Is It Really Your Story You are Living?
The manipulations of our story are numerous, often impossible to recognize or calibrate, and by no means always or wholly destructive. But because outside influences have the capacity to exercise profound, at times paralyzing, sway over us and how we live our days, it is imperative – at least for the vast majority of us who have ever felt a ‘misalignment’ in our lives, a gnawing lack of engagement and joy – that we work out figuring out how we ended up doing what we do and being who we are.
We wake up one morning and feel rotten, not knowing it because we have become so dogmatic and our story so inflexible, that we are impervious to change and even fresh input. Unaware that every important decision in our life has been triggered by one goal: the avoidance of pain and risk, professionally and personally.
Is there someone out there to call you out on the phony, self – sabotaging parts of your story? Do you have someone who cares enough to do that, and is himself or herself unentangled? Who sees you and the world with some measure of objectivity? Whom you trust and respect? If you have such a person or persons, that is good. Great, in fact. But een if you do, you don’t want to rely on others to police yourself.
Tragedies happen when we don’t examine our story to see if it is really ours anymore, when we don’t look hard to see if perhaps someone or something else has infiltrated it without our conscious knowledge or consent. If you don’t activate your build in storyteller if you don’t start listening to your intuition, ou make your evolving story vulnerable to hijacking, to rerouting, to programming.
That is why it is vital to waken ourselves to the brilliant, subtle methods that individuals and institutions use to indoctrinate us.
Of course, doing what I am suggesting – unerringly knowing what is good for you versus what is bad for you – is anything but easy. The answer ‘it is my story and I’m sticking to it’ speaks to this difficulty. It suggests two things simultaneously. First: my story is an unchangeable story, and second, my story may well be wrong but I will never abandon it so long as it is mine. There is honor simply in clinging to the ‘mine -ness’ of it; better to propagate a false illusion one can call one’s own than rent out a truth belonging to someone else.
What Can I Expect?
Here’s an outline of the THE POWER OF YOUR STORY journey.
Journey Outline
OLD STORIES
- The Power of Your Story
- What is your Story?
- Your Hero’s Journey
- How Faithful Are You as Storyteller?
- Is this Really Your Story?
- The Private Voice
YOUR NEW STORY
- A Quest is Never Forgettable
- They Lived Happily Ever After?
- The Three Rules of Storytelling
- The Four Story Scenario’s
- They Lived Happily Ever After!
- Do You Have the Resources To Live Your Best Story?
- Indoctrinate Yourself
- The Story Effect
- Your New Story
- The Premise of your Story. The Purpose of your Life and Art
- The words on your tombstone
- You ultimate mission, out loud
- Questioning the Premise
- Lining up
- Flawed Alignment, Tragic Ending
TURNING STORY INTO ACTION
- Turning your story into action
- Story Ritualizing
- The Storyteller and the art of story
- The Power of Your Story
- Storyboarding your creative process
- They Created and Lived Happily Ever After
About Peter de Kuster
Peter de Kuster is the founder of The Heroine’s Journey & Hero’s Journey project, a storytelling firm which helps creative professionals to create careers and lives based on whatever story is most integral to their lives and careers (values, traits, skills and experiences). Peter’s approach combines in-depth storytelling and marketing expertise, and for over 20 years clients have found it effective with a wide range of creative business issues.
Peter is writer of the series The Heroine’s Journey and Hero’s Journey books, he has an MBA in Marketing, MBA in Financial Economics and graduated at university in Sociology and Communication Sciences.