that
person treated me. And I guess if you would have
asked me at the time, I probably would have said
(05:49):
I didn't feel like I did have much of a choice.
But what happened as I began to put myself into
the position of the hero is I realized, oh, I
have a lot more agency than I thought I did.
I actually am able to set boundaries. I'm able to
initiate the arc of the story. I'm allowed to choose
where I want this story to go. I'm the main
(06:09):
character of the story. This is about my transformation, and
so the arc of the story is set around how
I'm going to change. So I had to start asking
myself questions like that, like how do I want to
evolve as a person? Who do I want to become?
How do I want to change? Who do I want
to be at the end of this story. And the
other piece is I started thinking about my story from
(06:29):
a more objective perspective. So this can be a really
helpful tool for anyone who's engaged in the activity of
writing about their life. It's easy when you're living your
life to be very subjective about everything that happens because
it's happening to you and you have strong feelings about
everything that's taking place. It can feel like you're inside
(06:50):
of your story, and, for lack of a better analogy,
like you're trying to read a label from the inside
of the bottle. You just can't see very clearly. You're
reading upside down and backwards. And so one practice that
can be really helpful is to remove yourself from the
story and almost pretend like you're watching this story unfold
on a movie screen. You can ask yourself questions like
what would I want the main character in this story
(07:12):
to do next? Like how would I want her to act?
And it can give you some clarity about how you
actually want to act or react. So, for example, with
my abusive, toxic marriage, when I'm inside of it, I
feel like I don't have a choice. Feels like the
right thing to do is to stay married and to
(07:32):
work on this and have compassion for him and have
grace for him, and have grace for our dynamic and
keep going to therapy and continue working on this. And
if I think about watching that take place on a
movie screen, even from who I was at the beginning
of a story, so even if you rewind to like
twenty twelve and meet the version of me that I
was in twenty twelve, I would still tell you that
(07:54):
if I'm watching a woman be physically abused on a
movie screen, I'm really wanting her to give that abuse
the middle finger. I'm not necessarily her partner in like
a mean or aggressive way, but I really am wanting
her to say nope, no more. I'm closing the door
on this. I refuse to be treated like this. I'm
setting a new standard for myself. I'm raising the bar.
I'm moving on from this relationship. I'm unwilling to continue
(08:17):
engaging in this dynamic that we have together. So as
the viewer of the story, sometimes you can have a
little bit more clarity or objectivity about how you would
want the hero to act or react or move forward
in the story to shape that narrative. Ark So these
are the kinds of things that were taking place during
that time when I was sitting down to write about
(08:38):
what was taking place in my life. Of course, it's
absolutely vital that I write the story the truest way
that I possibly can. So you know, I'm not going
to remember every detail perfectly, but yes, do tell the
details the way that you remember them. Do tell the
truth as it relates to how you felt about those
things in the moment. And you reach a point in
(09:00):
the process of writing your story where you realize that
you're ready to tell a new story, that the old
details to the story, the old way that you would
have told it, they're just not taking you where you
want to go, and you're ready to upgrade your perspective.
So I want to tell you a story about how
this happened to me in literal, real time this week,
and I'm going to share with you some really vulnerable
(09:21):
details from my life that I've not talked about here
on the podcast or on Instagram or anywhere publicly. And
I just want to share with you how this all
unfolded because I think it will be a really helpful
tool for you, despite you know it does. It reveals
information about my life that feels really personal and vulnerable.
But I'm sharing not because of that. I'm sharing because
(09:44):
I really believe that this will be a helpful tool
for you as you think about how to take your
story from the level that it's at to the next level,
from draft one to draft two, or draft two to
draft three, wherever you're at in the writing of your story,
the draft that's on paper usually has an upgrade, an
upgraded option. And if you're feeling that way, if you're
(10:05):
feeling like man, I've been living the same story on repeat,
over and over again. I've been in the same job
with the same boss, even though it's ten different workplaces,
it's like the same job, same boss, over and over again,
same feelings of being unappreciated, same feelings of not getting
paid enough, same feelings of working my ass off and
never being recognized. If you feel like you've been living
(10:25):
that same story over and over again, maybe it's time
for an upgrade to your story. And I hope that
my sharing this personal experience will help you to access
that upgrade that you're looking for. Okay, I'm actually going
(10:45):
to tell you the story exactly how it unfolded, and
then what I'm gonna do is read you my draft
one of the story that I wrote, and then my
draft too, and have a couple of these that I'm
going to read to you. Basically, what happened is last
week I saw that there was a trend to happen
on Instagram where people were sharing personal details from their
life that you wouldn't typically share on Instagram. So you
(11:06):
may have seen this trend, but essentially, in the first slide,
it would say something like Instagram isn't real or social
media isn't real. Here are some things that I've never
shared here before, or here are some details from my
life that I've never shared on social media before, something
like that, and then you would swipe through and there
would be several slides of details or information from this
influencer's life, this person's life that they would be unlikely
(11:29):
to share on Instagram because it's not kind of glitzy
or glammy details that we like to share about our
lives on social media. So I saw this trend, I
was instantly drawn in by it. I thought, like, how
cool this is really in alignment with what I teach
with write your story, that there's power in telling all
of the details of the story. The details, in particular,
(11:51):
the details that we tend to hold back or hide
are oftentimes the most powerful details of our story. They're
usually the most interesting to the audience, they're the most relatable,
they have the most leverage inside of the story. And
so the minute that I saw this trend, I thought,
this is so cool. I'm going to sit down and
do this. So I sat down to write my list
(12:12):
of things that I would share on Instagram if I
wasn't trying to hold anything back, and it just flowed
out of me, actually quite easily. There were like eight
or ten things that I wrote down that were really
vulnerable and personal details that I've never shared on social
media before, about things that have been going on in
my life for the last couple of years, and it
felt really good to write them down, which it does.
It feels really really good to tell the truth about
(12:36):
your life. You may have had this experience, you may
have sat down to write about something and it just
just so cathartic to just tell it the way that
it is, without any edits or adjustments or any kind
of like positive thinking or rainbow washing coming into it. Like,
just tell it exactly the way that it is, the
most honest way that you can communicate it in the moment,
(12:58):
and it feels really really good to do that. That's
what I did. I sat down to write those details
from my life and I was going to share them
on Instagram later that day. Well, when my husband got home,
I said, Hey, there's this trend happening on Instagram. It's
sharing details from your life that are really vulnerable and personal.
I wrote my own list of details that I would
love to share, but I really would like for you
(13:19):
to read them first, because many of them include you
talks about us in our relationship, and I was like,
I just really would like for you to take a
look at these first, just so that you don't feel
like I'm sharing these without asking your permission. Well, my
husband is a little more private than I am, and
so maybe that's one of the reasons why I felt
prompted to ask him. I just wanted to make sure
that he felt really respected in the way that I
(13:41):
shared the story, and that it didn't feel like I
was throwing him under the bus at any point. So
he sat down to read what I had written, and
he said to me, you know you're welcome to share
these on Instagram. That's fine, he said, I don't feel
disrespected by any of this. You know, it's your information
to share, your sharing from your perspective, and you're more
than welcome to He was like, it's very, very vulnerable,
and you're giving people access to a lot of information
(14:03):
that's really personal. So that's up to you if you
want to do that. But he said, I don't have
any issue with it. Well, his hesitancy kind of got
in my head because I started to feel really kind
of like, oh, I don't know, I'm not one hundred
percent on board with posting this yet, so I'm just
going to sit on it for twenty four hours and
think about it. So I gave myself a day to
sit on it, which is a practice that I use regularly,
(14:24):
and by the time the next day came around, I
was still just not one hundred percent on board with
posting it. And I have a rule for myself that
I have to feel in one hundred percent alignment with
doing a thing before I actually do it. I don't
always abide by that rule, but I like to try
to abide by it, and in this case, I didn't
feel a hundred percent aligned with posting it. So I
just kept sitting on this and meditating on it and
(14:44):
thinking about it and just asking myself, like, what do
I really want? Do I want to share this information
on Instagram? Does it feel too vulnerable to share? And
the more that I thought about it, the more I
realized it doesn't feel too vulnerable to share. But what's
happening for me is part of my own hesitancy that
popped up when I talked with not about it, is
that I'm feeling ready for an upgrade. In other words,
(15:07):
the things that I had written, which I will share
with you here on this episode, the things that I
had written, the ten things I wrote or nine things
or whatever it was, were true, like They're true, and
I don't feel embarrassed to share them with anybody. And
there's a higher truth, a bigger truth, a more all
inclusive truth, another angle in which to see the thing
(15:29):
that is also true. That is the second draft of
the story. And I'm just ready for an upgrade. And
so that's what I realized as I meditated on this.
It's like, it's not that I'm embarrassed to share this
on Instagram. It's that I don't know that I want
to put this out into the world, and not even
the world of Instagram, but like just the world energetically,
Like I don't want this to be the same story
(15:52):
that I'm still telling, because these are stories that I
could have told from ten years ago, and you'll see
when I read them to you, like they compass every
aspect of my life, Like I talk about money, I
talk about being a mother, I talk about friendships, I
talk about my relationship to Matt everything, And they're all
old stories, every single one of them. And so I
(16:15):
took myself through an exercise where I sat down and
rewrote the story. I just gave it a second draft.
And it's not every time that the second draft of
the story is more true. Sometimes it's just another angle
of the same truth. Like you've heard the phrase there's
two sides to every story, there's actually one hundred sides
(16:36):
to every story. There's infinite sides to every story, and
it's just a matter of which direction you're looking at
the thing. In fact, my therapist when I was going
through my divorce used to always say, there's a thousand
ways in which to see a thing. Make sure you're
looking at it from more than one angle. And so
a second draft of the story isn't necessarily more true.
In other words, you could just tell a story, the
divorce story, for example, from my side of things, and
(16:58):
my ex husband could also tell the story from his
side of things, which would be another truth that isn't
necessarily more or less true. But then there's this other
higher truth, like a more all encompassing truth, a truth
that feels better to tell, even better than the original
kind of gritty truth, because it's just a more loving
way in general, to see the entire situation. So what
(17:22):
I want to do is I want to read to
you what the first draft of my story was, and
then I want to read to you the new story
that I wrote, and these are all works in progress,
like this is happening in real time. I literally just
sat down right before I recorded this episode and wrote
the new versions of these stories. So I'm not standing
by these new versions as if this is the ultimate
version of the story. But what I want you to
(17:44):
see from witnessing this experience happen for me is I
want you to see that there are many different ways
you can tell a story, and that you get to
choose when you'd like to upgrade your story, or when
you'd like to edit it, or when you'd like to
adjust it, or when you'd like to tell it a
different way. At LEAs literally any point in your life,
you can make that decision. It's only your decision to make.
And it doesn't mean that the first draft of the
(18:07):
story was a worst draft of the story, or that
it was a less true draft of the story. It
doesn't mean that at all. In fact, the first draft
of each of these stories that I'm about to tell
you needed to exist, or I would have never gotten
to the second draft. And the second draft needs to exist,
or I would never get to the third draft, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. And the same is true for
your story, whatever story you're telling from your life, the
(18:28):
first draft of the story, that's the bitter, resentful, angry.
I don't know whatever yours is. I'm talking about. You
know my divorce story. That was the first draft of
my story. That version of the story has to exist.
It's the only way that we get to the next version.
And if you see your story as fixed, like once
you tell it one way, there's no way to rewrite it,
or to edit it, or to see it with a
(18:50):
little bit of a different light. If you see it
as fixed, then you see your life is fixed, and
you see yourself as fixed, and you aren't able to
witness yourself evolve and transform into someone new. But if
you're able to see that, every story can be upgraded.
Every story can be rewritten, every story can be edited,
every story can be seen in a different light, every
story can be told in a different way. Then you
(19:10):
become infinitely powerful because you can always change your perspective,
and you can always change the way that you see
your life. The same exact details can be seen through
a different light and they look different. So that's what
I want you to see from this experience, From what
I'm about to read to you. I want you to
see how you can edit and upgrade your story. So
(19:36):
what I'm going to read to you right now is
the old story and the new story. The old story
is each of those little slides that I wrote for
the Instagram Isn't Real Post, and then I rewrote each
one of those or edited them or upgraded them, and
that's the new story. So I'm going to go back
and forth between old story and new story, and you'll
get to see in real time how I upgraded each
(19:58):
of these pieces of my story. So for the Instagram
Isn't Real Post, I wrote the first slide says the
past five years have been some of the most financially
stressful years of my life. Between COVID and Matt's new
business venture that we've invested in. I've felt afraid at
times for our financial security and wondered what would happen
if we lost everything. That is true, I have wondered
(20:18):
that at many points. The new story I wrote is
the past five years have been a massive and unprecedented
expansion for me. I've had to face fears that have
been with me my whole life, including fears about running
out of money, and despite spending six figures a few
times over to learn this lesson. I've never once gone without. Okay.
The old story, my two kids came into the world
(20:38):
back to back, and while they're perfect in every way
and I have overwhelming love for them, I've really struggled
with transitioning into this new role in my life. I've
felt overwhelmed and overstimulated at points, and just generally not
up for the massive task that is being a mom.
That's the old story, and it's true. The new story says,
my two kids came into this world back to back
as co creators and collaborators and conspirators in my expansion.
(21:02):
They never once expected me to be a perfect mom
or to come into a life with perfect conditions. They
just wanted my presence and my love, which they are
getting more and more of each day. What a gift
it is to share this experience with them, the old
story says, despite desperately wanting to give my kids the
best of myself, I haven't been the best of myself
for much of these past few years. The new story,
(21:23):
my overwhelm with the task of being a mother is
mostly irrelevant. It reflects both cultural standards of motherhood that
don't align with my values, and also a nervous system
set point that is ready for an upgrade. My capacity
is growing every day. The old story, I'm an introvert
and I like spending much of my time alone, but
being alone with young kids has felt much more lonely
to me than I expected. I've often wondered where the
(21:44):
villages that's supposed to help me raise my kids, and
if I'm the only one who feels isolated in this role.
The new story. Being a mom has shown me the
places inside of myself where I've relied too heavily on
others to make me feel good, and where I've judged
myself for doing things my own way. And this time
of isolation has prepared me to enter or re enter
relationships in a new way, with more security and sturdiness,
(22:07):
more of myself to offer. I'm grateful the old story.
Matt and I have an overall peaceful and loving relationship,
but it's my experience that couples tend to have the
same conflict over and over and ours in the past
four years has been about money. Matt wants to conserve resources.
I want to give our kids and myself the best
life possible coming to harmony on that has taken a
ton of challenging, honest, humble work, and we're still doing
(22:29):
that work even today. The New story, I'm so proud
of the way that Matt and I have navigated the
difficult conversations about money that our life has brought to
the surface in the past few years. Most or at
least many couples go their entire relationship without coming into
alignment on these topics, and that would have certainly been
us if the flow of resources hadn't shifted in twenty twenty.
But I'm proud of us for taking this opportunity to
(22:50):
move with love and grace toward more alignment around finances
in the past several years. We're reaping the benefits of
that in our ever more loving and sturdy partnership. The
old story, Matt and I both grew up evangelical, and
our faith have evolved significantly in the past decade. While
I've never felt more alive in my faith, sometimes it
feels lonely or even confusing to be outside of the
predictable structures of church life and Christian ritual. We're finding
(23:13):
a way forward and leaning into the mystery of life
and God. But sometimes I miss the feeling of certainty
I had back then. The New story. I've never felt
more alive in my faith than I do now. I'm
finding new rituals, routines, teachers, friends, collaborators, and communities that
enrich me and contribute to my expansion. Life and God
are a mystery to me, and it feels good to
admit that to myself, rather than to grab onto a
(23:35):
false clarity for a temporary feeling of stability. I actually
feel quite stable, knowing there's still so much I don't
know the old story. Life changes have meant friendships in
my life have had to shift and change. Sometimes I
wonder if I've been a bad friend since I haven't
been able to keep up with so many people I
love the new story. Life is always shifting and changing.
(23:55):
It can feel sad sometimes to let go of something
that brought so much joy and light into my life.
And my circumstances have shifted, so have my relationships. I
feel immense joy and appreciation for every person who has
come into my life, and I wish them nothing but
happiness as they go their way. I am a good friend.
The old story. I'm learning to let go of the
predictable patterns I call my personality to discover more of
(24:15):
the truth of myself. This is an invigorating process, but
also terrifying. I'm less certain of anything than I have
been before, and I hold very loosely to the things
that I love the most. I had no idea life
could feel this tender and exquisite. The New Story. I
had no idea life could feel this tender and exquisite.
Each day I have more reasons for gratitude and joy.
Life is getting better and better, and the better it gets,
(24:37):
the better it gets. The Old Story. I teach writers
to write what's calling to them without worrying about how
perform in the marketplace, but I still worry every time
I release the book about how it will do. Even worse,
I feel like I have to pretend I don't care
so I don't look like a hypocrite. The New Story.
It's normal to wonder about how your art will do
in the marketplace. But at the end of the day,
(24:57):
I know it doesn't matter what others say about the
things I make. What matter is the joy I feel
while I'm making it, and when I release my tight
grip on the things I make they're able to find
their way to those who need them with very little
effort on my part. What I hope you're able to
see as I read these and as you think about
them and reflect on them, is how one or the
other story, the old story or the new story, are
(25:19):
not correct. There's not one story that's correct and the
other one that's not correct. It's two versions of the
same story, and you get the opportunity to choose which
one you would like to put your focus on. If
you think of it like a pie chart, like the
entire pie is one hundred percent of the pie. You
can either focus on one small sliver of the pie,
(25:40):
or a different small sliver of the pie, or a
different small sliver of the pie, or one bigger sliver
of the pie that's over on the other side of
the pie. You get to choose which part of the
story you want to focus on, and by placing your
focus on that part of the story, you're actually rewriting
the story or rewriting your experience of the story. Another
thing I wanted to address is is that upgrading your
(26:01):
story is not about spiritually bypassing what has actually happened,
and it's not about rainbow washing or deleting aspects of
the story that are uncomfortable, or hiding them, brushing them
under the rug, that sort of thing. There's a very
different energy that comes when you're hiding parts of your
story because you're afraid to share it, versus when you're
(26:23):
just ready for an upgrade. And that's why I sat
on this Instagram Isn't Real post for so long before
deciding to post it, because I really wanted to know,
is this happening because I'm afraid to share these details
of my story? Am I afraid what people are going
to think of me? Maybe there's some shred of that.
Am I afraid of what other people might say or
what they might make up or the story they might
(26:44):
tell themselves. Maybe there's some shred of that. But genuinely,
at the end of the day, the reason that I
didn't want to post just the original story that I
had written is because I felt really ready for an upgrade.
I was reading back on the story I had written
and just kept thinking, Oh, my gosh, I've been telling
this story for decades, particularly the story about money, but
so many of the other pieces too. I was like, Wow,
(27:06):
I've been telling the same old story forever and ever.
And I can only imagine that for each of us
there's one aspect of our life where we feel that way.
Maybe one aspect of your life feels that way the most.
For me, it would probably be my money story, where
I feel like, Wow, I've been telling the same story
over and over and over again. I'm sick of this story.
(27:27):
No matter what circumstance I'm put in, this is the
same story that I have chosen to tell. I'm really
ready to upgrade the story to something new. And it's
not about hiding the story or denying details, or rainbow
washing or covering it up or spiritually bypassing the story.
It's really about a readiness to begin to see the
(27:47):
story from a different angle. You are the only one
who can decide which one you're doing, and I want
you to, as much as you are able, remove yourself
from the idea that there's a writer or wrong way
to do this. You could even practice with upgrading your story.
And if you don't feel ready to go there yet,
if you still feel like there's actually more of these
(28:08):
gritty details to my story that I need to tell,
I just need to get it out in the most
honest way possible and kind of sit on that or
meditate in that for a minute until I feel ready
to upgrade it. Then trust that and go with that.
Like I said, maybe you practice with it for a
minute and then and you go like, no, I'm not
ready to do that. I'm ready to sit with the
details as they stand and really meditate on them. But
(28:29):
maybe as you're listening to this, you realize, oh, yeah,
there's an aspect of my life. There's a story that
I've been telling in the same old way for a long,
long long time, and it's just the same old stinking
story over and over and over again, and I'm really
ready to upgrade the story. Then I would challenge you
to see if you can look at the story from
a different angle and upgrade the story in the way
(28:51):
that I did with each of these pieces of my
story today. See if you can see the story in
the way someone else would see it. See if you
can see yourself as the hero of the story. See
if you can see the story as if you were
watching it unfold on a movie screen. What would you
be hoping the hero would do in the story. How
would you be hoping the hero would react or respond,
(29:11):
what sort of perspective would you hope the hero would
have if you were watching this unfold in someone else's life.
Let's imagine that whatever you're going through, it's actually your
best friend that's going through. What would you hope that
she would do? How would you hope she would react?
How would you hope that she would move the plot forward?
Maybe the different perspective that you're needing inside of your
story is not another human perspective, But maybe you want
(29:35):
to zoom out from the story and see it from
a thirty thousand foot view. Maybe you want to look
at the story from the perspective of God, whoever or
however you understand God to be, from the perspective of
the part of you that has not always been just
this physical being here on earth. Maybe you want to
kind of zoom out and think about this from your
broader perspective, and maybe thinking about it from that point
(29:57):
of view will help you to write this story story
in a little bit of a different way. Whichever you
decide to do, know that tiny, tiny shifts to your
story can make a massive impact. Like little little shifts.
Notice how some of the lines in my new story
were repeated from my old story, because the old story
is not total crap. It's not like, ooh, the old
(30:19):
story was this lower base or part of me, and
now I'm so enlightened, and so I write this new story. No,
some of the lines are literally repeated from the old story.
Like in my old faith story, I write, I've never
felt more alive in my faith, and that's the first
thing I say in the new story. I've never felt
more alive in my faith than I do now. So
what you see happen from the old story to the
(30:39):
new story is I just put more attention and focus
on that positive aspect instead of waiting until the middle
of the story to tell that part. I start with it,
I open with it. I use it as the hook
I've never felt more alive in my faith than I
do now. I hope you find this useful. I again,
am sharing these details from my life, not as a
(31:01):
way to linger on them and stand by them, and
specifically not as a way to get sympathy. I actually
think I'll say this small tangent and then I'll sign off.
But I think a lot of the reasons why we
avoid putting the real story or the juicy story or
the gritty story or whatever on Instagram is because we
actually don't Most of us don't really want the inevitable
(31:25):
sympathy slash advice giving that comes when we tell a
really difficult story in a platform like that with relative strangers. So,
if I'm to tell a story about how I'm struggling
financially or struggling with money or whatever, the inevitable response
I'm going to get is like, Oh, I'm so sorry,
I feel so bad for you. But the fact of
the matter is like, the true part of me doesn't
(31:47):
need that sympathy. The true part of me knows that
I'm writing the story and that I have all of
the power and agency to rewrite the story in whatever
way I choose, And so I think we avoid oftentimes
telling the gritty details of the story in a setting
where strangers are going to read it. Sometimes maybe because
we're scared of what people will say or how they'll
(32:08):
judge us, But I think a lot of times it's
more about really knowing deep down that we don't need
other people's advice. We don't need anyone else That input
is actually one hundred percent unhelpful to our situation. The
input from outside people even if those people love us.
But the fact of the matter is on Instagram, most
of those people are strangers. So I think that's a
(32:29):
lot of the reasons why we avoid sharing these stories
in that context. The emphasis I want to leave you
on is that rewriting your story is not about whitewashing
your story. It's not about rainbow washing your story. It's
not about skipping over the more difficult parts. It's not
about deleting the more difficult parts from our story because
we're embarrassed of them. It's actually about just being willing
(32:50):
to see our stories from a different perspective. And you
have the power to do this. You have the agency
to do it one hundred percent of the time. If
you feel ready to do this, today is a great
time to do it. You could do a similar version
of what I just did. You could write, like, here's
ten things that I probably wouldn't share on Instagram, or
that I'd be really scared to share on Instagram, and
then here's the new story. Here's the new version of
(33:11):
the story that I would prefer to tell. You could
also do this with just one thing in your life.
You don't have to do it with ten. That's just
the way that it happened for me in this particular circumstance,
But actually the way that it happened for me when
I was going through the divorce was I wrote one
story about one thing that was happening in my life.
And then when the first version of the story was
(33:31):
written and I felt like I'd gotten it all out
and that energy had been expended and expelled from my body,
then I felt ready to leave that old story behind
and to upgrade it into something new. And that's when
I started to think of myself as the hero of
my story and think about the kind of transformation that
I wanted to achieve, and for the most part, remove
this person who I had called the villain in my story,
(33:53):
more or less remove him from the story unless there
were pieces where it was necessary to talk about him.
So I hope you find this very additive. I hope
you find this really cathartic and healing. This is the
crux of why I teach people to write their story,
because it is truly this powerful. It will change the
way that you experience your life. It will change the
way that you feel about being in your own body
(34:15):
every day. It will change the way that you feel
about your relationships, about your finances, about every single thing
that happens to you, when you learn to write your
story as honestly as possible and then upgrade it little
by little, bit by bit until it feels better and
better and better to be you. I'll see you next
week on the Write Your Story podcast. Until then, happy writing,
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