Once upon a time, there was a frickin’ rockstar who kept telling themselves a life story that wasn’t working for them. One day, our hero decided to make a change and has never been happier.
We each have a story that we tell ourselves about the events of our life. It is up to you to make sure this story is helping, not harming your happiness. You are the writer, director and lead character, so you are in charge… it’s time to own your story!
Learn how in this week’s Goal Success by Choice.
Amuse Bouche
Before we get to today’s post, I offer you this light “amuse-bouche” to entertain your mind before we get down to business. Like any other amuse-bouche, you may hate my “dad joke,” but it is worth every penny that you paid for it, right?
They told me I would never be good at poetry because I am dyslexic.
The joke’s on them, I have made three jugs and a vase so far, and they are all lovely!
Goal Success by Choice
Do you have dreams that you are trying to make come true? Do you have a goal that you are trying to crush? Success doesn’t happen by chance. Success is a series of choices that can make you unstoppable. Goal Success by Choice helps you make these choices to move you closer to your goals.
Are you ready to help build a world where no goal dies of loneliness?
Stories Are Powerful, What Happens When Don’t Love Yours?
When you understand, that what you’re telling is just a story. It isn’t happening anymore. When you realize the story you’re telling is just words, when you can just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we’ll figure out who you’re going to be.
Chuck Palahniuk
Welcome to this week’s Goal Success by Choice post. I am grateful and humbled that you continue to choose to read my musings. I appreciate you all!
This week, I will be talking about storytelling and owning your story. Our brain loves stories, and they are an essential part of how we make sense of the world around us. But, more on that later.
Since I am talking about stories this week, I will start and end with a story and share a tool for life success between them. That means that this post will be a little longer than usual. But, because your brain loves stories, I hope that it doesn’t feel too long and that it is engaging and entertaining.
Ready? Let’s go…
Out In The Cold
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The alarm started blaring at 5am on a cold January morning.
There was no solace in my snooze button today; I needed to get my ass out of bed. In just a couple of hours (at 8:30), I need to be in the room for a pointless meeting at work. Before going to work, a shower was a must, and before that, I wanted some exercise. So, my time was limited, and I needed to get moving.
Turning off the alarm, I headed for the bathroom. I used the facilities, brushed my teeth and donned my workout clothes. With the freezing weather, outdoor exercise was out of the question; it would be an indoor gym session for me. I quietly snuck down the stairs to avoid waking up my wife and headed for the dining room. Before walking out the door, there was a routine to be had. I quickly removed the peel from a banana, grabbed my big water bottle, and sat at the table with my iPad. As I ate my pre-workout breakfast, I wrote my daily journal – something I had been doing for a little over a year.
At 5:45, I walked out the door. I jogged to the garage to get out of the cold as quickly as possible. I started the car, left the garage and was at the gym about five minutes later. After a quick stop in the locker room, I grabbed a towel and my water and headed to the treadmill for a short warmup run.
My body was on the treadmill and running, but my mind was elsewhere. One would think I would be beaming with pride. I was nearing my ninety pounds lost mark and was able to run just seven months after weighing in at 325 pounds. Instead, my mind was full of stress, anxiety and dread.
Like most recent workdays, I was not excited about the prospects of heading to the office where I had worked for ten years. In addition to an overflowing to-do list and a team that needed my support, my calendar was jam-packed with back-to-back meetings. I started my day with a meeting that would be a complete waste of my time. Even worse, none of the things on my agenda for the day were things that would bring me excitement, joy or a feeling of productivity. It was a difficult time, the environment was feeling a bit toxic, and I struggled to keep my head above water. The only thing keeping me in the job was a big paycheck and the recently improved work/life balance boundaries I had established with my boss. A boss who was just let go from the company.
My mind was so preoccupied with thoughts about work that I essentially coasted through a quick workout on autopilot. Then I headed for the door to get ready for work. After a quick shower, I got dressed, grabbed my coat and bag for work and was on the road. I quickly stopped at my favorite coffee shop, said hello to my barista, got my coffee and made the slushy drive to work.
One of my team members greeted me at the door and had a few questions for me. Without pausing to focus on the questions, I gave quick answers and headed to my pointless meeting. Once the meeting started, I was mostly disengaged and worked through my to-do list. The only reason I even attended the meeting was an expectation that all IT leaders attended this daily meeting. However, we seldom spoke and did little more than ratchet up the stress for the people in the room responsible for getting things done. Alas, I was there.
Fifteen minutes into the meeting, things started to get a little strange. One of two VPs filling in for our recently departed boss came to the door and asked a peer to step out. They walked away to have a different conversation, not an unfamiliar scenario. Two minutes later, an HR coordinator stepped into the room and grabbed my peer’s belongings. Oh shit, she was just let go!
Another five minutes passed when the day took another turn. The other VP, my current manager, walked towards the conference room. Just then, everything became clear. Our IT team was going through the downsizing that many of us feared was imminent. This would be the last day working at the company for multiple people.
Even more apparent was who my manager was coming to talk to: I was next.
I grabbed my things and silently walked with my manager to a small HR conference room, where I was greeted by my longtime HR partner. My stone-faced manager and clearly upset HR partner nervously read a script about a staff reduction and let me know I would be departing. We went through a checklist of details, and then my HR partner walked me to the front door.
Just like that, my ten-year career with the company was over. I was unemployed with only my severance to sustain me until I got another job.
Later in the day, I learned that about a dozen people had been laid off. The two leaders who were let go would have their teams combined, and those teams would now report to a single leader. The new leader: my best friend. She was suddenly presented with a slew of upsetting information. Her team was being eliminated, two of her friends were let go, and she would have to take over.
What a terrible day!
What’s Your Story?
How many of you have stories like this one? The stories about the twists and turns that your life has taken to get to the point you are today. Maybe you have stories about some of the following events:
• Loss of a job
• Starting a new job and building a career
• Meeting the love of your life and getting married
• Having your spouse leave you
• Celebrating the birth of a child
• Mourning the loss of a loved one
I know that these big items just scratch the surface of the stories you may have inside you. Similarly, my story above is just one of the thousands of stories that comprise the first half of my life. While every story in your life matters, they are but one drop in the ocean of your life story.
Stories about individual events are simply the scenes in a multi-act production that is our lives. Our life is one big story that often lasts for eighty years or more.
Why do stories matter? Because humans are natural storytellers, it is in our DNA. This has been confirmed in many scientific studies, including by neuroscientists studying our brains. According to one study, when we hear a good story, our brain’s neural activity increases five times. Joe Lazauskas, the author of The Storytelling Edge, explains this neural activity as follows.
Essentially our brains run on electrical pulses, and when we hear stories, our brains light up. Neuroscientists have this saying that neurons that fire together, wire together. So, when we’re hearing a story and our brain is lighting up, you have all of these neurons that are then wiring together, which triggers us to remember more of the information we’re getting.
Stories also have a chemical impact on our bodies. When we hear stories, our brains release a neurochemical called oxytocin. This is the same chemical released when a mother is with her baby, earning it the nickname “the love chemical.”
Stories cause us to experience the same chemical reaction as love, which makes us remember them and care about the story.
Biography or Tall Tale?
We view our entire lives through the lens of storytelling, but that lens can sometimes be rose-colored or worse. The stories that we tell ourselves are often one-sided works of fiction, but we believe them.
Do you ever think back on a story in your life and remember how great things were… you know, the good old days? Were they really that good, or are you just leaving out the bad parts?
Do you ever relay a story about a time when everything sucked? Did everything really suck? Was there nothing positive happening?
No story is ever one hundred percent positive or negative; there is always a touch of both when you look at them objectively. In fact, the same story can be told from different perspectives and have an entirely different theme.
I will share a secret with you so long as you promise not to tell. Ok, here goes… nobody is fact-checking the stories in your brain. You can tell them however you like.
Seriously, how you tell your life stories matters. By modifying how you process and retell your story, you can make yourself miserable by focusing on old trauma. But, your old stories (or current story) can also bring you joy and happiness if you look for the positives in the story. Even if you can’t find the positives in the particular story, you can look at them as the building blocks for greatness.
If you can tell yourself your story in any way you like, why wouldn’t you choose the version that brings you happiness? The same principle applies when you tell your story to others. Simply replace the story you have been telling from a negative perspective with a new one that is more positive. It is your story!
Rewriting Your Life Story
Are you ready to change your perspective on a larger scale? It is time to rewrite your entire life story. This exercise isn’t as daunting as it sounds and can completely change your view of yourself.
Think of your life as one long story being told in a movie. Like a good movie, your life story has a compelling protagonist or lead character. That’s you! Next, there are a few key acts to include in your story:
• The Backstory: what are the key events of your origin story? What are the defining characteristics of your personality and behaviors?
• Rising Action: this is where the main character faces conflict, problems and excitement. This is also where the plot twists happen and build towards the climax. Also, this is where you may find repeating events that may depict patterns.
• The Climax: in this section, the main character resolves the conflicts, makes a decision, and the crisis ends. There could be multiple climaxes in a movie the length of your life story.
• The Current Story: the action traditionally winds down after the climax before reaching the ending. There are still some plot points to be achieved, but the feeling is undoubtedly pivoting towards a resolution.
• The Ending: and they lived happily ever after… or did they? The ending of your story is where the loose ends get tied up, and resolutions get reached.
Write Your Story
With those key points in mind, it is time to write your life story as it stands today. This could be as simple as a single paragraph per section or could be more elaborate. It is your story; there is no right way.
What is your backstory? In a paragraph (or as much length as you’d like), summarize the main character’s characteristics and their background story.
What is your rising action? Write down the timeline and story of the influential and important scenes in your journey? Hint: start by looking at the scenes from your past that you replay frequently (positive and negative)?
What is your movie’s climax? There can be more than one. Summarize each of the climaxes in your life story? What were the big turning points when you figured something out? What are those moments when you changed? These should all be things that have already happened.
What’s your current story? Where are you today? After your movie’s last climax, what events occurred that created the present-day you? What scenes are currently happening in your life?
What’s the ending? Ok, your life hasn’t reached an end yet, so you have nothing to write here, right? Wrong! This is your story; you can forecast the ending. How do you see the story unfolding? What’s next? What does the main character do? What scenes do you still expect to occur?
What is the overall plot of your story? Is it a comedy, tragedy or some other genre?
Be Your Movie Critic (and Editor!)
Now that your movie is written, you can unleash your inner movie critic and evaluate it.
Are you satisfied with this story?
Is it what you want your story to be?
What would you like to be different?
Good news, you are the writer, actor and director of this movie! You can make any changes you want and rewrite any scene you’d like, and you don’t even have to pay overtime to your cast and crew.
You can even change the scenes from your past. Yes, the past happened, but it is over and no longer exists. It only exists in the scenes you replay in your movie. Your life experience may have been what inspired the story you tell, but it cannot impact your future unless you continue to tell the same story. There may have been things that happened “in the past” that you have included in your story, but what you tell going forward is what will determine how your story will continue to unfold.
Said differently, you have complete ownership of the story. Your movie and your story create the life you live, not the other way around.
So, how are you going to rewrite your story? Which traumas and pains are you going to rewrite as powerful lessons? Which successes will you attribute to being the results of your failures?
Now that you are in the midst of your rewrite, how will your present-day story and ending change? What do you want today and tomorrow to look like in your life? What will bring you the feelings of happiness, joy and success that you are seeking? Write these into your story today.
Tip: don’t let perfect become the enemy of good. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by this process; you don’t have to do this all at once. Your story rewrite can happen over days, weeks or months. You can even practice with individual scenes and micro-stories to get started. The important part is that your start!
And… Action!
Once you have identified your rewritten story, it is time to bring it to life. Without taking action to activate this new story, it is just words on a page. The same old scenes and old interpretations of your story will come rushing back, and you will be right back where you started. Your new story needs to replace the old story, so your brain needs to believe it. This means that you have to act to make it real.
How do you activate a new story? You do it through your habits and your goals.
Habits
Habits are powerful, and, like it or not, they define who you are. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, presents the following definition of habits and their impact.
Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day.
Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits. How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits. How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits.
What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray.
Sounds a lot like your old story is being told through habits, right? So, you need to change your habits and reprogram your brain. This reprogramming will require you to repeat a new habit every day for 21 days, the average time required to create a new habit. And you can choose how to build the new habit:
• Write 3-5 affirmations that capture the essence of your new story, and read them to yourself at the beginning of each day or before you go to sleep.
• Journal for 21 days and reflect on times through the day when your old story snuck in and remind yourself of the new story. Make sure you give yourself a big pat on the back for even noticing the old story creeping into your brain; that alone is progress!
• Record a video of yourself telling your old story and end by explaining why you are committed to changing this story. Watch the video every day for 21 days.
Any of these three exercises will be an effective tool to change your old story habit. If you need more exercises or somebody to help with accountability, that’s something a coach could do. Hint, hint…
Ok, time to commit to how you are going to yell “action” on the set of your story. Fill in the blanks:
I will activate my story by doing ____________________________________ every day for 21 days at (time of day) _______________. I make this easy to remember by ____________________ (e.g., set a reminder, post a note where I will see it, stage my needed materials someplace convenient, etc.).
Goals
The second powerful tool to change your story is through your goals. If your Current Story section isn’t what you want it to be, you can change it. By setting a few goals and building a plan to accomplish them, you can change your life. Plus, by doing so, you will be able to add a powerful new scene to your story – more on that in a minute.
I will not do a deep dive into the goal-setting process here. You can get a helpful guide to setting goals by downloading my free eBook, Goal Success Quick Start Guide.
Click to Get Your Free Copy
Your Life Story: Reboot
Have you noticed how many television shows and movies are reboots? It seems like everything we see today is a new take on a previously-produced show. Be prepared; your story will need a reboot in the future too.
Guess what? You are still alive, and your story is still unfolding and adding new scenes every day. This means the new story that you just wrote for yourself is incomplete.
Not only are you adding new scenes, but those new scenes may shift your perspective on some old plot lines and story arcs. It is nearly impossible to fully process how the events of your life connect to your past in real-time, so you have to reflect on them after the fact. Steve Jobs said something similar in one of his popular quotes:
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."
This means that you will want to dust off your story and make some edits on a regular basis. Each time you make edits to your story, make sure to repeat the steps to replace the old story in your brain with the new one. Habits and goals are powerful allies!
How often do you need to reboot your story? Only you can answer this question. But, the best answer I can give you is two-fold:
• Reboot your story as you complete any significant new scenes
• Reboot your story when it is no longer working for you
The challenge for you is to identify when these things happen and challenge yourself to revisit your story. It is your story; own it and make it what you want or need it to be. Don’t be a prisoner of your own story.
One more tip before I share my rewritten story… it may be helpful or even therapeutic to look for opportunities to share your story with others. Whether you use your story to build a leadership “brand” that you share with your team, write a blog, or just tell your story to a mentor or friend, sharing it is an effective way to help your new story stick.
Ok… now let me share a rewritten version of my story from above. You will see that all of the facts are still there; I am just processing them differently. I am using the benefit of hindsight and commitment to my happiness to adjust the story I was telling myself.
New Beginnings
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The alarm started blaring at 5am on a cold January morning.
No snooze button for me this morning; I had stuff to do! I had plenty of time to get through my morning routine, squeeze in a workout and then get to my hectic workday.
By 5:45, I had my gym clothes on and was out the door. No matter how short my workout was, I was going to get some sweat flowing. It was going to be a way to warm up on this cold morning, a chance to process my plan for the day and, most importantly, another step in my ongoing fitness journey. I was already down more than eighty pounds and wasn’t stopping there.
I checked in at the gym, made a quick stop in the locker room, grabbed a towel and my water and hopped on the treadmill for a short warmup run. I got my energy up with my favorite running playlist and started thinking through the events planned for today. I wanted to be in the office by 8:30 to sit in a meeting to support several of my team members. Then I had a variety of other things on my calendar to work through before heading out of the office before 6.
My biggest goal for the day was to be a calming, supportive presence for my team as they worked through a difficult time. Budgets were tight, the workload was significant, there was likely to be some downsizing, and there was a ton of uncertainty. My boss (our IT leader) was fired a few weeks before, and everybody was trying to cling onto some sense of normalcy. My presence, some leadership and a joke or two would help them in a way that only I could.
To be honest, I wasn’t immune to the anxiety associated with the uncertainty. But, my wife and I had discussed it, and I was secure even if the worst-case scenario happened and I lost my job. So, the only thing within my control was to show up and bring my A-game whenever possible. Most importantly, I needed to game-face the situation and be a good role model for those who worked for me.
Wow, my mind was so active that my workout was done before I knew it! It was time to go home, get ready for my day and head out the door. I even left myself plenty of time to stop for coffee on the way to the office and to say “hi” and catch up with my favorite barista. Her cheery and chatty personality always put a smile on my face.
I arrived at my office and was greeted by one of my team members greeted me at the door. I answered her questions the best I could and headed to my big meeting. The meeting included a small team of project managers, business analysts and software developers working on a software system that would be installed in all of our stores. The entire IT leadership team, including me, also attended the meeting to support, facilitate any needed decisions and clear obstacles.
Fifteen minutes into the meeting, things started to get a little strange. One of two VPs filling in for our recently departed boss came to the door and asked a peer to step out. They walked away to have a different conversation, not an unfamiliar scenario. Two minutes later, an HR coordinator stepped into the room and grabbed my peer’s belongings. Oh shit, she was just let go!
Another five minutes had passed, and the other VP, my current manager, walked towards the conference room. That’s when it became clear that today was the day for our IT downsizing. Several people would be leaving the business involuntarily. That always sucks, but sometimes it is what is best for the business and often for each person.
After surviving at least ten downsizings in as many years with the company, this would be the day that I left. As I said, I was prepared for this, and it was the right business decision. To be honest, I was also ready to go and was planning to start looking for my next career move soon. But none of this makes it any less nerve-wracking when it happens.
I grabbed my things and silently walked with my manager to a small HR conference room, where I was greeted by my longtime HR partner. My stone-faced manager and clearly upset HR partner nervously read a script about a staff reduction and let me know I would be departing.
We reviewed my severance agreement, and it was very generous, exactly what I had hoped, and I was treated very fairly. I asked my list of questions I had written down ahead of time. We talked about when I could reach out to my old team. We went through a checklist of details, and then my HR partner walked me to the front door. I thanked her, wished her the best and walked to my car.
I had just been given a gift!
My generous severance would allow me to take a sabbatical for a few months before jumping into my next job. It let me finish my weight loss journey, write a book, become a runner and many other things that would have been much harder working full time. While my HR partner was upset, I was surprisingly very upbeat and even a little giddy in the meeting.
Another benefit of my sabbatical was that it allowed me to invest in relationships. One example was the relationship with one of my best friends, who took over my team. As emotionally difficult as that was for her, I couldn’t think of another leader I would want my old team to work for on my exit.
While job losses and downsizing are always difficult, this was truly a new beginning for me!
So What?
Once upon a time, there was a frickin’ rockstar who kept telling themselves a life story that wasn’t working for them. One day, our hero decided to make a change and has never been happier.
We each have a story that we tell ourselves about the events of our life. It is up to you to make sure this story is helping, not harming your happiness. You are the writer, director and lead character, so you are in charge… it’s time to own your story!
Do you need a partner to help you rewrite your story? I am here for you!
Click Here to learn more about my Operation Melt coaching services.
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