June 10, 2025 • 41 mins
If we’re all a sort of “hero” in our own personal narrative, it begs an obvious question: who is narrating the story?
I watched Harold and the Purple Crayon on Netflix with my kids over the weekend, a children's book turned movie where the main character of a book goes searching for the narrator of his story so that he can better understand his purpose in life.
My kids thought the movie was hilarious. I found it deeply thought-provoking.
Who is narrating my story? Who is narrating your story?
This is a question (and an answer) I explore in today’s episode. I hope you enjoy and I’d love to hear what you think.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and I want to start today by sharing
a wild story about something that literally just happened to
me about three minutes ago before I hit record, because
I think this does a really good job of introducing
the topic that I want to talk about today. So
(00:46):
basically what happened is, in a matter for about thirty seconds,
I did this wild swing from utter sheer panic and
anxiety and feeling horrible about myself to like the pendulum
could not have swung any further back to complete relief,
realizing like, oh, actually nothing was ever wrong in the
first place, and it's still feeling a little twinge of
(01:08):
like wow, how did my brain get so confused so quickly?
But really coming back to that place of like sweet
and utter relief that like everything's fine, it's all fine.
We're all fine. So I just wanted to share this
story because basically what happened is I sat down to
record this episode. I got out my podcast equipment and
suddenly realized that even though today feels like a Monday,
it's actually a Tuesday. Because I'm recording this the day
(01:31):
after Memorial Day. My podcast episodes come out on Tuesday mornings.
I'm usually last minute, to be honest, I'm usually recording
an episode on a Monday for a Tuesday. Sometimes I
get ahead and batch episodes, but I'm not really great
at getting ahead, and I kind of like to record
episodes in the present moment anyway. Just always feels better
to me to be like I'm talking to you right
(01:51):
now from right here, instead of like I'm talking to
you in two weeks from now. And I know that
sometimes that's just necessary and it's part of it, but
I really do like to be recording an episode closer
to the day that it's going to come out, and
so a lot of times I'm recording episodes on Monday
to send them on Tuesday. Well, so I get my
podcast equipment out, I sit down to record this episode,
and I all of a sudden panic because I think
(02:12):
to myself, oh my gosh, today it's not Monday, it's Tuesday,
and I forgot to send my producer Houston my episode
for this week. And episodes are supposed to come out
on Tuesday morning, and so I just like fly into
this panic. The thought that went into my brain was
I forgot to send my episode, And there were like
a whole slew of thoughts attached to that thought. It
(02:32):
was like, I forgot to send the episode. I always
do this, What is wrong with my brain? What is
wrong with me? Why can't I get my act together?
Like this whole thing happening that's like very in line
with the patterns that I deal with and the self talk,
you know, that negative self talk, the way that I
specifically talk to myself, and you have your own way
that you talk to yourself. But yeah, like this whole
(02:54):
string of thoughts that came along with the idea that, oh,
I forgot to send my episode to Houston. So I
text youson in a blind panic, and the way you
text when you're panicking is like back to back to
back to back to back text. It was just like,
oh shoot, I'm so sorry. I forgot. Here's the episode, like,
I did record an episode last week. Here it is,
I just forgot to send it to you. And he
(03:14):
responded immediately and was like, hey, what are you talking about.
You actually did send me an episode, and so thanks
for the new episode. This episode puts you ahead by
an extra week. And I immediately felt this wave of
relief come over me. I was like, oh my gosh, okay.
The thought that came into my brain that I had
forgotten to send the episode was a wrong thought. It
was an incorrect thought, and it led me down this
rabbit hole of feeling panicked and feeling bad about myself
(03:37):
and whatever else. And it was an incorrect thought. And
so the correct thought that actually you're a week ahead
brought this wave of relief to me. But then I
was of course like, am I okay? Like is my
brain okay? What is happening? Like what's going on? Where
am I? What day is it? What time is it?
Just kind of like can I even trust my own brain?
But you can see how even though the thought that
(03:58):
I had I'd forgot to send the episode, it was
actually an incorrect thought. And it's not in every case
that we can identify that the thought we're having is
factually incorrect. Like let's just say I had actually forgotten
to send the link for the audio for my episode.
If I had actually forgotten to send it, you know,
there's still a way to stand back from the thought
(04:22):
and kind of tiptoe around the thought and observe the
thought instead of taking it in so completely and making
it about me and well, now I'm a failure and
how could I do this? And I always do this,
and you know all the thoughts that we have attached
to that thought. And this is the practice of meditation,
it's the practice of yoga, it's the practice of self reflection,
(04:42):
of therapy, all of those things. So detaching yourself from
that thought, stepping back from it, giving yourself perspective from
the thought is a really helpful tactic, a helpful tool
that you can use even if the thought were safe
actually true, like I'd forgotten to send the episode, stepping
back from it a a little bit, and instead of
immediately latching onto the thought, grabbing onto it, making it
(05:04):
mean something about me, making up this immediate narrative about it,
I can create some more space around the thought and
you know, maybe not allow the pendulum to swing quite
so far in that one direction. But this in the
case of this story, you can see how drastically the
pendulum swings in terms of how I feel about myself
are just generally how I feel in my body when
(05:26):
I think one thought versus another thought. So this just
goes to show you how powerful our thoughts are, how
powerful the stories are that we tell ourselves in our brains.
The narratives that are running constantly in our brains are
extremely powerful. They dictate how we feel about ourselves. They
dictate how we feel in our bodies moving through any
given day. They can very quickly either make us feel
(05:49):
panicked and anxious and stressed, or they can make us
feel relieved, or they can make us question our own sanity.
And so this practice of stepping back from the thought
is what I want to talk about today. What I want
I want to talk about today is the idea of
asking yourself who or what is narrating my story and
(06:09):
just learning to pay attention to the narrator that is
at work in our stories, because there's always a narrator
at work. And the reason that this idea came to
me is because over the weekend I watched this movie
with my kids. My husband was out of town, and
so on Saturday night we did a movie night and
we watched this new movie that's on Netflix called Harold
and the Purple Cran, which is based off of the
(06:29):
children's book called Harold and the Purple Cran, which I've
not read in decades or you know, since I was
a child. And what I remember about Harold in the
Purple Cran, the children's book, is that it's about this
little boy who has a purple cran and he learns
that he can draw whatever he wants with the purple cran,
and the purple cran, you know, allows him to create
(06:50):
whatever he wants and bring whatever he wants into his life.
So that's the basis of the book, and the movie
is really based off of that idea too. And yet
in the movie, this little boy who has this purple cran,
who learns he can create whatever he wants, overhears the
narrator of the story narrating his story and starts to
wonder to himself, who is this man? Who's this old
(07:11):
man who's narrating my story and goes on a quest
to the real world the quote unquote real world. You
can't see me using air quotes, but I'm using air quotes,
goes on a quest to the real world to track
down this old man who's narrating his story. So it's
similar to The vibes of the movie are very similar
to Elf, where Will Ferrell leaves the North Pole, this magical, mystical,
(07:35):
mysterious place that is fantasy, and comes to New York City,
which is the real world. And so this mystical creature
comes into the real world and runs into all these
hilarious problems because he's an Elf and he's meeting real
people and he's looking for his dad, Harold, and the
Purple Cran has a very similar vibe to it, where
(07:56):
he leaves this fictional story where he's a character and
a children's book and he comes into he draws a
door for himself and comes through the door and enters
into the real world. And Zoe Deschanel's in the movie.
And it's a good movie. I mean, I watch a
lot of kids' movies and some of them are much
better than others, and I would put this one on
the better than others side of things. I enjoyed watching it,
(08:17):
and it's really deep and philosophical and made me think
a lot about how we do create our own realities
and how important our thoughts are, and this concept of
who is the person or what is the thing that
is narrating my story? Because the person narrating my story
or the voice that's narrating my story is literally driving
(08:38):
the story. And when we can tune in to who
are what is narrating our story, we gain a lot
of leverage and a lot of power over creating the
path as we move forward. So I'm watching this movie,
I'm watching Harold on the Purple Cran with my kids.
I'm watching them have this experience with watching this character who,
even as he comes into the real world, carries this
(09:00):
purple cran with him and can draw motorcycle and make
the motorcycle come to life. He can draw a piano
and make the piano come to life. Even things that
he draws with the Purple Cran in the real world
can become quote unquote real. And so in the story,
there's no real separation between the fictional world of the
story and the real world that Harold enters into. He
draws the store and enters into the real world. And
(09:22):
so that had me thinking about that concept, but watching
Harold search out his narrator really got me fixated on
this idea of asking ourselves who is narrating our stories?
And this is one of the reasons why I so
highly recommend that people establish a regular practice of writing
(09:44):
in their life, which is something that I am honestly
a hypocrite about because since I've had my kids, I
have not had a regular practice of writing in my life.
I've had seasons of practicing writing regularly, and especially seasons
where I was working on a publishing project like Write
Your Story that came out last year. When I was
working on the manuscript for my book, I was writing regularly,
but it wasn't really the type of writing practice that
(10:05):
I'm talking about. When I say establish a regular practice
of writing, I'm talking about regularly sitting down to write
about what's going on in your life. So I'm not
really talking about establishing a practice of writing something for
the sake of publication. I'm talking about more what Julia
Cameron says when she urges you to do morning pages,
(10:25):
that you need a space and a time in your
day that is committed to telling the truth about what's
going on with you. And one of the reasons that
I think this is so vital to human beings and
to our creativity is because there are so few spaces
where we feel safe or free enough to admit what's
true to us. I've also been listening to a podcast
(10:48):
episode where Tim Ferriss interviews Martha Beck. This is an
episode that was sent to me and I started listening
to it and was immediately sucked in by what Martha
Beck talks about as her integrity practice. So she basically
challenged herself years ago to tell the truth and only
the truth for one hundred days, and she ended up
(11:08):
losing her marriage, she lost her religion, she was a
Mormon at the time, She lost connections and relationships with
her family members, and she really unpacks this idea of
what does it mean to live in integrity and to
tell the truth, and even comes around on the other
side of things, because you might have the objection, well,
do we always have to tell the whole truth to everybody?
(11:29):
Like is it always helpful to do that? And she
does address that too. She says, you know, sometimes silence
can be the truth too, and she really challenges you
to ask yourself if something is helpful before you say
it out loud, but regardless, speaking the truth in terms
of someone invites you to come to something that you
don't want to go to, and we have trouble saying
(11:50):
I don't want to come to that, and so instead
we make up an excuse. We say, well, I can't go,
and she challenges you to remove the words I can't
from your vocabulary instead say I won't be able to
make it, I won't be there, and really try to
tell the emotional truth to people about what really matters
to us, about what we want to do, about what
brings us joy, and that we begin to access more
(12:12):
joy in our lives through that type of integrity practice.
So it's a great episode. I'll link to it in
the show notes. It's worth a listen for sure. I really, really,
really love Martha Beck. I have gone back and forth
on Tim Ferris's podcast No shade at all on Tim Ferriss,
but just sometimes not totally my style. But Martha Beck
is so wonderful and Tim in this case does a
great job of interviewing her and kind of teasing out
(12:34):
some of those details. So I'll put a link in
the show notes if you want to go listen to
that in its entirety, but it's connected to this because
there are so few spaces in our life where we
feel safe enough to tell the one hundred percent truth.
And I think many of us are probably living in
a situation where we don't feel like there's anybody in
our life that can hear the one hundred percent truth
(12:55):
from us. And maybe more likely is that you feel
that there are certain people who can hear the truth
about certain things and other people who can hear the
truth about other things. But do you have any place
in your life where you can go where you can
be one hundred percent you without holding back. My guess
is most of us could find some growth in that area,
and writing is one way to find that growth, having
(13:18):
a regular practice of writing, of showing up to the
page to simply just tell the truth to yourself about
what's going on, to say, here's how I'm feeling today,
Here's what happened today, Here's how that landed on me,
Here's how I felt about it, Here's what was going
on in my head. And the reason this is connected
to the narrator in your life and the narrator in
your story is because you will begin to see a
(13:40):
thread of words, phrases, thoughts, ideas, narration, sense that someone
is making out of the story that is rising from
the ashes of the regular, boring, mundane, everyday events of
your life. So as you begin to write about what
took place in your day, rite about how that fell
(14:01):
on you, write about what sense you made of it, right,
about the feelings that you had as it took place,
you will begin to pick up threads, to pick up themes,
to hear yourself say words and phrases over and over again.
And some of this is a false narrator at work
in your story. And it becomes very very clear, like
the example that I just gave at the beginning of
(14:22):
this episode, there is a false narrator at work. When
I say, oh my god, I always do this, you know,
I'm so disorganized. This happens to me every time. I'm
always so confused about what's going on. I can't remember this,
I can't remember that there is a false narrator at
work there that's creating a meaning to my story that
is simply not true. Because again in this case, I mean,
(14:44):
it's so interesting to think about this that the truth
is I didn't forget to send the episode. That's just
the truth of the matter. But even if the truth
was I did forget to send the episode, I don't
have to make that mean that I always do this,
or I'm such a failure, or I'm such a screw up,
or I can't you keep anything straight. You know, all
(15:05):
those other stories that I want to add to this
are unnecessary additions to the story. It could just simply be, oh,
I forgot to send the episode, but in this case,
I didn't forget to forget to send the episode, and
so I'm operating off of a false truth, and yet
the narrator still keeps spinning the story. So think about that.
(15:27):
If your thoughts are so powerful that your narrator can
spin the story even when the data is wrong, even
when the data is incorrect, then it doesn't matter what
data is coming in. It doesn't matter what takes place
for you. That I mis grew up, I failed, I'm
never going to get this right. That is the story
that is going to be told over and over and
over again in your life in perpetuity until you die,
(15:50):
because that narrator doesn't need the details or the data
to be correct in order to spin that narrative. If
that is who is narrating story, then that's the story
that's going to be told, no matter the details. I
don't know if you've ever noticed this, but sometime when
you're reading a story, notice how much power the narrator
has over the story. The narrator is the one who
(16:13):
gets to decide what all of this means. There can
be very different information and a story, very different data points,
very different details of what took place, and the narrator
(16:35):
can spin the same narrative. The narrator can be this
is all my fault. I'm such a failure. This always
happens to me. I always do this. I'm such a
screw up. That will be the perpetual narrative until you
decide you want to change the narrative, until you decide
that that narrator no longer has power over your story
and that you would like to upgrade your narrator, you
(16:57):
would like to change the narrator. And think about this again. So,
if the narrator has that much power that it doesn't
matter what data comes in, the narrator is going to
trump the data. So the data was incorrect. The data
was I actually had sent an episode, and my narrator said,
you know, you're such a screw up. Whatever it said.
(17:18):
So it doesn't matter the data that comes in. It
doesn't matter whether it's false or true. The narrator's still
going to spin that story. Even when I realized Houston
texted me and said, oh, no, actually your week ahead.
Then I was like, oh my gosh, I'm such a
dumb dumb you know, like, oh, he probably thinks I'm nuts,
Like I'm losing my mind because I just like fired
off ten text messages in a panic. So notice how
(17:39):
the narrator still did still did the same thing that
it wanted to do. It was still trying to tell
that same old story, You're such a screw up, You're
such a dummy, like everybody probably thinks you're crazy, even
though the data changed. So if the narrator is that powerful,
then imagine if you tuned in to a narrator that
was telling a story about you. Imagine if you just
(18:02):
decided you were going to choose a narrator that was
telling a different story about you. That narrator would have
so much power that it doesn't matter what data comes in,
that the narrator would still trump the data, even if
the data was quote unquote false. And here's a little
tiny sidebar that I want to take for a minute,
because I feel like sometimes we get in our heads
(18:22):
that we have to be accurate about everything, Like for example,
when you're in the self help world and you're talking
about affirmations or mantras or whatever, and people will say, like,
you know, say to yourself, I'm at perfect peace, and
it's like, well, I'm not at perfect piece, Okay, I'm anxious,
I'm feeling stressed. And we're so focused and fixated on
this idea of getting the details right, getting the data right.
(18:47):
But I think the point is that if your narrator
says I'm at perfect peace, it doesn't matter the data
that comes in. The truth of the story will be
I'm at perfect peace. If the narrator says I'm I
am abundant, the universe is abundant. I live in a
world where everything I need is accessible to me and
I can always have access to it, then it doesn't
(19:07):
matter the data that comes in because the data will
fit under the arc of the narrative. The narrator is
the one who makes the meaning of the story. So
the narrator has complete control the narrator, whether the episode
is in the inbox or not in the inbox, whether
it was posted on time or not posted on time,
the narrator's telling the same story. What a screwup. You're
(19:27):
never going to get this right. You're such a loser,
you know, whatever the story is. So this is how
much power our narrators have. And I wanted to pose
the question, who or what is narrating your story? What
is the narration that's happening inside of your story? And
one really powerful way to tune into the narrator is
to sit down and write about what's happening to you.
(19:48):
Because a lot of times our narrators are happening outside
of our conscious awareness. This is certainly true for me,
Like I said, I have fallen out of a practice
of regular writing. I'm such a hypocrite because I tell
everyone to do it, but I'm actually not doing it myself.
And so I made the decision this morning, right before
I sat down to record this episode. This whole thing
happened where I thought I forgot the the file, and
(20:09):
I didn't actually forget the file, And I thought, you
know what I need. I need to create a regular
practice of writing in my life again, because I need
to tune in to who is narrating my story so
that I can reroute the narrative. Because if I can
upgrade the narrator, I can upgrade the whole story. It
actually doesn't matter the data and the details that are
coming in, I think, at least for me, I get
fixated on fixing the details of the story when actually
(20:33):
what needs to be changed is the narrator. The details
of the story don't matter nearly as much as the
narrator because the narrator's the one who's making sense of
the details. So if the details that come in are
you know, my bank accounts at zero? Or the details
that come in are my boyfriend broke up with me?
Or the details that come in are you know I
got in a fight with my husband this morning. Or
the details that come in are it's total chaos with
(20:55):
the kids recently, or you know, I'm at odds with
a family member, or gosh, there's this neighbor who's just
driving me absolutely nuts, or whatever it is. Whatever the
details of the story are, the narrator trumps the details
because the narrator is the one who makes sense of
those details. So maybe you get in a fight with
your husband and the narrator says to you, I'm so unlovable.
(21:17):
You know, this always happens with us. It's all my fault.
I'm never going to have the relationship that I want
to have. Maybe that's the narration that's happening. Well, you
wouldn't know that unless you tune into the narration, and
you wouldn't tune into the narration unless you're doing some
sort of self reflective exercise like therapy, or like sitting
down to write about your life, or any number of
(21:38):
other self reflective exercises that you could be doing. So
it's not like writing is the only one, but writing
is just a really powerful one. So you have those options.
The option can either be that the narration says, you know,
I'll never find the love that satisfies me, or my
relationships will always be rocky like this, or maybe the
narration says, you know, we have a lot of trust
(22:00):
and respect for one another, and we didn't see eye
to eye this morning, and we probably didn't handle it great,
and we're going to figure this out later and everything
is going to be okay. All as well. Upgrading to
that second narrator changes the way you see the details.
The details to the story stay the same. I've got
in a fight with my husband this morning, but the
(22:22):
narration changes. The narration doesn't say, oh, it's always going
to be this way, We're never going to find our
way through this. The narration says, we have a lot
of trust and respect for each other, and we're going
to figure this out. We're really competent people, we have
a lot of love for each other. We're going to
figure this out. Or maybe the narration says, you know what,
something really needs to change because I don't want to
(22:43):
live like this anymore. We've been doing this too often
and something really needs to change. So I need therapy,
or I need more supporter, I need friends to speak
into this for me, or I need my husband to
give me X or whatever it is. But there there
are many different ways to narrate the same set of details,
(23:03):
and narrating the details differently makes you feel different about
the story. It's so so important to know who or
what is narrating your story. What is the narration that's
happening in your life right now? Maybe you don't exactly know.
I'll tell you one really sure fire. Way to tune
into this is to find an episode or an experience
(23:25):
in your life that is extremely charged. So just like
what happened to me forty five minutes ago when I
thought that I hadn't send the episode on time, Just
like that, find an experience in your life that sort
of lights you up. So that could either be in
a positive way, like you have a really joyful experience
and you're like, oh, that, I just wish I could
have that experience every day of my life. That was
(23:46):
just so wonderful, or maybe the electricity aspect of the
experience is a little bit more negative. Maybe it's a
little more negatively charged, like the experience I have this morning,
and you kind of feel yourself all over just be
likes or your palm sweat or or something about the
experience just doesn't feel good in your body. It's like
(24:06):
I didn't like the way that that fell. I didn't
like the way that that landed on me. So that
sensation in your body is evidence that there's some type
of narration happening, that there's some sort of thought that's
occurring to you. The thought is the same as a narration,
a thought that's occurring to you a voice that's telling
you about this experience that is driving the situation. So
(24:29):
maybe the voice is saying, you know, it's always going
to be this way, You're never going to get it right.
You're such a screw up. You know, you're you're a fool.
You get taken advantage of whatever it is. The voice
is saying something to you that's creating a sensation inside
of your body. It doesn't start with sensation, but a
sensation is an excellent place to enter in because you
can tell of this is charged, then there's a narrator
(24:51):
behind it. Okay, So I'm going to walk you through
a really simple three step process that I have used
when I have an experience like this that's charged. This
has become somewhat second nature for me, which is why
I could have that experience with the podcast this morning
(25:13):
and then immediately kind of dissect it because I've done
this on paper so many times, and so I've taught
myself how to do this pretty quickly. But the three
step process looks like this. So you have an experience
in your life that's charged, you go, oh, there's something here.
There's a narrator at work here that I want to
know more about So I'm going to get curious and
(25:34):
I'm going to sit down and write about it. So
step one is just to write the details of the
situation as they took place. Try in this step to
stick with the data points that have come in, to
stick with just here's what happened. First, this happened, Then
this happened. You know. First I realized I hadn't sent
the podcast episode. Second, I panicked. Third, I texted Houston
(25:56):
Rapid Fire six texts. Here's what the text said. He
responded and said, no, no, no problem, there's an episode
already up. And then I felt huge relief, you know.
So first step is just to kind of dictate what
took place, the data points that came into the situation.
The second step is to begin to identify some of
the feelings that were present there. And so there was
(26:19):
a feeling of panic for me, and there was a
feeling of relief. And that was the one thing I
identified very quickly after all of this happened, is that
the pendulum had swung so quickly from like my body
being an utter panic and fight or flight to all
of a sudden being like phew, wow, okay, crisis averted
in about thirty seconds quite literally between sending a text
and receiving one back, and so that alerted me to
(26:41):
the fact that there was probably something more going on here.
And then the third step is to begin to identify
the thoughts or the narrator that are driving the story.
And so the first thought that I identified in this
story was I forgot to send the episode, which in
this case was a false thought. And there are may
be thoughts in your story or narrations of your story
(27:04):
that are also false narrations. It's like, that's just simply
not true. That's just not the way that it happened.
But if the narration is you know, I got in
a fight with my husband and that's a true data
point in the story and that's actually what took place,
then maybe the thoughts that are attached to that thought
are the more toxic thoughts that are kind of dragging
you down. So maybe there's thoughts attached to the fight
(27:26):
with your husband things like, you know, this always happens
to us, or he doesn't understand me, or he never
sees me, or you know, he really has a problem
with his anger or something like that, or maybe it's
more about you, maybe the thoughts that are driving the
story are more like, I'm unlovable, or I'm invisible to him,
(27:47):
or I'm not important to him, I'm not important to anyone,
whatever it is for you, Identifying those thoughts or the
narrations that are taking place in the story that are
really driving the sensations of the story and driving the
narrative forward is the third step in sort of stepping
back from the situation and beginning to see it from
a more neutral place. And when you can start to
(28:08):
see it from a more neutral place, even though in
my example, I had the experience of realizing very quickly
that my data point was off. So I thought I
sent the I thought I didn't send the episode. Oh
I actually did send the episode. So on the one hand,
I felt tremendous relief, I felt a shift in the
charge of the physical sensation. But at the same time,
(28:29):
like I mentioned, I went from being like, Oh, you're
such an idiot, you didn't send the episode on time,
to being like, oh, my gosh, you're such an idiot.
You thought you didn't send the episode, but you actually
did send the episode. Like so, the narrator stayed the same.
The narration of you're such an idiot. People probably think
you're crazy, or you know, your producer probably thinks you're crazy.
Stayed the same regardless of the data point changing. So
(28:53):
the most powerful column in this kind of three column exercise,
and you don't have to do it separately in columns,
but if you do, if you kind of list the
data first and then the sensations second, and then the
thoughts or a narration's third, the most powerful column is
that third column because the sensations, you know, you could
have a physical sensation, like I could have the sensation
(29:14):
of anxiety, and I could step back from the situation
and say, like to myself, Okay, people make mistakes. Even
if I forgot to send the episode. That is an
honest mistake. Yesterday felt like a Sunday. It was actually
a Monday because it was a holiday. Whatever, no worries,
no problem, This is not heart surgery. It's podcast. If
(29:36):
an episode doesn't go up on a Tuesday, okay, So
what I mean? Sure, is it nice to be consistent
and post it episode every Tuesday? Yeah? But is anybody
gonna die because the episode didn't go up until halfway
through the day on Tuesday? No? Now, Shifting the narrative,
or shifting the narrator in this case, is going to
be extra challenging. If the narrow pathways. If the narrator
(29:59):
that you've been listening to for a really long time
has always said, you're such a screw up, you always
do this, you know, you can't keep anything straight, you're
so disorganized, whatever, whatever. If that's what the narrator has
always said to you, then shifting the narrative probably isn't
going to happen in a single day. Which is why
the writing can be so powerful, because it begins to
show you in a very clear way, these voices, these
(30:22):
narrators that are present in our lives, that are simply
driving how we feel about our day to day experiences,
that are actually creating the experiences that we have because
creating it from the standpoint of I think I've always
thought of creating your own reality as this sort of mystical,
magical thing. But what I think it is is it's
(30:43):
actually like, Okay, you're handed a piece of clay that's fairly,
you know, shapeless, and your thoughts are shaping the piece
of clay. Your thoughts are taking that raw matter and
turning it into something with form, and your thoughts can
either say, Yeah, this happens to people. People forget stuff
all the time, it's not a big deal. Or your
(31:04):
thoughts can say like, oh, you always forget stuff. You're impossible.
You know you can't. Nobody can rely on you for anything.
You're absolutely impossible. Depending on how your thoughts move through
your mind, those thoughts are going to shape your reality
quite differently, and so simply by bringing attention to the
thoughts that are taking place, by bringing attention to the
narrator that's at work, you can shift and shape and
(31:28):
change your story and change your experience of your own life. Now,
one question worth asking that you may not have an
immediate answer to is who is this narrator? Like where
did this voice even come from? You may not have
an immediate answer to that. It may not be like, Oh,
that's my dad, or that's my mom, or that was
my high school basketball coach or whomever you know, that's
(31:49):
the pastor that I grew up under for my whole life,
that's the evangelical church, whatever it is. You may not
have an immediate answer to who that voice is or
where it came from, but it is a question worth
asking because you can begin to see that these voices
simply are not you, that you are something outside of that,
that you are not the one telling you you're such
(32:11):
a screw up, that that's just a thought that doesn't
even belong to you, that was handed to you by
someone else, by magazines, by the world, by culture, by
your teachers, by you know, the public school system, by
by your religion, by whatever it is, something that was
handed to you by somebody else that does not belong
to you, that you can easily put down and still
(32:35):
retain one hundred percent authenticity and integrity to yourself. In fact,
probably more authenticity and integrity to yourself by not berating
yourself or making a simple mistake. And maybe you're saying
to me, Okay, well, you made a simple mistake, you
forgot to send a podcast. But the type of mistakes
that we're talking about that I've made are much bigger
than that. You know, I've choices that I've made have
(32:57):
ruined my life or ruined someone else's life, or you know,
there's so much more at stake in my story, Ali
than there is in your story. And I will tell
you from personal experience that even when the stakes are
very high in your personal story that upgrading your narrator
can shift your experience of your life for good. If
(33:18):
I think back to my life ten years ago when
I was in the middle of a really dramatic divorce,
and my life now, the essence, the vibration, as many
people say in the spiritual self help community, the vibration
of my life, the essence of it, the feeling of it,
the just the sense of being inside of it is
so dramatically different than it was back then. And the
(33:42):
only reason for that is because I upgraded my narrative
slowly over time, because I committed myself to choosing a
different narrator in my story, because I refused to accept
that life had to be this hard, horrible way, and
I began to shape the raw material, the raw matter,
(34:03):
the clay in my hands a little bit differently by
shifting the way that I thought about things. And my
life is not perfect now, but the sense of being
inside of my life is so much lighter, and so
much freer and so much better than it was before.
And I like to remind myself of that all the
time because it also reminds me that I can continue
(34:27):
to upgrade that narrative even here, and the parts of
my life that are extremely frustrating to me now, and
the parts of myself that I'm like, ooh, I don't
love that about me, I realize and recognize I can
continue to shift the raw material that's in my hands.
I can continue to shape that into something better, something
that I would more prefer As I continue to lean
(34:48):
into this invitation to upgrade my narrative. I'm not done growing,
I'm not done changing, I'm not done evolving. I have
a lot of evolution left to do while I'm still
here on planet Earth. And it's something that is not
only really important to me to become the highest version
of myself, but it is also something that is just
(35:09):
like a beautiful invitation that we get to receive and
to answer to say, like, I'm going to learn how
to enjoy my life more. I'm going to learn how
to invite more joy into my life. In fact, this
is a great place to end because that same conversation
with Tim Ferriss and Martha Back, which I'll put in
the show notes, she talks about bodily joy, which sounds
(35:30):
kind of sexual. She does not mean it that way,
but She talks about bodily joy as a differentiator from
joy in the mind, where you're like, when we think
of joy, like how could I create more joy in
my life? It's like ooh, massages or sitting by a
pool or going on a fancy vacation or driving this
really nice car or whatever like we tend to as
human beings. Just think about what do I want to achieve? Okay,
(35:52):
I want to achieve this success. I want to be
on the New York Times list. I want to be
remembered and important and drive this nice car and go
these nice places and have these important friends. But when
you think about bodily joy, so forget you know, all
the stuff that your mind thinks of when you think,
like what would give me joy? Just think about like
the experience of joy in your body. She has Tim
(36:13):
on the podcast list three things he loves to taste,
three things he enjoys the touch of, three things he
likes the sound of, you know, just kind of grounding
you into your senses like that. And this was such
an epiphany for me because I'm like, there's joy in
my mind where it's like if only I could get X,
Y and Z, you know, an it might be even
(36:34):
something that's really important to me, Like, you know, Matt
and I would really like to grow our family. I'm like,
I would just love to have another baby, Like that
would just bring me so much joy. I would really
love to have another baby. And having the awareness that
that's not a given, that it's not guaranteed that we
will for sure get to have another baby is just like, oh,
that kind of breaks my heart a little bit. And
so even thinking about that, like is using your mind
(36:58):
to say, if only I had another baby, then I
would feel joy. But what she's trying to get you
to think about is like the bodily sensations of joy,
having joy in the body. Like what is it for
you that when you think about it, or when you
get that invitation or when you have that experience that
just really like lights you up in your body that
you just feel it like an electricity that moves through
(37:19):
your body. It's funny how it's different stuff, you know,
Like I can have that feeling of electricity and of
bodily joy when I'm just with my two kids, who
I already have. I can have that feeling in that
sensation just having a really intimate conversation with my husband,
who I adore, I can have that feeling just like
being out in the yard and listening to the crickets
(37:41):
and hearing the rain hit the roof, and you know,
tasting mint chocolate chip ice cream, and like, there's so
many different ways that I can experience that bodily joy.
So she really challenges you to move from the joy
that your mind wants to think up like if only
I had ten thousand dollars, or if only I had
this baby, or if only had X, Y or Z
or whatever, then I would feel joy, moving into what
(38:02):
does it feel like to actually feel joy in your
body right now? Why did I bring that up? Because
here's the reason that I know that. I know that.
I know that as you begin to refine your narrator
and tune into the current narrator and upgrade the narrator
through this process of writing it down, that you invite
(38:23):
more of that bodily joy into your life. It's real, true,
grounded for real joy that has nothing to do with
the dollars in your bank account or the car you
drive or any of that stuff. It just is just joy,
like pure bodily joy of being in your life. And
I can tell you that I have that experience in
(38:44):
my life now in a way that I didn't have
it ten years ago when I was in this toxic
cycle with my ex, and there were so many things
that I wanted to happen in my life that never
could have happened if I didn't take the step out
of that story and into a new story. And so
I know it's possible. I've lived it. I have up.
I've created my story so many times before, and I
feel like I've been in a rut for the last
couple of years trying to carve out this new story
(39:07):
from my mind instead of from my heart, instead of
from my body. I invented in my mind these things
I wanted to achieve and was trying to carve that
out using my creative manifestation power, my ability to mold
the story from my mind, and it really hasn't been
working for me. And it's been disappointing on so many levels.
(39:27):
And there's been a lot of grief, and there's been hardship,
and that's also just part of life. But what I
think I'm learning and what I will invite you into,
is dropping from mind into heart into body and following
what brings you joy in your body and realizing that
so much of that joy is right here if we
can step away from the narrator that is literally ruining
(39:47):
our lives and ruining our experience of our lives. Like
imagine the same data, same data I forgot to send
the podcast, different narrator, totally different experience. Narrator says you're
such a loser. The other narrator says, no big deal,
no problem, people make mistakes, No big deal. We'll post
it later today. So that's my invitation for you. I'm
(40:10):
going to invite you, actually specifically to join me in
waking up twenty minutes before you would normally wake up,
and in my house, in my life, sleep is so precious,
so I would not ask you to do this if
I was not also doing it myself. I have been trying,
actually to wake up at five am, which is more
than twenty minutes before I used to wake up. I
normally wake up around seven or six thirty when my
(40:30):
kids get up, but I've been waking up at five
because if I can just get in the shower, get
my shower, get a cup of coffee, sit down, and
get twenty minutes of writing in then I am already
ahead of the game in terms of being able to
clearly see the narrators that are driving my story. The
narrator is the one that's responsible for shaping the raw materials.
(40:51):
So don't worry about the raw materials of your story.
The raw materials of your story are kind of meaningless.
What's much more meaningful, at least, I'll say this. What's
much more meaningful is the narrator who shapes those raw
experiences into something beautiful. So I invite you to do
that with me. I invite you to wake up twenty
minutes before you would normally wake up, and just begin
(41:12):
writing about experiences in your life, telling yourself the truth,
finding one space, this one space in your life where
you can tell yourself the full and complete truth, and
you do not have to perform for anybody. It is
the raw, raw truth. You can be as mad as
you are, as sad as you are, as overwhelmed as
you are. Whatever it is that you need to feel,
you get to feel it on the page, and you
(41:33):
can observe the narrators that are work in your life.
I will see you back here next week on the
write your Story podcast, and I can't wait to hear
how it goes
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and I want to start today by sharing
a wild story about something that literally just happened to
me about three minutes ago before I hit record, because
I think this does a really good job of introducing
the topic that I want to talk about today. So
(00:46):
basically what happened is, in a matter for about thirty seconds,
I did this wild swing from utter sheer panic and
anxiety and feeling horrible about myself to like the pendulum
could not have swung any further back to complete relief,
realizing like, oh, actually nothing was ever wrong in the
first place, and it's still feeling a little twinge of
(01:08):
like wow, how did my brain get so confused so quickly?
But really coming back to that place of like sweet
and utter relief that like everything's fine, it's all fine.
We're all fine. So I just wanted to share this
story because basically what happened is I sat down to
record this episode. I got out my podcast equipment and
suddenly realized that even though today feels like a Monday,
it's actually a Tuesday. Because I'm recording this the day
(01:31):
after Memorial Day. My podcast episodes come out on Tuesday mornings.
I'm usually last minute, to be honest, I'm usually recording
an episode on a Monday for a Tuesday. Sometimes I
get ahead and batch episodes, but I'm not really great
at getting ahead, and I kind of like to record
episodes in the present moment anyway. Just always feels better
to me to be like I'm talking to you right
(01:51):
now from right here, instead of like I'm talking to
you in two weeks from now. And I know that
sometimes that's just necessary and it's part of it, but
I really do like to be recording an episode closer
to the day that it's going to come out, and
so a lot of times I'm recording episodes on Monday
to send them on Tuesday. Well, so I get my
podcast equipment out, I sit down to record this episode,
and I all of a sudden panic because I think
(02:12):
to myself, oh my gosh, today it's not Monday, it's Tuesday,
and I forgot to send my producer Houston my episode
for this week. And episodes are supposed to come out
on Tuesday morning, and so I just like fly into
this panic. The thought that went into my brain was
I forgot to send my episode, And there were like
a whole slew of thoughts attached to that thought. It
(02:32):
was like, I forgot to send the episode. I always
do this, What is wrong with my brain? What is
wrong with me? Why can't I get my act together?
Like this whole thing happening that's like very in line
with the patterns that I deal with and the self talk,
you know, that negative self talk, the way that I
specifically talk to myself, and you have your own way
that you talk to yourself. But yeah, like this whole
(02:54):
string of thoughts that came along with the idea that, oh,
I forgot to send my episode to Houston. So I
text youson in a blind panic, and the way you
text when you're panicking is like back to back to
back to back to back text. It was just like,
oh shoot, I'm so sorry. I forgot. Here's the episode, like,
I did record an episode last week. Here it is,
I just forgot to send it to you. And he
(03:14):
responded immediately and was like, hey, what are you talking about.
You actually did send me an episode, and so thanks
for the new episode. This episode puts you ahead by
an extra week. And I immediately felt this wave of
relief come over me. I was like, oh my gosh, okay.
The thought that came into my brain that I had
forgotten to send the episode was a wrong thought. It
was an incorrect thought, and it led me down this
rabbit hole of feeling panicked and feeling bad about myself
(03:37):
and whatever else. And it was an incorrect thought. And
so the correct thought that actually you're a week ahead
brought this wave of relief to me. But then I
was of course like, am I okay? Like is my
brain okay? What is happening? Like what's going on? Where
am I? What day is it? What time is it?
Just kind of like can I even trust my own brain?
But you can see how even though the thought that
(03:58):
I had I'd forgot to send the episode, it was
actually an incorrect thought. And it's not in every case
that we can identify that the thought we're having is
factually incorrect. Like let's just say I had actually forgotten
to send the link for the audio for my episode.
If I had actually forgotten to send it, you know,
there's still a way to stand back from the thought
(04:22):
and kind of tiptoe around the thought and observe the
thought instead of taking it in so completely and making
it about me and well, now I'm a failure and
how could I do this? And I always do this,
and you know all the thoughts that we have attached
to that thought. And this is the practice of meditation,
it's the practice of yoga, it's the practice of self reflection,
(04:42):
of therapy, all of those things. So detaching yourself from
that thought, stepping back from it, giving yourself perspective from
the thought is a really helpful tactic, a helpful tool
that you can use even if the thought were safe
actually true, like I'd forgotten to send the episode, stepping
back from it a a little bit, and instead of
immediately latching onto the thought, grabbing onto it, making it
(05:04):
mean something about me, making up this immediate narrative about it,
I can create some more space around the thought and
you know, maybe not allow the pendulum to swing quite
so far in that one direction. But this in the
case of this story, you can see how drastically the
pendulum swings in terms of how I feel about myself
are just generally how I feel in my body when
(05:26):
I think one thought versus another thought. So this just
goes to show you how powerful our thoughts are, how
powerful the stories are that we tell ourselves in our brains.
The narratives that are running constantly in our brains are
extremely powerful. They dictate how we feel about ourselves. They
dictate how we feel in our bodies moving through any
given day. They can very quickly either make us feel
(05:49):
panicked and anxious and stressed, or they can make us
feel relieved, or they can make us question our own sanity.
And so this practice of stepping back from the thought
is what I want to talk about today. What I want
I want to talk about today is the idea of
asking yourself who or what is narrating my story and
(06:09):
just learning to pay attention to the narrator that is
at work in our stories, because there's always a narrator
at work. And the reason that this idea came to
me is because over the weekend I watched this movie
with my kids. My husband was out of town, and
so on Saturday night we did a movie night and
we watched this new movie that's on Netflix called Harold
and the Purple Cran, which is based off of the
(06:29):
children's book called Harold and the Purple Cran, which I've
not read in decades or you know, since I was
a child. And what I remember about Harold in the
Purple Cran, the children's book, is that it's about this
little boy who has a purple cran and he learns
that he can draw whatever he wants with the purple cran,
and the purple cran, you know, allows him to create
(06:50):
whatever he wants and bring whatever he wants into his life.
So that's the basis of the book, and the movie
is really based off of that idea too. And yet
in the movie, this little boy who has this purple cran,
who learns he can create whatever he wants, overhears the
narrator of the story narrating his story and starts to
wonder to himself, who is this man? Who's this old
(07:11):
man who's narrating my story and goes on a quest
to the real world the quote unquote real world. You
can't see me using air quotes, but I'm using air quotes,
goes on a quest to the real world to track
down this old man who's narrating his story. So it's
similar to The vibes of the movie are very similar
to Elf, where Will Ferrell leaves the North Pole, this magical, mystical,
(07:35):
mysterious place that is fantasy, and comes to New York City,
which is the real world. And so this mystical creature
comes into the real world and runs into all these
hilarious problems because he's an Elf and he's meeting real
people and he's looking for his dad, Harold, and the
Purple Cran has a very similar vibe to it, where
(07:56):
he leaves this fictional story where he's a character and
a children's book and he comes into he draws a
door for himself and comes through the door and enters
into the real world. And Zoe Deschanel's in the movie.
And it's a good movie. I mean, I watch a
lot of kids' movies and some of them are much
better than others, and I would put this one on
the better than others side of things. I enjoyed watching it,
(08:17):
and it's really deep and philosophical and made me think
a lot about how we do create our own realities
and how important our thoughts are, and this concept of
who is the person or what is the thing that
is narrating my story? Because the person narrating my story
or the voice that's narrating my story is literally driving
(08:38):
the story. And when we can tune in to who
are what is narrating our story, we gain a lot
of leverage and a lot of power over creating the
path as we move forward. So I'm watching this movie,
I'm watching Harold on the Purple Cran with my kids.
I'm watching them have this experience with watching this character who,
even as he comes into the real world, carries this
(09:00):
purple cran with him and can draw motorcycle and make
the motorcycle come to life. He can draw a piano
and make the piano come to life. Even things that
he draws with the Purple Cran in the real world
can become quote unquote real. And so in the story,
there's no real separation between the fictional world of the
story and the real world that Harold enters into. He
draws the store and enters into the real world. And
(09:22):
so that had me thinking about that concept, but watching
Harold search out his narrator really got me fixated on
this idea of asking ourselves who is narrating our stories?
And this is one of the reasons why I so
highly recommend that people establish a regular practice of writing
(09:44):
in their life, which is something that I am honestly
a hypocrite about because since I've had my kids, I
have not had a regular practice of writing in my life.
I've had seasons of practicing writing regularly, and especially seasons
where I was working on a publishing project like Write
Your Story that came out last year. When I was
working on the manuscript for my book, I was writing regularly,
but it wasn't really the type of writing practice that
(10:05):
I'm talking about. When I say establish a regular practice
of writing, I'm talking about regularly sitting down to write
about what's going on in your life. So I'm not
really talking about establishing a practice of writing something for
the sake of publication. I'm talking about more what Julia
Cameron says when she urges you to do morning pages,
(10:25):
that you need a space and a time in your
day that is committed to telling the truth about what's
going on with you. And one of the reasons that
I think this is so vital to human beings and
to our creativity is because there are so few spaces
where we feel safe or free enough to admit what's
true to us. I've also been listening to a podcast
(10:48):
episode where Tim Ferriss interviews Martha Beck. This is an
episode that was sent to me and I started listening
to it and was immediately sucked in by what Martha
Beck talks about as her integrity practice. So she basically
challenged herself years ago to tell the truth and only
the truth for one hundred days, and she ended up
(11:08):
losing her marriage, she lost her religion, she was a
Mormon at the time, She lost connections and relationships with
her family members, and she really unpacks this idea of
what does it mean to live in integrity and to
tell the truth, and even comes around on the other
side of things, because you might have the objection, well,
do we always have to tell the whole truth to everybody?
(11:29):
Like is it always helpful to do that? And she
does address that too. She says, you know, sometimes silence
can be the truth too, and she really challenges you
to ask yourself if something is helpful before you say
it out loud, but regardless, speaking the truth in terms
of someone invites you to come to something that you
don't want to go to, and we have trouble saying
(11:50):
I don't want to come to that, and so instead
we make up an excuse. We say, well, I can't go,
and she challenges you to remove the words I can't
from your vocabulary instead say I won't be able to
make it, I won't be there, and really try to
tell the emotional truth to people about what really matters
to us, about what we want to do, about what
brings us joy, and that we begin to access more
(12:12):
joy in our lives through that type of integrity practice.
So it's a great episode. I'll link to it in
the show notes. It's worth a listen for sure. I really, really,
really love Martha Beck. I have gone back and forth
on Tim Ferris's podcast No shade at all on Tim Ferriss,
but just sometimes not totally my style. But Martha Beck
is so wonderful and Tim in this case does a
great job of interviewing her and kind of teasing out
(12:34):
some of those details. So I'll put a link in
the show notes if you want to go listen to
that in its entirety, but it's connected to this because
there are so few spaces in our life where we
feel safe enough to tell the one hundred percent truth.
And I think many of us are probably living in
a situation where we don't feel like there's anybody in
our life that can hear the one hundred percent truth
(12:55):
from us. And maybe more likely is that you feel
that there are certain people who can hear the truth
about certain things and other people who can hear the
truth about other things. But do you have any place
in your life where you can go where you can
be one hundred percent you without holding back. My guess
is most of us could find some growth in that area,
and writing is one way to find that growth, having
(13:18):
a regular practice of writing, of showing up to the
page to simply just tell the truth to yourself about
what's going on, to say, here's how I'm feeling today,
Here's what happened today, Here's how that landed on me,
Here's how I felt about it, Here's what was going
on in my head. And the reason this is connected
to the narrator in your life and the narrator in
your story is because you will begin to see a
(13:40):
thread of words, phrases, thoughts, ideas, narration, sense that someone
is making out of the story that is rising from
the ashes of the regular, boring, mundane, everyday events of
your life. So as you begin to write about what
took place in your day, rite about how that fell
(14:01):
on you, write about what sense you made of it, right,
about the feelings that you had as it took place,
you will begin to pick up threads, to pick up themes,
to hear yourself say words and phrases over and over again.
And some of this is a false narrator at work
in your story. And it becomes very very clear, like
the example that I just gave at the beginning of
(14:22):
this episode, there is a false narrator at work. When
I say, oh my god, I always do this, you know,
I'm so disorganized. This happens to me every time. I'm
always so confused about what's going on. I can't remember this,
I can't remember that there is a false narrator at
work there that's creating a meaning to my story that
is simply not true. Because again in this case, I mean,
(14:44):
it's so interesting to think about this that the truth
is I didn't forget to send the episode. That's just
the truth of the matter. But even if the truth
was I did forget to send the episode, I don't
have to make that mean that I always do this,
or I'm such a failure, or I'm such a screw up,
or I can't you keep anything straight. You know, all
(15:05):
those other stories that I want to add to this
are unnecessary additions to the story. It could just simply be, oh,
I forgot to send the episode, but in this case,
I didn't forget to forget to send the episode, and
so I'm operating off of a false truth, and yet
the narrator still keeps spinning the story. So think about that.
(15:27):
If your thoughts are so powerful that your narrator can
spin the story even when the data is wrong, even
when the data is incorrect, then it doesn't matter what
data is coming in. It doesn't matter what takes place
for you. That I mis grew up, I failed, I'm
never going to get this right. That is the story
that is going to be told over and over and
over again in your life in perpetuity until you die,
(15:50):
because that narrator doesn't need the details or the data
to be correct in order to spin that narrative. If
that is who is narrating story, then that's the story
that's going to be told, no matter the details. I
don't know if you've ever noticed this, but sometime when
you're reading a story, notice how much power the narrator
has over the story. The narrator is the one who
(16:13):
gets to decide what all of this means. There can
be very different information and a story, very different data points,
very different details of what took place, and the narrator
(16:35):
can spin the same narrative. The narrator can be this
is all my fault. I'm such a failure. This always
happens to me. I always do this. I'm such a
screw up. That will be the perpetual narrative until you
decide you want to change the narrative, until you decide
that that narrator no longer has power over your story
and that you would like to upgrade your narrator, you
(16:57):
would like to change the narrator. And think about this again. So,
if the narrator has that much power that it doesn't
matter what data comes in, the narrator is going to
trump the data. So the data was incorrect. The data
was I actually had sent an episode, and my narrator said,
you know, you're such a screw up. Whatever it said.
(17:18):
So it doesn't matter the data that comes in. It
doesn't matter whether it's false or true. The narrator's still
going to spin that story. Even when I realized Houston
texted me and said, oh, no, actually your week ahead.
Then I was like, oh my gosh, I'm such a
dumb dumb you know, like, oh, he probably thinks I'm nuts,
Like I'm losing my mind because I just like fired
off ten text messages in a panic. So notice how
(17:39):
the narrator still did still did the same thing that
it wanted to do. It was still trying to tell
that same old story, You're such a screw up, You're
such a dummy, like everybody probably thinks you're crazy, even
though the data changed. So if the narrator is that powerful,
then imagine if you tuned in to a narrator that
was telling a story about you. Imagine if you just
(18:02):
decided you were going to choose a narrator that was
telling a different story about you. That narrator would have
so much power that it doesn't matter what data comes in,
that the narrator would still trump the data, even if
the data was quote unquote false. And here's a little
tiny sidebar that I want to take for a minute,
because I feel like sometimes we get in our heads
(18:22):
that we have to be accurate about everything, Like for example,
when you're in the self help world and you're talking
about affirmations or mantras or whatever, and people will say, like,
you know, say to yourself, I'm at perfect peace, and
it's like, well, I'm not at perfect piece, Okay, I'm anxious,
I'm feeling stressed. And we're so focused and fixated on
this idea of getting the details right, getting the data right.
(18:47):
But I think the point is that if your narrator
says I'm at perfect peace, it doesn't matter the data
that comes in. The truth of the story will be
I'm at perfect peace. If the narrator says I'm I
am abundant, the universe is abundant. I live in a
world where everything I need is accessible to me and
I can always have access to it, then it doesn't
(19:07):
matter the data that comes in because the data will
fit under the arc of the narrative. The narrator is
the one who makes the meaning of the story. So
the narrator has complete control the narrator, whether the episode
is in the inbox or not in the inbox, whether
it was posted on time or not posted on time,
the narrator's telling the same story. What a screwup. You're
(19:27):
never going to get this right. You're such a loser,
you know, whatever the story is. So this is how
much power our narrators have. And I wanted to pose
the question, who or what is narrating your story? What
is the narration that's happening inside of your story? And
one really powerful way to tune into the narrator is
to sit down and write about what's happening to you.
(19:48):
Because a lot of times our narrators are happening outside
of our conscious awareness. This is certainly true for me,
Like I said, I have fallen out of a practice
of regular writing. I'm such a hypocrite because I tell
everyone to do it, but I'm actually not doing it myself.
And so I made the decision this morning, right before
I sat down to record this episode. This whole thing
happened where I thought I forgot the the file, and
(20:09):
I didn't actually forget the file, And I thought, you
know what I need. I need to create a regular
practice of writing in my life again, because I need
to tune in to who is narrating my story so
that I can reroute the narrative. Because if I can
upgrade the narrator, I can upgrade the whole story. It
actually doesn't matter the data and the details that are
coming in, I think, at least for me, I get
fixated on fixing the details of the story when actually
(20:33):
what needs to be changed is the narrator. The details
of the story don't matter nearly as much as the
narrator because the narrator's the one who's making sense of
the details. So if the details that come in are
you know, my bank accounts at zero? Or the details
that come in are my boyfriend broke up with me?
Or the details that come in are you know I
got in a fight with my husband this morning. Or
the details that come in are it's total chaos with
(20:55):
the kids recently, or you know, I'm at odds with
a family member, or gosh, there's this neighbor who's just
driving me absolutely nuts, or whatever it is. Whatever the
details of the story are, the narrator trumps the details
because the narrator is the one who makes sense of
those details. So maybe you get in a fight with
your husband and the narrator says to you, I'm so unlovable.
(21:17):
You know, this always happens with us. It's all my fault.
I'm never going to have the relationship that I want
to have. Maybe that's the narration that's happening. Well, you
wouldn't know that unless you tune into the narration, and
you wouldn't tune into the narration unless you're doing some
sort of self reflective exercise like therapy, or like sitting
down to write about your life, or any number of
(21:38):
other self reflective exercises that you could be doing. So
it's not like writing is the only one, but writing
is just a really powerful one. So you have those options.
The option can either be that the narration says, you know,
I'll never find the love that satisfies me, or my
relationships will always be rocky like this, or maybe the
narration says, you know, we have a lot of trust
(22:00):
and respect for one another, and we didn't see eye
to eye this morning, and we probably didn't handle it great,
and we're going to figure this out later and everything
is going to be okay. All as well. Upgrading to
that second narrator changes the way you see the details.
The details to the story stay the same. I've got
in a fight with my husband this morning, but the
(22:22):
narration changes. The narration doesn't say, oh, it's always going
to be this way, We're never going to find our
way through this. The narration says, we have a lot
of trust and respect for each other, and we're going
to figure this out. We're really competent people, we have
a lot of love for each other. We're going to
figure this out. Or maybe the narration says, you know what,
something really needs to change because I don't want to
(22:43):
live like this anymore. We've been doing this too often
and something really needs to change. So I need therapy,
or I need more supporter, I need friends to speak
into this for me, or I need my husband to
give me X or whatever it is. But there there
are many different ways to narrate the same set of details,
(23:03):
and narrating the details differently makes you feel different about
the story. It's so so important to know who or
what is narrating your story. What is the narration that's
happening in your life right now? Maybe you don't exactly know.
I'll tell you one really sure fire. Way to tune
into this is to find an episode or an experience
(23:25):
in your life that is extremely charged. So just like
what happened to me forty five minutes ago when I
thought that I hadn't send the episode on time, Just
like that, find an experience in your life that sort
of lights you up. So that could either be in
a positive way, like you have a really joyful experience
and you're like, oh, that, I just wish I could
have that experience every day of my life. That was
(23:46):
just so wonderful, or maybe the electricity aspect of the
experience is a little bit more negative. Maybe it's a
little more negatively charged, like the experience I have this morning,
and you kind of feel yourself all over just be
likes or your palm sweat or or something about the
experience just doesn't feel good in your body. It's like
(24:06):
I didn't like the way that that fell. I didn't
like the way that that landed on me. So that
sensation in your body is evidence that there's some type
of narration happening, that there's some sort of thought that's
occurring to you. The thought is the same as a narration,
a thought that's occurring to you a voice that's telling
you about this experience that is driving the situation. So
(24:29):
maybe the voice is saying, you know, it's always going
to be this way, You're never going to get it right.
You're such a screw up. You know, you're you're a fool.
You get taken advantage of whatever it is. The voice
is saying something to you that's creating a sensation inside
of your body. It doesn't start with sensation, but a
sensation is an excellent place to enter in because you
can tell of this is charged, then there's a narrator
(24:51):
behind it. Okay, So I'm going to walk you through
a really simple three step process that I have used
when I have an experience like this that's charged. This
has become somewhat second nature for me, which is why
I could have that experience with the podcast this morning
(25:13):
and then immediately kind of dissect it because I've done
this on paper so many times, and so I've taught
myself how to do this pretty quickly. But the three
step process looks like this. So you have an experience
in your life that's charged, you go, oh, there's something here.
There's a narrator at work here that I want to
know more about So I'm going to get curious and
(25:34):
I'm going to sit down and write about it. So
step one is just to write the details of the
situation as they took place. Try in this step to
stick with the data points that have come in, to
stick with just here's what happened. First, this happened, Then
this happened. You know. First I realized I hadn't sent
the podcast episode. Second, I panicked. Third, I texted Houston
(25:56):
Rapid Fire six texts. Here's what the text said. He
responded and said, no, no, no problem, there's an episode
already up. And then I felt huge relief, you know.
So first step is just to kind of dictate what
took place, the data points that came into the situation.
The second step is to begin to identify some of
the feelings that were present there. And so there was
(26:19):
a feeling of panic for me, and there was a
feeling of relief. And that was the one thing I
identified very quickly after all of this happened, is that
the pendulum had swung so quickly from like my body
being an utter panic and fight or flight to all
of a sudden being like phew, wow, okay, crisis averted
in about thirty seconds quite literally between sending a text
and receiving one back, and so that alerted me to
(26:41):
the fact that there was probably something more going on here.
And then the third step is to begin to identify
the thoughts or the narrator that are driving the story.
And so the first thought that I identified in this
story was I forgot to send the episode, which in
this case was a false thought. And there are may
be thoughts in your story or narrations of your story
(27:04):
that are also false narrations. It's like, that's just simply
not true. That's just not the way that it happened.
But if the narration is you know, I got in
a fight with my husband and that's a true data
point in the story and that's actually what took place,
then maybe the thoughts that are attached to that thought
are the more toxic thoughts that are kind of dragging
you down. So maybe there's thoughts attached to the fight
(27:26):
with your husband things like, you know, this always happens
to us, or he doesn't understand me, or he never
sees me, or you know, he really has a problem
with his anger or something like that, or maybe it's
more about you, maybe the thoughts that are driving the
story are more like, I'm unlovable, or I'm invisible to him,
(27:47):
or I'm not important to him, I'm not important to anyone,
whatever it is for you, Identifying those thoughts or the
narrations that are taking place in the story that are
really driving the sensations of the story and driving the
narrative forward is the third step in sort of stepping
back from the situation and beginning to see it from
a more neutral place. And when you can start to
(28:08):
see it from a more neutral place, even though in
my example, I had the experience of realizing very quickly
that my data point was off. So I thought I
sent the I thought I didn't send the episode. Oh
I actually did send the episode. So on the one hand,
I felt tremendous relief, I felt a shift in the
charge of the physical sensation. But at the same time,
(28:29):
like I mentioned, I went from being like, Oh, you're
such an idiot, you didn't send the episode on time,
to being like, oh, my gosh, you're such an idiot.
You thought you didn't send the episode, but you actually
did send the episode. Like so, the narrator stayed the same.
The narration of you're such an idiot. People probably think
you're crazy, or you know, your producer probably thinks you're crazy.
Stayed the same regardless of the data point changing. So
(28:53):
the most powerful column in this kind of three column exercise,
and you don't have to do it separately in columns,
but if you do, if you kind of list the
data first and then the sensations second, and then the
thoughts or a narration's third, the most powerful column is
that third column because the sensations, you know, you could
have a physical sensation, like I could have the sensation
(29:14):
of anxiety, and I could step back from the situation
and say, like to myself, Okay, people make mistakes. Even
if I forgot to send the episode. That is an
honest mistake. Yesterday felt like a Sunday. It was actually
a Monday because it was a holiday. Whatever, no worries,
no problem, This is not heart surgery. It's podcast. If
(29:36):
an episode doesn't go up on a Tuesday, okay, So
what I mean? Sure, is it nice to be consistent
and post it episode every Tuesday? Yeah? But is anybody
gonna die because the episode didn't go up until halfway
through the day on Tuesday? No? Now, Shifting the narrative,
or shifting the narrator in this case, is going to
be extra challenging. If the narrow pathways. If the narrator
(29:59):
that you've been listening to for a really long time
has always said, you're such a screw up, you always
do this, you know, you can't keep anything straight, you're
so disorganized, whatever, whatever. If that's what the narrator has
always said to you, then shifting the narrative probably isn't
going to happen in a single day. Which is why
the writing can be so powerful, because it begins to
show you in a very clear way, these voices, these
(30:22):
narrators that are present in our lives, that are simply
driving how we feel about our day to day experiences,
that are actually creating the experiences that we have because
creating it from the standpoint of I think I've always
thought of creating your own reality as this sort of mystical,
magical thing. But what I think it is is it's
(30:43):
actually like, Okay, you're handed a piece of clay that's fairly,
you know, shapeless, and your thoughts are shaping the piece
of clay. Your thoughts are taking that raw matter and
turning it into something with form, and your thoughts can
either say, Yeah, this happens to people. People forget stuff
all the time, it's not a big deal. Or your
(31:04):
thoughts can say like, oh, you always forget stuff. You're impossible.
You know you can't. Nobody can rely on you for anything.
You're absolutely impossible. Depending on how your thoughts move through
your mind, those thoughts are going to shape your reality
quite differently, and so simply by bringing attention to the
thoughts that are taking place, by bringing attention to the
narrator that's at work, you can shift and shape and
(31:28):
change your story and change your experience of your own life. Now,
one question worth asking that you may not have an
immediate answer to is who is this narrator? Like where
did this voice even come from? You may not have
an immediate answer to that. It may not be like, Oh,
that's my dad, or that's my mom, or that was
my high school basketball coach or whomever you know, that's
(31:49):
the pastor that I grew up under for my whole life,
that's the evangelical church, whatever it is. You may not
have an immediate answer to who that voice is or
where it came from, but it is a question worth
asking because you can begin to see that these voices
simply are not you, that you are something outside of that,
that you are not the one telling you you're such
(32:11):
a screw up, that that's just a thought that doesn't
even belong to you, that was handed to you by
someone else, by magazines, by the world, by culture, by
your teachers, by you know, the public school system, by
by your religion, by whatever it is, something that was
handed to you by somebody else that does not belong
to you, that you can easily put down and still
(32:35):
retain one hundred percent authenticity and integrity to yourself. In fact,
probably more authenticity and integrity to yourself by not berating
yourself or making a simple mistake. And maybe you're saying
to me, Okay, well, you made a simple mistake, you
forgot to send a podcast. But the type of mistakes
that we're talking about that I've made are much bigger
than that. You know, I've choices that I've made have
(32:57):
ruined my life or ruined someone else's life, or you know,
there's so much more at stake in my story, Ali
than there is in your story. And I will tell
you from personal experience that even when the stakes are
very high in your personal story that upgrading your narrator
can shift your experience of your life for good. If
(33:18):
I think back to my life ten years ago when
I was in the middle of a really dramatic divorce,
and my life now, the essence, the vibration, as many
people say in the spiritual self help community, the vibration
of my life, the essence of it, the feeling of it,
the just the sense of being inside of it is
so dramatically different than it was back then. And the
(33:42):
only reason for that is because I upgraded my narrative
slowly over time, because I committed myself to choosing a
different narrator in my story, because I refused to accept
that life had to be this hard, horrible way, and
I began to shape the raw material, the raw matter,
(34:03):
the clay in my hands a little bit differently by
shifting the way that I thought about things. And my
life is not perfect now, but the sense of being
inside of my life is so much lighter, and so
much freer and so much better than it was before.
And I like to remind myself of that all the
time because it also reminds me that I can continue
(34:27):
to upgrade that narrative even here, and the parts of
my life that are extremely frustrating to me now, and
the parts of myself that I'm like, ooh, I don't
love that about me, I realize and recognize I can
continue to shift the raw material that's in my hands.
I can continue to shape that into something better, something
that I would more prefer As I continue to lean
(34:48):
into this invitation to upgrade my narrative. I'm not done growing,
I'm not done changing, I'm not done evolving. I have
a lot of evolution left to do while I'm still
here on planet Earth. And it's something that is not
only really important to me to become the highest version
of myself, but it is also something that is just
(35:09):
like a beautiful invitation that we get to receive and
to answer to say, like, I'm going to learn how
to enjoy my life more. I'm going to learn how
to invite more joy into my life. In fact, this
is a great place to end because that same conversation
with Tim Ferriss and Martha Back, which I'll put in
the show notes, she talks about bodily joy, which sounds
(35:30):
kind of sexual. She does not mean it that way,
but She talks about bodily joy as a differentiator from
joy in the mind, where you're like, when we think
of joy, like how could I create more joy in
my life? It's like ooh, massages or sitting by a
pool or going on a fancy vacation or driving this
really nice car or whatever like we tend to as
human beings. Just think about what do I want to achieve? Okay,
(35:52):
I want to achieve this success. I want to be
on the New York Times list. I want to be
remembered and important and drive this nice car and go
these nice places and have these important friends. But when
you think about bodily joy, so forget you know, all
the stuff that your mind thinks of when you think,
like what would give me joy? Just think about like
the experience of joy in your body. She has Tim
(36:13):
on the podcast list three things he loves to taste,
three things he enjoys the touch of, three things he
likes the sound of, you know, just kind of grounding
you into your senses like that. And this was such
an epiphany for me because I'm like, there's joy in
my mind where it's like if only I could get X,
Y and Z, you know, an it might be even
(36:34):
something that's really important to me, Like, you know, Matt
and I would really like to grow our family. I'm like,
I would just love to have another baby, Like that
would just bring me so much joy. I would really
love to have another baby. And having the awareness that
that's not a given, that it's not guaranteed that we
will for sure get to have another baby is just like, oh,
that kind of breaks my heart a little bit. And
so even thinking about that, like is using your mind
(36:58):
to say, if only I had another baby, then I
would feel joy. But what she's trying to get you
to think about is like the bodily sensations of joy,
having joy in the body. Like what is it for
you that when you think about it, or when you
get that invitation or when you have that experience that
just really like lights you up in your body that
you just feel it like an electricity that moves through
(37:19):
your body. It's funny how it's different stuff, you know,
Like I can have that feeling of electricity and of
bodily joy when I'm just with my two kids, who
I already have. I can have that feeling in that
sensation just having a really intimate conversation with my husband,
who I adore, I can have that feeling just like
being out in the yard and listening to the crickets
(37:41):
and hearing the rain hit the roof, and you know,
tasting mint chocolate chip ice cream, and like, there's so
many different ways that I can experience that bodily joy.
So she really challenges you to move from the joy
that your mind wants to think up like if only
I had ten thousand dollars, or if only I had
this baby, or if only had X, Y or Z
or whatever, then I would feel joy, moving into what
(38:02):
does it feel like to actually feel joy in your
body right now? Why did I bring that up? Because
here's the reason that I know that. I know that.
I know that as you begin to refine your narrator
and tune into the current narrator and upgrade the narrator
through this process of writing it down, that you invite
(38:23):
more of that bodily joy into your life. It's real, true,
grounded for real joy that has nothing to do with
the dollars in your bank account or the car you
drive or any of that stuff. It just is just joy,
like pure bodily joy of being in your life. And
I can tell you that I have that experience in
(38:44):
my life now in a way that I didn't have
it ten years ago when I was in this toxic
cycle with my ex, and there were so many things
that I wanted to happen in my life that never
could have happened if I didn't take the step out
of that story and into a new story. And so
I know it's possible. I've lived it. I have up.
I've created my story so many times before, and I
feel like I've been in a rut for the last
couple of years trying to carve out this new story
(39:07):
from my mind instead of from my heart, instead of
from my body. I invented in my mind these things
I wanted to achieve and was trying to carve that
out using my creative manifestation power, my ability to mold
the story from my mind, and it really hasn't been
working for me. And it's been disappointing on so many levels.
(39:27):
And there's been a lot of grief, and there's been hardship,
and that's also just part of life. But what I
think I'm learning and what I will invite you into,
is dropping from mind into heart into body and following
what brings you joy in your body and realizing that
so much of that joy is right here if we
can step away from the narrator that is literally ruining
(39:47):
our lives and ruining our experience of our lives. Like
imagine the same data, same data I forgot to send
the podcast, different narrator, totally different experience. Narrator says you're
such a loser. The other narrator says, no big deal,
no problem, people make mistakes, No big deal. We'll post
it later today. So that's my invitation for you. I'm
(40:10):
going to invite you, actually specifically to join me in
waking up twenty minutes before you would normally wake up,
and in my house, in my life, sleep is so precious,
so I would not ask you to do this if
I was not also doing it myself. I have been trying,
actually to wake up at five am, which is more
than twenty minutes before I used to wake up. I
normally wake up around seven or six thirty when my
(40:30):
kids get up, but I've been waking up at five
because if I can just get in the shower, get
my shower, get a cup of coffee, sit down, and
get twenty minutes of writing in then I am already
ahead of the game in terms of being able to
clearly see the narrators that are driving my story. The
narrator is the one that's responsible for shaping the raw materials.
(40:51):
So don't worry about the raw materials of your story.
The raw materials of your story are kind of meaningless.
What's much more meaningful, at least, I'll say this. What's
much more meaningful is the narrator who shapes those raw
experiences into something beautiful. So I invite you to do
that with me. I invite you to wake up twenty
minutes before you would normally wake up, and just begin
(41:12):
writing about experiences in your life, telling yourself the truth,
finding one space, this one space in your life where
you can tell yourself the full and complete truth, and
you do not have to perform for anybody. It is
the raw, raw truth. You can be as mad as
you are, as sad as you are, as overwhelmed as
you are. Whatever it is that you need to feel,
you get to feel it on the page, and you
(41:33):
can observe the narrators that are work in your life.
I will see you back here next week on the
write your Story podcast, and I can't wait to hear
how it goes
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