It's been two weeks since I formally announced I’m taking on clients as a life and transformation coach. So far it’s off to a great start! I’m really excited about the group of people I get to begin working with.
The coaching I’m practicing is very much rooted in storytelling. We see the world through the stories we tell ourselves about the world. We even see ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
These stories become our reality, whether they’re empirically true or not. They’re so powerful they often cause us to reject the truth.
Many of you know I’ve also done a lot of writing and public speaking coaching. For that work I have a concept I share with my clients called “the narrator.”
In those contexts, “the narrator” is a representation of ourselves that we put on the page or share in a talk. We obviously can’t put every element of our psyche in a 20 minute talk, so we create a character separate from ourselves to show the audience and call it, “the narrator.”
It’s a useful device for thinking about our stories from outside ourselves. Through this process I've had many public speaking clients over the years rethink a key moment in their life and say, “oh wow. I never thought of it that way.”
This same concept comes up in life transformation coaching too, although the context is a little different.
Instead of the narrator being a version of ourselves that we share with an audience, the narrator is the voice in our heads running roughshod over our psyche with an interpretation of events that may or may not be true.
It’s on stage representing itself as an expert on what it means to be YOU, yet it's giving a woefully unvalidated TED Talk full of theories, half-truths, and disparate facts all out of context.
Yet there you are in the audience, taking the whole story in like it’s the absolute truth.
The good news is that we have the ability to check this voice, tell it to take a closer look at the facts, and come back to us with a story that’s more accurate and helpful.
The bad news is this voice is also very smart and stubborn. It has the approximate emotional capacity we had at four years old, but with the intellectual capacity we possess today. It can very persuasively argue against any attempt we throw at it to change or rethink our interpretation of events.
Yet the other good news is there are ways to counteract these arguments. Part of the process requires recognizing and acknowledging how the old story and the mean voice in your head actually serve you. Like any adult throwing a temper tantrum, sometimes they just need a hug and acknowledgement. 😉
If this is resonating with you at all, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
And if you’ve got a change you want to make in your life and you’re feeling like you might need some help, I’m happy to talk. We can start with an initial phone call to see if it’s a good fit and go from there.
Thanks again to everybody who has been so supportive of this change so far. It feels good to be on a path where I’m offering my best skills to create the most impact. I was going to limit the number of clients I took on at first but things are off to such a good start that I’m feeling a lot more comfortable dialing down some of my freelance work to make more time here.
If you want to talk, let me know. ♥️
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Storytelling is a fascinating aspect of how we perceive the world and exist as humans. If you’d like to learn more, download the Storytelling Primer below and start learning more about storytelling today.