The Power of Your Story DEMO

the power of your story YOU ARE THE STORYTELLER OF YOUR OWN LIFE, CREATE YOUR OWN LEGEND

2015

PETER DE KUSTER with MELISSA VAN GENT

the power of your story

the power of your story 2015

YOU ARE THE STORYTELLER OF YOUR OWN LIFE, CREATE YOUR OWN LEGEND

PETER DE KUSTER with MELISSA VAN GENT

The Power of Your Story Copyright Š 2015 Peter de Kuster Printing: Pumbo | www.pumbo.nl Design: Melissa van Gent | www.melissavangent.nl No part of this publication may be reproduced by printing, photocopying, computerized databases or in any other way without the prior written permission of the publisher.

W W W . P O W E R O F Y O U R S T O R Y. C O M

Introduction My Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Chapter 1

The Power of Your Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chapter 2

Your Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 3

How do You find Your Story?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Chapter 4

Are You the Storyteller of Your Own Life?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 5

Your Hero’s Journey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Chapter 6

Your Hero’s Journey Out Loud.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Chapter 7

The Three Rules of Storytelling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Chapter 8

Write Your New Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Chapter 9

Indoctrinate Yourself.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Chapter 10

Turning Story into Action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

the power of your story

contents

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INTRODUCTION

my story melissa van gent

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Photography: Jan Rietveld, JR Photography | www.jrphotography.nl

Melissa van Gent Graphic & Webdesigner www.melissavangent.nl

Melissa van Gent

melissa_van_gent@hotmail.com Woerden

The Netherlands

What is your story about your greatest passion?

I love to build a relationship with my customers by creating beautiful designs that fit their needs and offering some extra service.

What is your story about perfect happiness?

I want to find a good balance between my work and private life. Work should give you energy because you’re doing what you love and at home you should be able to completely relax and undertake fun things. Still working on that balance thing though...

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My biggest fear is that something would happen to me so I can no longer practice my hobbies and job. I would not know what to do with myself.

What is your story about what you love about your work?

I love the highly varied nature of the work I do. I make designs for online and offline purposes and also organize the processes around it –marketing, printing,

the power of your story

What is your story about your greatest fear?

delivery–, so I end up having lots of contact with customers and suppliers.

What is your story about your greatest weakness?

If I have a stressful moment, I can sometimes react very loudly and stressed out. People can get a bit shocked by that, but most of the time it will be over in two minutes.

What is the influence of role models, in your work and in your life?

My Mom is a big influence! It surprises me almost everyday how much I’ve become just like her. I’ve been raised to be a perfectionist and customeroriented.

Joni Israeli | www.joniisraeli.com | www.pixiocard.com

What is your story about the people who are most important in your life?

Many people say they are blessed with many friends. I think there are only a few real friends, who will support you at any time, with any problem, even if you’ve hurt them with your actions. In my case, those people are my mom and my partner.

What story which you tell yourself has definitely to be rewriten to be more happy?

I wish I could sometimes say ‘no’ a bit easier.

I still have to learn that the world does not end if you are not able to help your customers on call.

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Photography: Jan Rietveld, JR Photography | www.jrphotography.nl

you play in?

I would play a role in Avatar. I think that is such an amazing movie, I would love to be able to turn back time and watch it again for the very first time. The sights James Cameron creates are a feast for the eyes. The attention to detail is incredible, the viewer gets sucked into a beautiful new world, which hasn’t met its equal yet.

the power of your story

Should you reincarnate as a movie actor, what famous movie would

Which movie moved you emotionally the most in your life?

There are many movies which moved me emotionally, but the one movie that has really fueled my passion for film is The Lord of the Rings trilogy. An epic journey, in three parts, spread over three years, each part leaving you wanting to know more about the characters and the beautiful places of Middle-Earth.

And now, with the last part of The Hobbit all wrapped up, unfortunately the story of Middle Earth has come to an end. Who knows if there will ever be another movie that will play such a big role in my life as this movie has?

Which film series moved you emotionally the most?

The series that I watched till the final episode: Lost, American Horror Story, Prison Break, Heroes and Game of Thrones. Lost is the one that kept me on the edge of my seat with every episode. It keeps on getting weirder and weirder, but that really appeals to my imagination.

Who is your favorite actrice, actor, movie director?

My favorite actrice is Scarlett Johansson. My favorite actors are Sir Ian McKellen, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Jackman, Matthew McConaughey and Robert Downey Jr. What can I say, I’m an action movie-girl, I can’t choose!

My favorite director is Steven Spielberg – some of my favorite movies were pro­duced by him, Jurassic Park, Men in Black, Artificial Intelligence, Indiana Jones, Transformers and many more.

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What is your story about whom you would like to work with in the future?

I do not have a specific person in mind, but generally I like to work with young and enterprising creatives. Always being busy with your profession, ensures that you can learn from each other.

What is your story about which project, in the nearby future, you are looking forward to work on?

Well I just started with a new product, the PixioCard. A physical card with a mini TV screen, on which video messages can be played. I am to market and custom design this new product.

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chapter 1 The Power of Your Story

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I want to explore the most compelling story of all times. Namely, how we tell stories about ourselves to ourselves. And what the movies we love tell us about our own story we tell ourselves.

Your life is a story. Your story is your life. Your career is a story. Your story is your career. When movies we see move us, they do so because they fundamentally remind us what is most true or possible in life. Whether it is a biography, an escapist romantic comedy, fairy tale or even a sci – fi fantasy. If you are human, you tell yourself stories – positive and negative ones.

The story of Midnight in Paris is that its hero Gil not only recognizes that we must all live in the now, but more important, we must all be who we really are; as long as we continue to deny our true nature, our true path, our true bliss, our true story, we will remain in a confused and conflicted condition.

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the power of your story Gil of 2010 loves the 1920’s; Adriana is drawn to La Belle Époque.

When an elegant carriage conducts them to Maxim’s and they meet Lautrec, Degas, and Matisse, who offer her the opportunity to remain in the golden age of Paris, Gil realizes the folly of trying to live in a past era and spurns Adriana’s offer to join her. She doesn’t rewrite her story about what makes her happy and it means the end of their relationship.

Consciously and, far more than not, subconsciously.

Stories that span a single episode, or a year, or a semester, or a weekend, or a relationship, or an entire life on the planet. By ‘story’ I mean those tales we create and tell ourselves and others, and which form the only reality we know in this life. Our stories may or may not conform to the real world. They may or may not inspire us to take hope – filled action to better our lives. Our stories may or may not take us where we ultimately want to go. But since our destiny follows our stories, it’s imperative that we do everything in our power to get our stories right.

For most of us, that means some serious re-writing.

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chapter 2 Your Story

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There is no such thing as the perfect career. That is the story many people really tell themselves, and it’s sad, because there are plenty of rewarding, challenging and fulfilling career opportunities that allow creative people to use their gifts and be rewarded handsomely for their efforts. Those who settle for less than the best simply haven’t found the right job – yet. You can have it all when it comes to a creative career. If you know what story to tell yourself which is authentic, lets you reach your goals and gives you everyday the energy to work full of passion at it.

The fact is that most people hate their jobs. They would rather be doing something else – anything else. It doesn’t have to be that way. What if I told you that you would never have to work another day in your life? Would you be interested? When you find the right fit in a career, it no longer feels like work.

You wake up every day excited about how you earn your living. This perfect harmonizing of your talents, skills, personality and work style creates a passion and a desire as well as a feeling of contentment that is worth more than gold.

Gil realizes that somehow, he has transported back to the 1920s, and is amongst some of the greatest writers of all time who used to gather there and show him what it takes to make money doing what you love.

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other businesses. To get ahead, you sometimes have to zigzag to the top. Let the stories of creative heroes and heroines in the movies show you when to zig and when to zag to make the most of the opportunities out there.

Telling yourself a powerful story about yourself and your creative quest – your hero’s journey – you embark on a journey, an adventure in search of how you

the power of your story

The challenge of this journey is that the creative business is very different from

will make money doing what you love. The thing is, there isn’t a golden (or orange) egg waiting for you when you get to the spot marked ‘X ’ on the map.

The buried treasure is within you. The pursuit of the gold (or the goal) is the reward. Because, when it comes to a career, there is no ‘there’ there. It is all a hero’s journey. Enjoying the quest is what success is all about. This is the age of opportunity for the creative person. Innovation and ideas are gold. Ridicule and red tape are being replaced with respect and rewards for the clever and creative person.

The business environment is changing, and changing for the better – for you.

Are you ready for these exciting times ahead? Do you have a powerful story which drives you and makes people remember you?

Your story will put you in a position to prosper. While parents, teachers and bosses might tell the story that they see problems in you (sloppiness, habitual tardiness, short attention span, non conformism) can actually be hidden assets in the search for work in a rewarding and interesting creative career.

Intuition, emotion, divergent thinking, daydreaming, thriving on chaos, big – picture thinking, cleverness, open – mindedness and an ability to play and have fun are virtues in the right setting.

Even so, it’s not exactly easy to build a career in the creative business world.

You have to be able to deal with rejection. It is a part of everyday life for the creative person. The story you tell yourself about yourself should have a powerful script to deal with rejection. There is also that funny feeling that you don’t quite fit in – and you don’t.

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Gil meets Dali and some of his surrealist friends at a restaurant. Gil has to tell someone about his feelings and what is happening. So he tells Dali that he’s falling for a woman from a different time. Dali and his friends have heard crazier things and urge him to follow his intuition, follow his passion and pursue the girl.

An unconventional person with unconventional ideas you are often seen as immature, temperamental, moody, difficult, distracted, irresponsible, and irrational. The truth is, you can be your wonderful self and still get ahead in the business world. This book will help you manage your career using a whole – brain approach that takes advantage of the way you are, without forgetting the way the world works.

It’s time to move on, move up, and move out with a new mission. The Power of Your Story is about taking charge of your story and thereby your destiny so that no idiot can control your fate.

New creative careers and enterprises are popping up all the time. There has never been a better time to strike out on your own. This is your time to shine as a creative person. The future looks bright. Many of the current trends favor your preferred mode of operation – self – reliance, zigzagging to the top, rapid change, multi- tasking, chaos, adaptability, intuition, training and retraining.

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a living doing what you love. You will learn how to overcome the challenges the creative right brainer faces, and how to make your nature and your creativity work for you. You’ll learn how to market yourself even in a crowded marketplace, survive and thrive in the battlefield that is entrepreneurship. How to be your own boss and work for others, take the ‘free’ out of ‘freelance’, rise to the top without step- ping on too many toes, and use your natural abilities to

the power of your story

This book will show you how to find your career niche, and then how to earn

find a perfect pitch and harmony in your work world.

I saw this Woody Allen movie numerous times and was moved each time by the beautifully imagined and realized journeys into Paris of the 1920s and, more briefly, of La Belle Époque taken by the protagonist Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson), a screenwriter and aspiring novelist with a strongly romantic bent. How seductive the salons, bars, nightclubs, and cobbled and gaslit streets where a writer can commune with the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein and listen to Cole Porter play and sing the tunes that became standards of the American songbook.

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There is a direct, undeniable correlation between your career and your life. It’s less about what you do for a living than what you can live with doing. Finding fun and fulfillment at work spills over into the rest of your life. Without it, your health will suffer, your creativity will suffer, your performance will suffer – and so will everybody around you. You don’t need to live that way.

If you are thinking of giving up on a creative career and getting a ‘real ’ job, stop right there. When you settle for less in your life story you tell yourself than what’s best for you, you instantly get less than you settled for. Don’t sell yourself short. The regret will eat you up inside. Don’t miss your chance; it may be right around the corner. Instead, get going and go for it – be bold.

Don’t let others push boulders in your path and fill your head with facts like ‘most businesses fail in the first year’, ‘it’s too competitive out there’, ‘there are no (dancing) jobs’, ‘you don’t have enough experience or talent‘, ‘you have no agent’. It’s bad enough that these insecure and misinformed people are telling you why you can’t succeed. It’s worse if you believe them. Don’t let anyone talk your dreams down.

This book is for creative people of all kinds. It isn’t meant to apply to just the glamour jobs; whatever form your creativity takes, you can apply these stories.

For everyone who tells you ‘you can’t make a living doing that’ there are hundreds and thousands of examples of creative heroes and heroines in all the cities of the world who found a way to turn something they thought was fun and would even do for free into a fulfilling life and career.

I will help you as your travel guide to take your powerful creative energy and harness it, and you will beat the odds, making a living doing what you love to do. Your life will become a hero’s journey story.

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chapter 3 How do you find your Story?

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Few people know what they want when they grow up, and even fewer creative people want to grow up. Maybe you won’t discover your true calling until you test- drive several dream jobs and work with some role models. Isn’t it better to test drive them, using that incredible imagination of yours than waste years on a dead-end- job? One of the key things you’ll work on here is defining what you want to do (not for the rest of your life, but what you want to do now) and eliminating the careers that aren’t a fit.

The best way to find your story is to make a test drive in your dream job.

Meeting your heroes, your role models, the people who already do what you love to do. Learn everything about their story. And most of all, discover which story they tell themselves to pursue their passion.

In Midnight in Paris the hero who works in advertising discovers his hero’s journey story by meeting his heroes Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Gertrude Stein and getting answers from them to his questions and doubts to pursue the path of a writer.

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here for the making. The catch is that creative careers are often unconventional and in some cases completely unchartered. The challenge is that there are a million different things you could do.

The key to success in any career is clarity. Becoming clear about your story about who you are and what you love is the first part of this guide. Then how

the power of your story

The choices that lead to a life of creative expression and financial security are

to get what you want is covered in great detail. It’s hard work, but this is your chance to reinvent yourself. Don’t let it pass you by.

Success for a creative hero can be tremendous. Not just in money, but in creative freedom. Look at the list of the highest – paid actors and entrepreneurs – they are all people who don’t fit any mold, but they’re also people who used that fact to their benefit.

You can do it too, in your own way, on your own time, reaching your own goals.

Un mire yourself from the myths about creative people. Don’t be afraid to look at your strengths and weaknesses. Face the fact that traditional business management, which is left-brain, logical and linear (not to mention rigid, boring, and counterproductive) doesn’t work for you. It isn’t much fun and if it isn’t at least a little bit of fun, you’re not going to do it. It’s that simple. If it’s not fast, fun, flexible and easy you are less likely to embrace it. Be willing to work within a system – as long as it’s one that you create and one that works with you as well as for you.

Creative heroes have an insatiable hunger to achieve, create, accomplish. They want to be recognized and heard, receive applause and take home awards.

They desire change, to create a body of work, to earn, to make deals. Many people who don’t know what they want actually want too much, too fast.

The key to success is learning how to focus on what’s most important. It’s counterproductive to try to do too many things at once – nor is it good to focus on only one area of your life or work. One way to whittle it down (focus) and spread it around (multi focus) is to choose a top goal for each aspect of your life.

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Your story about making money is about multiple streams of income. Rather than focusing on a single source of income, the lesson is to develop several.

This covers you during seasonal slumps, tough times, and boredom ( you can switch off from business to business or client to client) It also helps to spread the risk around. The key is to build your businesses so they support one another. You sell the same thing to different markets or different things to the same market. Build one venture at a time, get it up and running, and then move on.

Take a good, hard look at who you are, what’s your story and what you want out of life. Sometimes having everything be just okay, having an adequate job and a moderate life, is the biggest tragedy of all. Take the time now to find yourself, so you can live your life without getting lost and make good decisions that will lead you to the success and happiness you desire.

We are all born creative. What happens to us from kindergarten to college shapes how much of that creativity stays with us. Some, despite the best efforts of the school system and the corporate system to stamp out the creative spirit, slip through the cracks, creativity intact. You are still not safe.

Ninety – eight percent of the people of the world are living the left – brained life.

Society tends to reward the left brain (structure, status quo) and reprimand the right brain (chaos, creativity, innovation).

You can stunt your creative spirit with disuse. You cannot lose a talent, but your skills can certainly atrophy. Almost any job can be done creatively.

Entrepreneurs must be creative to survive, managing people can be done creatively, marketing, communication and sales certainly involves a degree of creativity, even distribution and finance can be a right-brained affair. What makes any career interesting, exciting and vital is the creative approach you take to it.

People who ignore their creative gifts in their careers are frustrated and unhappy by midlife (or much sooner). Happiness comes from finding your greatest gifts and abilities and then developing and using them in the work you do.

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between the left hemisphere of your brain (the detail – oriented accountant side) and the right hemisphere (the big picture, artistic side). The right brain comes up with the ideas, and the left brain implements them. Too much right brain and nothing gets done; too much left brain and life is dull and uninspiring.

the power of your story

Creativity and creative careers involve a whole brain approach, an interaction

Gil Pender is a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He is also a very unhappy Hollywood screenwriter who has long wanted to write a novel and is currently working on a story about a man who owns a nostalgia shop. Gil has come to Paris with his fiancée, Inez, the shallow, snobbish daughter of rich, conservative, and shallow, snobbish parents. It is clear from the start that these two are absolutely not meant for each other.

Gil adores Paris and wants to stay; he loves wandering the streets— even in the rain, perhaps especially in the rain—exploring the little shops, watching people in the sidewalk cafés. He believes that Paris is where he can finish his novel, completing the transformation from Hollywood hack to true writer.

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As a right brainer you are absolutely unique (and wonderful). There has never been anyone like you and there will never be again. Ponder that for a moment.

Beneath all the self-doubt, guilt, fear, remorse, and distorted stories is a gem of a person who more than anything, deserves to be happy, successful and fulfilled.

To have a career that is challenging and rewarding. A career that fits like a glove and is such a joy that you would do it for free – but is so valuable to others that you are paid well. And why not? You have found your place in the universe, you are making a contribution with your talent and creativity.

Once you understand yourself and what work you enjoy doing, you can work with your natural abilities and tendencies rather than against them. It makes life much easier. This is something that is unique to you. It is what will work best for you. So don’t just breeze past the questions in this travel guide. Make the time to really give some thought to who you are, what you want to do, and what would be the best way to go about doing it. I have always said that to find yourself you need to go on a journey. You need time for reflection, away from the hustle and bustle of your busy life, to open yourself to new possibilities.

Do you honestly love what you do now? Are you excited to go to work on Monday? Do you go home happy? If you answered no to any of these questions, there is a better way for your beautiful mind.

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the power of your story I had to cringe each time Inez talked down to Gil. You could certainly see how flawed their relationship was and upon deeper reflection I really saw how her character was like an archetype of Gil’s inner critic.

He is truly on his own hero’s journey in the film and learning how to stand-up for his dreams with courage (as Ernest Hemingway would put it!).

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chapter 4 are you the Storyteller of your own Life?

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The human brain has evolved into a narrative – creating machine that takes whichever it encounters, no matter how apparently random and imposes on it chronology, cause-and-effect logic – a mathematic formulae.

Stories impose meaning on the chaos; they organize and give context to our sensory experiences, which otherwise might seem like no more than a fairly colorless sequence of facts. Facts are meaningless until you create a story around them.

Nostalgia is a sentimental story about the past. In this film Gil Pender is nostalgic for the Paris of the 1920s. Paul, the man who sleeps with Gil’s fiancé, is also quite knowledgeable about the past. Gil calls Paul a pedantic pseudo-intellectual. Paul, obviously with Gil in mind, has the following to say about nostalgia.

PAUL: You know, nostalgia is denial. Denial of the painful present.

INEZ: Oh, Gil is a complete romantic. He would be more than happy living in a complete state of perpetual denial.

PAUL: And the name of this fallacy is called ‘golden-aged thinking’.

INEZ: Touche.

PAUL: The erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in. It’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.

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for the happiness and livelihoods of dozens of people in your club, and you are the unappreciated hero.

Maybe your story is that you must keep chasing after something (money, prestige, power, control, attention, revenge, redemption) before you can be free even though you already seem to have a lot to be happy about.

the power of your story

Stories are everywhere in your life. Perhaps your story is that you are responsible

Telling yourself tragic stories has, ultimately, long-term negative consequences.

The consequence of tragic storytelling is hardening of the categories, narrowing of the possibilities calcification of perception. A sure road to tragedy, often quietly.

The cumulative effect of our tragic stories will have tragic consequences in our health, happiness, engagement and performance. Because we can’t confirm the damage our tragic storytelling has, we disregard it, or veto our gut feelings to make a change. Then one day we awaken to the reality that we’ve become cynical, negative, angry. That’s now who we are. Though we never quite saw it coming, that is now our true story.

We love to be the storyteller of our own life. Yet we possess a marvelous capacity to give ourselves only a supporting role in the ‘movie of our life’, while ascribing the premier, dominant, true authorial role to our parents, our spouse, our kids, business partner, fate, chance, genetics, bad weather, nationality or lousy drinks. Anyone or anything but us appears to have more influence in moving the metaphorical camera across our life.

The most important story you will ever tell about yourself is the story you tell to yourself. This story determines nothing less than our personal and professional destinies. The story we tell ourselves is the story we are living in.

Participate in your story rather than observing it from afar. Make sure your story is a story that compels you. Tell yourself the right story the rightness of which only you can really determine only you can really feel.

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If you’re finally living the story you want than it needn’t – it shouldn’t and won’t - be an ordinary one. It can and will be extraordinary. After all, you’re not just the storyteller of your own story, but also its main character, the hero. Heroes are never ordinary.

In the end, your story is not a tragedy. Nor is it a comedy, or a romance or thriller or science fiction adventure or a drama. It is something else. What label would you give the story of your life the most important story you will tell?

To me, that sounds like a hero’s journey. An epic. A Legend. A Hero’s Journey.

End of story.

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chapter 5 Your Hero’s Journey

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In the great stories of mankind there are hero’s journeys being made. I want to show you just how dramatically our story and our willingness to spend energy and take risk change when there is a great purpose. In short, when the stakes are a large sum of money, almost no hero or heroine takes great risks. When the stakes are love and life in the great stories of mankind and that which has incalculable value, everyone goes.

Purpose is the epicenter of your hero’s journey story. Purpose is one of the three foundations of good storytelling.

Without purpose, no character in a book or a movie would do anything interesting meaningful, memorable, worthwhile. Without purpose, our life story has no meaning, it has no coherence, no direction, no inexorable momentum.

Without purpose, our life will still move along – whatever that means – but it lacks an organizing principle. Without purpose it is all but impossible to be fully engaged. To be extraordinary.

With purpose, on the other hand, people do amazing things: good, smart, productive things, often heroic things, unprecedented things.

Purpose is the thing in your life you will fight for. It is the ground you will defend at any cost. Purpose is not the same as ‘incentive’ but rather the motor behind it, the end that drives why you have energy for some things and not for others.

To find one’s true purpose – one’s Hero’s Journey – sometimes takes work.

Fortunately, the skill it requires is one that every person is blessed with.

For a few people, naming one’s purpose comes with remarkable ease. The individual feels it in the deepest part of his or her soul, the purpose has always been there, even if it got lost for a very long while, remaining unexpressed to one self and to those who are the objects of one’s purpose. (Deep, enduring purpose is virtually always motivated by a desire for the well-being of others).

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To author a workable, fulfilling new story, you will need to ask yourself many questions and then answer them, none more important than those that concern purpose. Once you know your purpose – your hero’s journey – that is, what matters – then everything else can fall into place. Getting your hero’s journey clear is your defining truth. What is the purpose of your life? Of your work? To make

the power of your story

You know purpose when you see it

your parents proud? To keep your children out of harm? To be the most successful earner in your cycle? To leave the world a better place than when you entered it? To honor somebody? To live to a hundred? To seek out adventure and risk? Whatever it is, it had to be something you GO for. Seven days a week, no questions asked.

Once you find your hero’s journey, you have a chance to live a story that moves you and those around you.

The Gertrude Stein character in Midnight in Paris says, “It’s the artist’s job not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence”. Gil Pender says that, “it’s my job as a writer to try and come up with reasons why despite life being tragic and unsatisfying, it’s still worth it”.

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The words on your tombstone Remember when your mother asked you, “are you telling me a story or is that really true? ” The assumption being: a story is what you concoct to keep yourself out of trouble. But your mother’s error was the same one many of us make when we think of stories. We fail to recognize that everything we say is a story – nothing more, nothing less. It would have been more accurate for Mom to have said: “I know you are telling me a story, but I need to know if your story truly reflects the facts or if you’re intentionally making things up to get out of trouble or to get what you want”.

With every story, it is vital that one understand the hero’s journey behind what is being said. The critical first step to getting our stories right is ensuring that the story we are telling at the moment is aligned with our ultimate hero’s journey in life, a phrase I use largely interchangeable with ‘purpose’. Your Hero’s Journey is the thing that continually renews your spirit, the thing that gets you to stop and smell the roses. It is the indomitable force that moves you to action when nothing else can, yet it can ground you with a single whisper in your silliest moment. It spells out the most overarching goals you want and need to achieve in your time here, and the manner in which you feel you must do it (that is, you pursue these goals in accordance with your values and beliefs).

Our ultimate hero’s journey must be clearly defined. If you find this difficult to do, ask yourself: if I was told I could die this day for 80% sure at an aneurism, what would I have regretted not to have done with my life. What would be the story of my life until then? Was it completely told? By envisioning the end of your life in terms of ‘how will I be remembered? ’, ‘what is the legacy I leave behind? ’, you provide yourself with your single most important navigational coordinate: your fundamental purpose, your hero’s journey, which henceforth will drive everything you do.

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the power of your story Gil chooses to go back in time again, and is transported back to the 1920s.

• Gil finds himself at Gertrude Stein’s house.

• Gil talks about writing and life and love with Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

• Gertrude Stein agrees to read Gil’s book about the ‘nostalgia shop’.

And upon turning, Gil meets Adriana, who is a beautiful woman.

Gil is immediately smitten by her, but Adriana is being pursued by Hemingway. However, she’s dating Picasso and their relationship is rocky, at best. Gil’s hero’s journey starts.

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chapter 6 Your Hero’s Journey Out Loud

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What’s your Hero’s Journey? Before you write it down – using whatever words that speak to you and move you; you’re writing this after all, for yourself, no one else – ask yourself these questions: • How would you want to be remembered?

• What is the legacy you most want to leave for others?

• How would you most like to hear people eulogize you at your funeral?

• What is worth dying for?

• What makes your life really worth living?

• In what areas of your life must you truly be extraordinary to fulfill your destiny?

Write your story here.

My hero’s journey is:

Outing false purpose True success is realizable when one consciously crafts an ambitious achievable story and then sticks to it. Everybody needs to find a purpose that satisfies their needs, not just their wants. When one lives one’s life in pursuit of a false purpose, it will eventually come apart. Sooner or later – hopefully sooner – the false purpose will come to seem like a fiction in a world that demands nonfiction. A flawed purpose always results in a flawed ending. So long as we rely on false purpose to navigate through life , we can be certain that our life story will never bring true fulfillment. We may well catch what we’ve been chasing, but what we’ve been chasing will turn out to be a prize not really worth having, at least not at these prices (given the volume of time and energy expended on the chase). If you’re unconnected to your true purpose, if you’re chasing the wrong thing, you miss the most exciting part of living.

To find that simple and true purpose can be relatively hard. It often takes half our life or more to come back to it. It is rare that someone can identify a purpose for himself or herself at a young age and have it stand up to scrutiny.

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the power of your story

Your Hero’s Journey is Never Forgettable

At the party Gil soon becomes aware that the company is unusual. The fellow playing the piano and singing is remarkably like Cole Porter. And a young woman introduces herself as Zelda Fitzgerald; when she learns Gil is a writer she calls out to ‘Scott’ to come and meet him. The look on Gil’s face when he realizes where he has landed is worth the price of admission alone. The romantic young novelist is soon swept into the literary world of the Fitzgeralds. He meets Hemingway, then Stein, then Picasso. And then he meets Adriana (gorgeously and deliciously played by Marion Cotillard), the wistful romantic who mirrors his own character.

As its very name suggests, a movie’s primary intention is to move the audience emotionally. Story is the vehicle through which the movement occurs. Story is what stirs us, terrifies us, breaks our heart. A boring story fails because it doesn’t move us, doesn’t tap our capacity for empathy. Think of the very best stories you’ve ever seen or read or heard, and you remember the depth of your feeling for one or more of the characters.

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That’s what happens with you when you create your new story. This story, finally, moves its author and others – the way great movies, novels or art does.

We feel the potential for heroism in what the author’s main character aspires to. IF you’re seriously going to write a story powerful enough to get you to do things extraordinary then you’ve got to create a purpose and a story so compelling that you are moved to make those corrections in your life, and make them for good. Remember that tremendous feeling you got, when younger, after seeing a movie that spoke to you so profoundly you were all hyped to make major changes to your life – travel the globe, join the air force, tell someone you were in love with him or her, write a book? – That’s the kind of action your own story must move you to take.

The only way a story can achieve that level of transformative power is when it supports an unassailable purpose.

If I asked you what your purpose was, how would you know you got it right?

First and last. Does it move you? Really, really move you? Some purposes are so obviously faulty that the individual can smoke it out by himself or herself.

But other purposes sound very very good, so neat, so on-message – and yet they’re not quite the purpose.

A Hero’s Journey is never small. It is never minor. It can’t be by definition. It is grand, heroic, epic. You don’t successfully take major risks that if you fall, this was the dumbest thing you have ever done. You should never put your life on the line for something not fully aligned with your Hero’s Journey.

For the story ultimately to succeed it has to be true (the second pillar of good storytelling) and lead to real action (that is the final pillar). Anchored in real accountability and verifiable statements.

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the power of your story Inez is the stereotypical philistine American tourist: Paris is okay but...

When she meets up with another American couple, she is immediately enchanted with the excruciatingly pedantic Paul, who knows everything about everything French. Gil is repulsed by the falsehood of this little circle, it does not fit with his hero’s journey and begins spending more time on his own.

Although The Hero’s Journey is synonymous with ‘purpose’, it is also close to synonymous with ‘theme’, word with which every accomplished storyteller is familiar. Every story has a theme, usually a very simple one. You should be able to identify it, though often you have to think about it a bit, to make sure that you have sorted out the overall theme of the story from other, less profound themes. In every great story, the overall theme is reiterated in almost every scene, in ways we usually process not intellectually, but very much instinctually. Thus each scene is, thematically a microcosm of the whole story.

In many ways, it is this echoing or alignment between the overarching theme of a great story and all the scenes, characters and moments that make up that story that makes these stories stay with us forever. Great stories are never 41

made up of far-flung elements. They are never about petty concerns. They are always tight, streamlined, deceptively simple. Indeed, they are unified.

Unity – alignment – are hallmarks of persuasive stories. A good story is consistent.

It has internal logic. Every thought your share, every word you utter, every expression you make can’t help revealing some aspect of your unique story.

Gil is walking the streets of Paris alone. He comes upon the Beautiful Antique Dealer. They continue their conversation about music and art and literature. And we learn that Gil has decided to stay in Paris and become a novelist. We have hints that he might even start a future with the Antique Dealer.

(And we see that this final image is the exact opposite of the opening, where Gil was walking with a woman, Inez, who wasn’t right for him.

Gil now walks with the Antique Dealer. And they look happy together…)

As with great stories, the Hero’s Journey of your life story is simple – touching on ideas like family, honor, benevolence, continuity – and each subplot reiterates 42

apart somewhere. If one of the goals in your hero’s journey is to ‘empower as many people I can over the longest time possible’ – yet you are yourself closed to new learning, incapable of improving and further empowering yourself – then there is something askew in your Hero’s Journey.

Without alignment, you can’t achieve what you set down in your Hero’s

the power of your story

the theme. Without this echoing or alignment, your mission is going to fall

Journey. This is true in other aspects of life, too. Your story can’t work without all the important elements being aligned. It’s no accident that another way to describe being aligned with someone is ‘to be on the same page’.

Your Hero’s Journey is to inspire you – truly inspire you, the way a great, consistent, seamless story moves and inspires you – then everything in it needs to be aligned. The values it professes need to dovetail with each part of your mission. If something in your life is not aligned with your Hero’s Journey – some behavior, some habit, some relationship – then you have to examine it and change it or eliminate it until things are aligned.

Flawed Alignment - Tragic Ending We’ve talked about how a faulty purpose always leads to a bad ending. But you may have a good purpose – like those admirable, heartfelt purposes we hear all the time – and your day to day actions are not aligned with them. It’s imperative to consider whether your actions and your purpose are aligned. It is a fact that the ramifications of such misalignment will make their appearance – divorce, heart attack, estrangement, shame, maybe prison. Perhaps they are dormant now, or in shadow, but they will emerge at some point – a year, ten years, who know.

Without examining and resolving this misalignment no hiding, no pretending no denial, no wishful thinking on your part can derail these unfortunate happenings from finally paying a visit. If you consider yourself a moral person and yet your willingness to compromise is only growing fuzzier, what do you think the ending of that story will be? Is it one you want for yourself or those you care most about?

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Without courageously confronting whether your hero’s journey and your actions are aligned (are truthful and mutually supportive) in every aspect of your life in every mini story around your love life, around your friends, around your work, your health, you risk flawed, tragic endings for every one of them.

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chapter 7 The Three Rules of Storytelling

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People continue to pursue happiness just around the corner – in the next goal accomplished, the next social relationship obtained the next problem solved.

Forget it. In the long run, your efforts are futile.

We constantly need to infuse our story with new thinking, new energy in activities we are doing this moment. To do so brings about shifts in happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, joy, inspiration that are not incidents. It’s a far, far better place one returns to than one had ever known before.

But one needs to work at this, continuously. If not, then one almost certainly retreats to previous, lower levels of happiness and engagement.

Gil is discussing with the travel guide his questions and thus starts rewriting his story.

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All good stories hinge on dramatic moments, truth ... and turning points. All life stories have turning points. A turning point is simply an event or circumstance that precipitates a significant change in the story, a change in how we think or feel about something important in our lives. Turning points can alter, suddenly our day-to-day circumstances, our self-confidence, our perception, even our

the power of your story

Rewriting: Turning Points

values and beliefs. Turning points usually entail powerful emotion. They can force us to face the truth as nothing else can. There are profound opportunities for transformation represented by the plentiful turning points in every life.

Here’s the thing about turning points, though: They’re not always obvious.

Many turning points are subtle, recognizable only in hindsight; they tend to be much more obvious in the telling than in the living. A turning point can be the tail –end of something gradual and cumulative – more accurately described as a tipping point than a turning point.

During our life we often experience periods when we seem to lose our sense of meaning and purpose. There is no longer a feeling of alignment between our inner values and our tasks in the external world. We find ourselves working harder and harder and receiving less satisfaction from our efforts. We struggle through every day, lacking the vitality, commitment, and initiative we used to have. After much inner reflection and contemplation, we begin to realize that we need a new focus, a new vision, but it is difficult to uncover.

Hardly your typical Aha moment – and yet the need for change as described here is so oppressive, one’s skin almost crawls with it. How, then, does a person this aimless and dissatisfied find the will to reassert control over life, to rediscover purpose, to tell a story that restores energy, fulfillment and productivity where before there were fatigue, boredom, and despair?

By taking control over your story. You must be ready, if necessary, to rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it. You may need, at least at first – before you get the hang of it, before you have ritualized new habits until you can stop thinking 47

about them – to do it every day even several times a day, if your story is to engage you every day. Your story has to move. It has to move you, and it has to move.

Your story has to move you, even if it scares you like it does Gil.

Purpose, truth, action When storytellers really want to emphasize something, they put it in a one sentence paragraph. If they suspect even that isn’t emphasis enough, then they go to Plan B: break things up into still more melodramatic, one-word paragraphs.

• Purpose • Truth • Action

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the power of your story The film Midnight in Paris dives deep into our ability to obsess about a new purpose, a new story, in order to forget. Gil Pender is accused of loving a fantasy in the opening lines, referring to his misplaced attraction to the city. But what we realize later in the film is that much like Bogart in Casablanca, all he ever had was Paris; it was his entire raison d’etre, and the lie he was living was the real fantasy. As the film closes and Gil walks through Paris as it drizzles, it’s clear that while his future is entirely up in the air, his present will no longer be forgotten for some ghost of the past.

All good storytelling coheres around those three ideas. They are the three criteria, taken together, by which we judge the workability and ultimate success of our story. With those three principles in your pocket, you can summon your deepest intelligence and wisdom to protect yourself from all forms of sinister indoctrination and faulty storytelling, bad influences from without and within; armed with those three principles, you are virtually guaranteed to keep your story vital, moving, productive, fulfilling.

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Let’s review them: Purpose: What is my ultimate purpose? What am I living for? What principle, what goal, what end? For my whole life, and every single day? Why do I do what I do? For what? What is the thing that would let me risk everything and to be sure and at peace that’s the right decision, the necessary one, the only one? What is the thing I’m driving forward – or should be – with every action I take? Have I articulated to myself my deeper values and beliefs, which are the bedrock of who I am and which must be inextricably tied to my purpose (and vice versa)? Who do I want to be at the end? What legacy do I want to leave?

What story about myself could I ‘live with’? When all is said and done, how do I want to be remembered? What is non-negotiable in my life? What do I believe must happen for me to have a successful life? Is my story taking me where I want to go? Is it ‘on purpose’? Consistently? And why am I telling this story?

What is my real motive? Is my purpose noble or ignoble?

Truth: Is the story I’m telling true? Does it conform to known facts? Is it grounded in objective reality as fully as possible; that is, does it coincide with some generally agreed-upon portrayal of the world? Or is it true only if I’m living in a dreamland? Is it a lie I tell myself when I think ‘this is the way the world is’- my own, probably biased evaluation of things. One that is dubiously defensible, and which I repeat to myself because it provides false comfort for the way my life has turned out? Where has my crap detector failed me? Do I sidestep the parts of my story that are obviously untrue because they’re just too painful to confront? Is my story something I still believe when I really dig down, when I listen to my most candid, private voice, when I do my best to shut out other influences and hear instead what I genuinely think and feel? Which is the truer statement. My story is honest and authentic or My story is made up? What myths am I perpetuating that could potentially seal my fate in areas of my life that really matter?

Action: A good story is premised on action... Is mine? With my purpose firmly in mind, along with a confidence about what is really true, what actions will I now take to make things better, so that my ultimate purpose and my day-to-day life are better aligned in my hero’s journey? What habits do I need to eliminate?

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observing? Are my actions filled with hope – hope that I will succeed, hope that the change that I seek is realistically within my grasp? Or is my ‘actiontaking’ really more accurately portrayed within my grasp? Or is my ‘action-taking’ really more accurately portrayed as ‘going through the motions’? Do I believe to my core that in the end, my willingness to follow through with action will determine the success of my life? Do I believe that if I act with commitment

the power of your story

What new ones do I need to breed? Is more of my life spend participating or

and consistency I will end up where I want to be, where I have always felt I am capable of being? Does the story I tell myself move me to action? Does it inspire hope and determination in me? Am I confident that I can make any necessary course correction, no matter what stage of life I’m in, no matter how many times I may have failed at it in the past? Do I proceed in the belief that I will never surrender in this effort because my success as a human being is what’s at stake?

Gil returns to his present life and confronts Inez. She confesses to an affair with Paul.

• Gil tells her that they are no longer getting married.

• Inez flips out. Her father flips out. And says that he hired a Private Detective, and is sure that Gil had an affair.

• CUT TO: We see the Private Detective is stuck in the Middle Ages and will not return

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When you achieve a breakthrough, it is always – always because you have come to a fundamental understanding of the interlocked nature of all three rules of storytelling. It’s not good enough to satisfy one or even two of the three rules and content yourself that your story has now improved. It won’t leave you 33% or 67% better off. More likely, you may have fulfilled one or even two of the three rules but because all three rules are not followed, your story remains dysfunctional.

While one needs to understand deeply each of the three rules of storytelling, not all rules are created equally. Truth and action probable give people more trouble than purpose. For example, what about those people who have purpose nailed… but not action? This is probably the most common, and in some ways the most tragic. In this group you find the novelists who have yet to set pen to paper, lovers who are single and celibate, entrepreneurs who don’t know the first thing about how to procure a small – business loan.

What about those for whom truth is the toughest part? Some live in another universe altogether, of course – people whose biases are as prominent as their minds are narrow – and it’s hard to imagine getting through to them.

Riding with his heroes through the night in Paris – Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – feels as truth for Gil.

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chapter 8 Write Your New Story

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Next step: Write Your New Story, making sure that it fulfills the criteria for good storytelling.

Crafting a new story is liberating. Also challenging, scary, and painful. It should be painful. After all, it will be more clear – eyed than your Old Story was in defining what you really want from life, it hacks away all of the excuses and rationalizations that appeared in your Old Story, and it demands real change, something your Old Story was probably not that interested in. In short, it is more purposeful, truer and more action – oriented than your Old Story.

In other words, it’s got all the ingredients of a really good story.

That doesn’t mean that all new stories have the same feel to them. Just because it’s called your New Story doesn’t mean it’s all sweetness and light.

For some people, their New Story is characterized by an uplifting, cheerleading tone, while still satisfying the three rules of storytelling.

For others their New Story sounds more like a rebuke of what their life will be if they don’t change, and change fast, although it still satisfies the three rules of storytelling.

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their friends are examining a Picasso favorite and Owen’s character just shines as he knows first-hand the story behind the painting since he met the artist in his midnight walks to the 1920’s. Everyone in the theatre both laughed and cheered him on which is really what often

the power of your story

One of my favorite moments in the film was when the couple and

happens when we do shine. In spiritual terms, it was as though he was having a ‘direct knowing’ experience and no one could even question him; they all just looked on in awe. His fiancé asked him “what have you been smoking” which is often the way the outer world disbelieves when someone taps into this kind of wisdom experience.

For still other s, their new story is part uplift (about the future), part sobriety (about leaving the negative parts of one’s current life story behind). In short, the tone of your new story should be whatever it needs to be – just so long as it meets the three criteria of good storytelling, the only recipe that can possibly work.

To accept seriously the challenge of writing your new story, you must write it fully conscious. To create your new story you’ll need to confront the truth of your old story. You’ll need to hold tight to your ultimate purpose. You’ll need to suggest an urgency for finding a better way. You’ll need to dig deep.

It is here, in this written story, that you will discover (or, more likely rediscover) your voice, the true and private voice, the intuitive voice. You will not only know it, but you will find a way to turn up the volume and become a master storyteller.

Your new story is your blueprint for the future. It exists for you to chart new pathways for energy to flow in all those areas of your life you want to change.

Your new story is a map of how you will change the dynamics of the energy you give to things. In this way, your new story helps to chart your destiny.

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The truth is...

Indeed the majority of sentences in the new story begin with that phrase. This forces the writer always to confront Storytelling Rule 2. It must be truthful.

Beginning your new story with these words commits you to strip away denial, rationalization, or mythical thinking and to confront the truth about where your Old Story has led you and continues to mislead you. You’re forced to connect the dots, to project, to get specific and clear-eyed about the brutal truth of what might happen if you continue on with the same story –taking poor care of yourself, disengaging from your family, going through the motions at work, cheating occasionally on your wife, working only for money.

In your New Story describe how you’d likely feel, if, say, you died too young or because of your disengagement were divorced and lost the love of your life.

Confront whether the price you might pay is acceptable. Expose details you left in your Old Story or things you made up to support the faulty subplots you wrote there. Magnify the conflicts your Old Story very well might have created – loss of respect, loss of personal integrity – until you clearly see them and feel them. In your New Story bring all the facts and evidence you can to support the conclusion that your Old Story does not represent the truth, that it’s faulty, that it will not work. That it simply cannot take you where you ultimately want to go.

But that’s not all that goes into your New Story. It’s not just about exposing and breaking down what does not work. It’s very much about articulating what will work. Your New Story must suggest a general plan of action. (The specific plan of action is reserved for the … Adventure Starts… which will be discussed in Part II). Your New Story must therefore articulate a belief about where you want to go that is it must be consumed by purpose.

Time to take a shot at writing your New Story: New Story The truth is After your New Story is written, ask yourself the following questions: 56

2. Is it true?

3. Does it lead to action that stimulates genuine hope?

If the answer to all three questions is yes then you’re ready to move on to the second and final part of the travel guide, which discusses the most vital life force of all the one without our stories and very lives are disengaged a force we

the power of your story

1. Does it take me where I want to go?

spectacularly ignore misdirect and downright abuse. FLOW. They lived happily ever after.

Inez’s father has become suspicious of Gil disappearing every night. So the father hires a Private Detective to follow Gil – convinced that he’s having an affair That night, Gil returns to the ‘20s, and finds out that Adriana broke up with Picasso. And, being a free spirit, she has already left for an African Safari with Hemingway. Gil also runs into Gertrude Stein and she says that she didn’t love his book. It wasn’t optimistic enough about the present and the ‘human condition’.

Gil is distraught. His pursuit of being a novelist feels threatened – as well as his pursuit of following true love in Adriana.

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The next day, present, Gil walks alone. He finds the Beautiful Antique Dealer that we met earlier, and they talk about the past and music. Gil finds a book vendor who sells old and rare texts. And leafing through these periodicals, he finds a journal that belongs to Adriana (from the past).Gil reads Adriana’s journal and learns that she’s met a man from Malibu. His name is Gil. And she has feelings for him. She even had a dream about Gil where he gave her earrings.

Gil has an idea. He can use this new information ‘from the past’ to woo Adriana, when he returns to the ‘20s later that night. So what does Gil do? – He runs back to the hotel room and steals a pair of Inez’s earrings that he will wrap up and present to Adriana. Inez unexpectedly shows up with her parents. Her father is having heart problems. And in the midst of this chaos, Inez learns that her earrings are gone. Someone stole them. Inez becomes accusatory. Gil makes up lies. And finally gets out of it. Gil sneaks back to the 1920s. Gil goes to find Adriana.

He professes his love to her.They kiss. And they are in love. A carriage appears and Gil urges Adriana to get in, wanting to experience the ‘magic of travel’ with her. Gil and Adriana are transported back to the late 1800s.

– Adrianna is captivated. Not only by Gil, but also about traveling to the past. Adriana loves it here. It’s so romantic.

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chapter 9 Indoctrinate Yourself

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Midnight in Paris. The hero is dreaming. Only a meager percentage – 5% or less – of his creativity is visible at the surface.

Now suppose, that the Midnight experience in Paris represents our complete mind, the visible surface of the day our conscious world; the vast subsurface Midnight our subconscious world.

5% or less of the mind should be classified as the conscious part – controlled by self regulatory willful acts – while an astonishing 95% is non conscious, automatic, instinctive.

As we go down deeper into the Midnight in Paris, it gets murkier, and it’s more challenging for us to bring into consciousness the often mystical forces of the subconscious world. Residing here is most of the hidden matter that influences our stories – all the instinctual urges coded in genes (governing autonomic responses like fight – or flight for example). All the conditioning that took place during childhood, all the indoctrination that has occurred since the first day of life, all the trauma and conflicts festering beneath the surface, waging a constant battle between our wants and needs. It is this subconscious material that’s hardest to retrieve and bring to the surface, to full awareness.

Yet is the mortar that goes a very long way in determining who we are and the shape our life story has taken.

Many people find it hard to accept that our lives are ruled by habits and routines and ossified memories, rather than moment – to – moment acts of conscious intent. They don’t want to acknowledge that our stories might actually be so profoundly influenced by factors outside our normal state of awareness.

After all, once we acknowledge the extent to which our behavior is governed by subconscious forces, how daunting – how futile! – is it to exercise full responsibility (whatever that means) for our life when a paltry 5% of that life is really under our control?

Rather than being troubled by the percentages, and the perception they may give rise to, I see them as a glorious challenge. Forget that so much, 60

part that makes the real difference – is the part we control. It’s this capacity that separates us from all other life forms. This evolutionary masterpiece is the only hope we have for making course corrections in our life story.

Our single greatest human asses is awareness, particularly self – awareness.

This capacity to be reflective, to be conscious, is our most sacred capacity. The

the power of your story

percentage – wise, of what we do is out of control. The part that matters – the

evolution of the species has, despite frequent missteps, moved progressively towards greater self awareness, the more self aware we are – that is the greater our capacity for conscious, deliberate thought, for creating new stories – the better able we are to change directions, to adapt, to survive and thrive.

Gil chooses to return to his life in the present .He leaves Adriana behind, but we know that she is happy now.

Says good-bye to his friends from the 1920s. Gil sees Gertrude Stein and learns that she likes the rewrite of his novel. Gil realizes that he has what it takes to be a novelist. He returns from the fantasy world of his subconscious mind and has found what he needs.

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While consciousness may represent a mere 5% of our complete mind, the influence this fraction exercises over our life is far profounder than that. This precious one twentieth resides in the cerebral cortex, and it might be likened to the steering wheel or the gas and brake pedals in a car – only a slight but very intentional touch to each significantly redirects the several ton vehicle, turns it 10 degrees or 90 degrees or makes possible a complete U – turn, speeds it up or slows it down, starts or stops it altogether. While one might be able to make a decent guess at the parameters of our future by taking a snapshot of our subconscious 95% (were such a thing possible) it is our conscious 5% that allows us to make course corrections to that future especially when the 95% has taken us off a desirable course. The conscious 5% is unquestionably the most important portion inside us. It is, in fact, what truly separates us from all other species. It is what creates the possibility for self – directed change.

Let’s get back to the Midnight – the deepest part. Stored here is all the non conscious material that clearly affects our beliefs, our attitudes, our view of the world, our story. Stored here are subconscious forces (wants, needs) that may be in direct conflict with conscious aspirations, intentions, values. Stored here are our most frightening and potentially destructive memories. The depth and concealments of this material, of these memories, does nothing to diminish their potential influence on our stories we tell and the vast content stored below the waterline of our titanic iceberg mind.

In devoting tremendous energy to keeping these events from being accessible, the individual’s beliefs, attitudes and stories get distorted. In fact, the ongoing power of these forces to distort might best be portrayed as having a boomerang effect. The individual’s very defense against these hidden stories – a lifelong expression of extreme defensiveness, aggression, irrational anger, distrust, fear, rage – in turn betrays the existence of unresolved conflicts stored deep in the subconscious. Don’t we find people who don’t protest too much most likely to be hiding something? Despite one’s best, most public intentions to live a productive story, the hidden story may undermine any real chance for it. To any careful observer great tension exists between the conscious and hidden stories.

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the power of your story There was no passion in the world in which Gil lived. In the 1920s, Gil sees action, passion and a total devotion to art. He sees a period of time when creating was more important than selling. Gil eventually realizes that he has no choice but to be in the present and that he must embrace the future, using inspiration and lessons from the past as they apply...

Fortunately, it is not a prerequisite of meaningful personal change that one connect one’s current dysfunctional story with something specific from the past; even if that were possible, it’s hardly a lock that one could undo the dame easily, if at all. Very often we can move forward and make positive changes with little or no clue as to how or why our convoluted story got formed that way.

Unfortunately though, when a conflict exists between our conscious and subconscious worlds, the advantage clearly goes to the subconscious, precisely because the influencing factor is beyond our conscious knowledge of 63

its being there. We often have no clue that there’s distortion going on. However, when current dysfunctional stories can be linked to past dysfunctional stories and the accompanying faulty assumptions that arise from them – feelings of inadequacy, resentment, the injustice of it all – the insight can be liberating and invaluable. And can better equip us to create new stories that work.

For this reason we must recognize and appreciate how our current stories are formed and molded from much more than the material that is simply percolating at the surface. While not everyone experiences severe childhood trauma (most do not), we all experience various forms of indoctrination in our lives, we all possess instinctual urges, we all experience conflicts between wants and needs, we all struggle with misguided stories in our past. The more aware we are of hidden needs, conflicts and traumas, the better chance we have of creating stories that meet the three criteria for storytelling (purpose, truth, hope-filled action). Once a memory of an important event or happening can be brought to consciousness you can start to explore how that past material might be affecting your current story.

Deep Diving So how do we prevent these ‘hidden stories’ from contaminating our current stories? We become courageous subconscious explorers. We learn to be skilled awareness divers. To get our current stories right, we must be willing to dive as Jules Verne did into the world of our subconscious and explore the terrain. Every dive we make holds perceived risk and uncertainty. The deeper we go the greater our fear that we won’t return safely to the surface.

And yet every dive we make increases our confidence – confidence that we can explore and better understand this mysterious, uncharted world that plays such a powerful role in our storytelling and, thus, in our destiny. Each dive increases our confidence that we can do it safely. To map this vast cerebral space (known in neuroscience as neuronal space site of frantic activity in some regions and inactivity in others) will likely necessitate countless dives throughout our lifetime.

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the power of your story Traveling from the conscious story to the deeper story and back in Midnight in Paris. One night when Gil has once again opted out of enduring the tedious company of Paul and his girlfriend – and Inez – the aspiring novelist gets lost on his way back to the hotel. He ends up sitting on the steps of a church just before midnight. As the church bell begins to chime the hour, a gleaming 1920 Peugeot Landaulet pulls up to the curb and stops. The cab’s passengers, clearly in a festive spirit fuelled by champagne, urge him into the car. Gil quickly gives in to their exhortations to join them in their revelry and is whisked off to a lively party at a timeless location in the City of Light.

Living fully conscious lives, which is the essence of full engagement – flow, requires a genuine understanding of the stories beneath the surface. Flow experiences in life requires a healthy co – existence between our conscious and subconscious stories, one characterized by openness, frequent travel, accessibility and courage.

1. What hidden influences might be behind some of your faulty thinking and beliefs that helped to create your current story?

2. Do you get very defensive about your faulty story? If you do, then what are you protecting? Specifically, in what parts of this story are you most fragile 65

and vulnerable? What are you most afraid of here? If you follow the fear, where does it take you?

3. The story you currently tell yourself clearly hasn’t inspired you to make a change. What’s the logic and rationale you’ve used to keep this faulty story alive in your life for so long?

4. Is this really your story you’re telling or someone else’s?

5. Whose voice is it?

From subconscious story to conscious story and back again Connecting to the past may be helpful but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient for effecting real change. What is necessary?

First. We must consciously face the truth that something in our story isn’t working properly. Our carelessness with money, our lack of exercise, our lack of joy in work or with family and friends. Our lack of engagement, flow, happiness in our daily life. Then we must consciously identify any faulty assumptions, distortions, hidden conflicts and prior indoctrinations. Getting these insights to surface may require a number of deep dives in our subconscious storytelling.

To bring the story to full consciousness, it needs to be written down. This is what the Old Story is about.

Second. Once the manifestations and subconscious influences in our dysfunctional story are made conscious, in black and white we can begin to craft a story no longer contaminated by the forces of hidden persuasion, one now more obviously aligned with our ultimate purpose. Our Hero’s Journey.

This is what the New Story is about.

Good, fine. This is all positive effort and tough to do, very tough. One is to be commended for doing it. But we can’t stop there. There’s another thing still to be done.

To gain real power in our lives, our new story must become re-embedded into the world of the subconscious story. After all, we’re creatures controlled by habit 66

conscious – where our new, functional story must find its permanent home, allowing us to keep the 5% conscious part uncluttered.

Embedding Next step: Embed your new story into your life by indoctrination. How do you

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and routine, right? It’s in that 95% force in our lives – automatic, instinctive not

indoctrinate yourself? By investing energy repeatedly and for as long as it takes until the new story becomes ‘embedded ’ – that is, becomes instinctual and irreversible. For most people ninety days appears to be the point-of-no-return, though significant momentum occurs in as little as three weeks.

Investing energy in what he loves. Time and time again. Night after night he returns to the church and is transported to the literary and artistic world of the twenties to which he has become so romantically attached. It is interesting that Allen has made all the great figures into caricatures: the self-absorbed Zelda, the party-loving Fitzgerald, the cliché-spouting Hemingway, the grandiloquently vapid Dali. When he asks Hemingway to read his manuscript, the great man defers to Stein, who offers the most unhelpful advice—in fact, it is no advice at all.

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The most effective way to embed a new story is by: • Writing and rewriting it. Including keeping a book to document all the flow experiences you have • Re-reading it • Thinking about it • Visualizing it • Talking about it, both publicly to others and privately to yourself • Deliberately acting it out by your new behavior I realize that the journey I recommend here represents a significant departure from the belief that real change cannot happen without an understanding of why and how one’s dysfunctional stories and their underlying unconscious conflicts were formed in the first place. I disagree. I believe that, given how our brain works, the more we repeatedly go back to our old, dysfunctional stories, and the more energy we invest in them, the more we strengthen them. Unless we give them the opportunity to die or wither they won’t.

When we make the Hero’s Journey - when we invest energy in new and constructive things, we give those experiences strength and life. New pathways open up. As travel does. Energy flows through them and flow experiences occur. With increasing fluidity. New stories are given life. New perceptions occurs, new meanings take hold, new behaviors become possible.

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the power of your story Gil travels with his guide Scott Fitzgerald to find new pathways for his creative energy as a writer.

The final act, then, involves fashioning highly specific flow rituals. Create new pathways for energy; see them become a flow activity and eventually invisible to you. The flow becomes ‘ritualized ’. Only by creating and embedding a new story about what you can do, at work, with your partner, with your creative company – will your hero’s journey change in that area. Now let’s determine what it is, specifically that you want to embed, and move to action.

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chapter 10 Turning Story into Action

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Inevitably, there are many changes you wish to make to turn your life into a story you want to tell It would be nice to think that all these changes could be made in one enthusiastic burst of self-transformation. But that doesn’t happen.

Pick a few changes and make sure that each is: • Important enough to you • Realistically fixable • Clearly defined • Supported by behavioral changes (flow rituals) that will do the trick

The Story Effect Whenever you invest energy in anything, there is a ‘training effect’. The greater and more frequent the energy you give to that thing, the more life your give it, and the bigger and stronger it becomes. Its impact grows. The training effect is inescapable. It happens whether you intend it or not. It happens whether its impact on your life is good or bad. It happens whether the repetition is an action or a thought.

Walking his new path of happiness with his new love in the city he loves most will have a story effect.

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yourself, that story travels your neural pathways more easily. Tell yourself that story again and again and again and soon enough those pathways that were once unpaved roads, metaphorically speaking, have now become slick six lane superhighways. Gradually repetition reinforces the primacy and value of that story – not to mention pushing away or ignoring alternative stories undeserving of your energy, which then atrophy or die. The pathways they once traveled

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There is a training effect for stories, too. With each repetition of a story you tell

now narrow again, growing less supple with disuse. You become indoctrinated by your current story. You are training yourself to believe it and to live it.

Every story we tell has some effect. Stories move the needle every time we tell them. Because of this powerful ‘story effect’, it is imperative that the story you tell be a constructive, and not destructive one. The effect of training makes it hard to break the bonds that form. It’s crucial, then, to be utterly conscious about who you are and what you’re doing with your life – in other words to be brutally truthful with yourself about your hero’s journey. So that you are aware of your story and can assess whether and how it’s helping or hurting you.

Obliviousness is, as they say, not an option. Without this awareness, you can’t take corrective action.

When you are pursuing your New Story and trying to fulfill your Hero’s Journey, you want to be at the mercy of the story effect. This is where the power of your unconsciousness is delightfully beneficially, working for you. Thanks to the story effect, once you’ve finished an initial period of flow experiences, you’ll gradually be required to spend less and less of your conscious energy toward reaching these flow experiences and positive change they cause.

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Paul uses his knowledge about the past to impress people, but he has no passion for it and he does not really learn anything that is important to his life. Like Inez and her parents, Paul is shallow. Gil has a great passion for the past throughout the movie but by the end of the story he realizes that we must live in the present and that the proper use of the past is to take the lessons that it provides and use them to help us live well. The symbol for Gil using the knowledge of the past and putting it to good use in the present is that Gertrude Stein reads and comments on his book. Ms. Stein was famous for performing this function for writers of the Lost Generation.

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You have a story you tell yourself about yourself. Every second of your life. This story has a great influence on whether you are capable to get it all. The freedom to create and the financial stability you desire. Making money doing what you love. This book shows the power of the stories you tell yourself. Stories about your passion for their work, stories about what makes you happy. Stories about your obstacles, your strengths and weaknesses. Stories about who your role models are and why. Stories about the projects you look forward to. Stories which you tell yourself and which define your reality and ‘destiny’. To fix a story gone awry, this book explains how to rewrite your story into a powerful story using three basics of storytelling – purpose, truth and action – in order to fashion a new, healthy, hero’s journey narrative. Be inspired by the stories of heroes who tell about their hero’s journey and the stories they tell themselves.

2015

the power of your story PETER DE KUSTER AUTHOR AND FOUNDER OF THE POWER OF YOUR STORY

MELISSA VAN GENT CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Photography: Jan Rietveld, JR Photography | www.jrphotography.nl

W W W . P O W E R O F Y O U R S T O R Y. C O M