Spinning Your Story
Last May, 2007 I wrote a post called The Stories that No Longer Serve You. This week, Andrea Hess began a great conversation at Empowered Soul — What is Your Story? Read her original post and the discussion taking place in the comments.
I’d like to continue my thoughts on the difference between Your Story/Your Identity and the details, events, and plot-line “ingredients” of your life.
A time-line of details, or the conflict of events, is only a small part of a story. Consider Patricia’s articles about abuse — it’s not your fault if you are victimized (an event). You can’t choose what external forces invade your life; you can’t control the actions of other people.
So what do you do with a story of abuse? What do you do with a story of disease or some other tragic hardship?
Spin
You do what any good storyteller, journalist, writer, or filmmaker does — you choose the energy of a story that transcends the details. There’s not a single person on the planet who doesn’t have all the necessary ingredients for tragedy. But look at the recipe for Stories of Survivors — the details, the actions, the events — the elements that make up the story of a Victim are the same raw materials that you can use to tell the story of a Survivor.
The perspective works like a filter through which you view and re-make what you can’t control — this the part you do have control over.
Stream of Consciousness
Early 20th Century British novelists like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce invented the literary device we know today as stream of consciousness. In books like Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses, these writers explored the multiple layers of Mind that transcend the details and events of common experience. They illustrated the personal, internal, near-infinite universe of thought that defies time and plot-lines. Novels like these two in particular contrast the extremes between the mundane “day in the life” moments taking place in the external physical reality and the internal, timeless reality of the mind and spirit.
Stream of consciousness invites you to contemplate What is Real? What is True? Is your Story that you did the dishes at 3:30pm, or that while you did the dishes you internally dramatized the argument you had with your spouse the night before and explored the possibilities of where the argument came from, what it means, how it might continue or be resolved…?
Is this a story of a woman doing the dishes, or a deeper transcendent story of a woman coming to terms with dramatic behavior patterns in her relationships? Perhaps that brief moment when she rubs the lipstick from the rim of a coffee cup is also the moment of epiphany from which all the relationships she’s had with all the men in her life suddenly makes sense…
I’d like to use Michael Howard’s example (from his comment on Adrea’s post) to illustrate the difference between your Story/your Identity and the Events/Plot-line.
Michael’s comment, repeated here:
What is my story, if I could not include the past? What is my story if the first page had to be today? Alright Slade here goes:
I woke up and fed the cat and gave him lots of love and good food, he was happy. I made coffee, did the dishes and checked my blogs and e-mail. My daughter woke up and I told her I loved her and brought her to her mom who I also said I love you to and brought her coffee, she was happy, we watched the morning news.
I went to work, pruned a bunch of cherry trees and hurt my elbow which was extremely painful and I cursed several times out loud unfortunately. I finished work, got bogged down in traffic and thought about blogging and several business ventures on the way home. I ate dinner with my family, tried to ease the pain in my elbow and neck and had a decompression talk with my wife and whola..here I am, that’s my story!
My Spin on Michael’s Story
For me, these are details, events, the pieces of a story; viewed from a higher perspective, there are powerful ingredients for a story of great joy. Michael’s story is the Story of a Father, a nurturer, a care-taker. This is also the Story of a creative writer, an inventor, an entrepreneur, who transforms the traffic of his commute into a Studio of the Mind.
How do you spin your story? Who are you? Are you the ingredients of your daily life, or the free spirit, flying like a kite, merely tethered to those little moments on the ground? Are you the stick wound up with string in the fists of a child, or are you the colorful silk and streamers riding the sky?
Seek Wisdom, Practice Love, Spin Your Story
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18 Responses to “Spinning Your Story”
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Slade - this is beautiful. And I just got a hearty laugh out of your new tagline, which I just noticed!
You are so completely right - the events are the threads. But we choose whether to weave a straightjacket out of them, or wings with which to fly. We get to choose the story through which we will express ourselves. It truly is an act of conscious creation that we are invited to.
Thank you for continuing this conversation here!
Blessings,
Andrea
Slade, as usual, a great article. I posted a new article on my own blog after reading, commenting and thinking about all of the comments on Andrea’s article. My new article is called Blame Keeps You Stuck—Incest May Be A Part Of My Life Series—Part 7.
I have chosen to revisit the incest part of my story over the past months only as a way to reach out to others who may be stuck in their own stories. I feel that , for the most part, I have moved on with my own life. I said for the most part because I have found some areas that I still need to heal so that I release that part of the story from my mind and body.
My writings and Andrea’s article helped me to realize that I was still holding on and making parts of the story who I am. Now that it is in my awareness, I can let go of those parts and fully realize that they are only parts of the story.
Who I am is a being of love, joy and creativity who greets each day as a new opportunity to be. To just be is a wonderful new experience. I am not able to stay there all of the time yet. Keep teaching me, friend. We all have the capability to BE there all the time.
Slade,
As I read your post from last year I was struck by the realization that I had stories I needed to transform. The person I was, is no longer.
Andrea’s article was an opportunity to open that dialogue with myself and see what it contained.
Patricia’s site is a constant reminder that no matter what, there is ability. Courage ability and change as a result.
The authors utilizing stream of consciousness in their fiction now serves me well, I use it now as I write today.
Michael’s story of the everyday shows me that every moment I make a choice to do something, anything, illustrates a little more of who I am. Even if it doesn’t always seem so.
You then ask me who I am. I am the person you pointed to who is learning to see my old self as someone who I created from the events and finding that some of it is fiction. I am the person Andrea spoke to, that I might speak with myself. I am the person who needs to be brave as Patricia has been. I am the person who feeds the cat and nurses her injured elbow. I am the child who holds tightly onto her kite as if it were her last posession. Who has also experienced the infinitiy of the sky it flies.
My stories are not who I am. My stories tell you where I’ve been as I keep looking through to the depth of my reality.
Which you illustrate here is our reality.
Andrea,
Threads! Yes (or should I say DUH?) How did I manage to use “spinning” and “spin” without identifying the details, events, ingredients as threads? Thank you for embroidering the metaphor with such a perfect word. And, of course, thanks for starting the conversation.
Patricia,
I included the link to your article in the body of my post above. One of the reasons I wanted others to read your part of the conversation, specifically, is because you represent someone who skillfully (and with so much heart) transforms painful details from the past into something More.
You’re weaving an emotional, cathartic tapestry from so many little broken pieces and scraps… You’re a wonderful example of someone who understands what it means to transcend, to make something more…
Barbara,
Beautifully written comment!
Barbara and Slade, thanks to you both. You both had tears of thanksgiving coming into my eyes. Your words tell me that I am getting my thoughts across to others. My life has been so enriched by the journey. I sometimes forget the beauty of that journey, especially when looking at and though the pain. Life isn’t about the pain. It is about the living. It is about the wonderful other souls that we come into contact with. It is about being, instead of doing.
As a creative writer who was trained in the Hemingway style of short story development - less is more and everything you include has to be there because it is important to the story - I found this phrase from your post particularly poignant:
The lipstick is in one way a symbol of femaleness but could also be construed as a cultural reference to women in relationship to men. What does it say that this epiphany comes as she is standing alone, washing dishes (another cultural reference to traditional women’s roles), wiping this trace of femaleness away?
This example illustrates how perfectly one simple, seemingly unimportant snippet in time can become laden with significance. As I think about it I realize that this happens to me all the time. (And I want to read the story about the lipstick!)
Slade,
The stories that no longer serve you is one of my 2 favorite articles here, and I love the way you’re expanding the concept here.
I’ll definitely have to revisit this theme in my own life, so I can start to spin a pattern out of the chaos I’m in right now. Very thought-provoking, makes my creative muscles itch!
I didn’t just have a Victim Story, I had a whole movie and had spent much of my life in the starring role.
My new story is Survivorship, Transcendence, and Glittering Creative Success. Like Vitor, The Stories That No Longer Serve You was a catalyst to undertaking a major re-write of my life.
Thanks for the spin on the subject.
Angela-Eloise,
It’s awesome how you plucked that thread, that fragment, from this post and began following its Story. I was sitting in a crowded cafe on a Sunday morning when I wrote this… I channeled Virginia for a moment, reaching out around me for some classically Mrs. Dalloway-esque or The Hours-esque incidental fragment (something mid-20th Century, post-war, pre-feminist…)
As I looked around me at all the Sunday after-church traffic and people reading the paper over coffee, I fleetingly thought “Wonder who that story belongs to?”
Thank you so much for seeing that sentence as a window into someone’s world!
Vitor,
I’m thrilled that my May 2007 post was one of your favorites. That Beltane is the most deeply significant religious experience I’ve had since beginning Shift Your Spirits. I wasn’t sure if the essence could be captured for someone who wasn’t physically there… Incredible to know that it delivered. Wow. Very cool…
Slade,
I’ve come to your site from both Urban Monk and Empowered Soul and glad I did. You have a very fresh, very cool perspective!
Kirsten,
Welcome! I’m glad you found me, and by way of two excellent, worthy connections.
I can’t think of a better compliment — I’d like for my voice to be received as kind, generous, helpful, practical — but cool is awesome! Thank you!
Slade,
Okay, okay, okay — I get the message. I’ll start the file tonight for my as yet untitled memoirs. ARE ALL YOU GUIDES HAPPY UP THERE??? Geez, nothin’ like being pounded on the head with the message….
Seriously, I know I’m giving your post more of a literal reading than you intended, but — as you know — I’ve been receiving this same message over and over and over and over again.
How is your post different? You just gave me an “Ah-ha” moment. One of my main hesitations in writing My Story is that I vowed a number of years ago that I would always write a happy/uplifting ending no matter what the story. It is one of the characteristics of my fiction, according to all my writing workshops/peers. And I like it that way. So I’ve been struggling with how I can find a happy/uplifting ending — or any “ending” at all — to the story of an ongoing life & struggle.
DUH!! My ending is not in the details; it is in the “spin” or “angle” I give to my experiences. Which is something I do ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME when I’m typing an e-mail or telling a story or whatever to a friend!! I feel like a moron for missing that all this time….
Thanks again, Slade.
Love & Light,
Jewels
Cool, Jewels!
Glad I could help facilitate that Aha Moment for you.
:-)
[…] Peace Slade has done it again. He took a simple concept and put it into words in a way that has deep implications. His latest post, Spinning your Story, talks about how we can transform the stories of our own life simply through a new perspective. The Stories that No Longer Serve You, the original piece that inspired his follow-up, is also purely magical. These two posts were the firestarters of what I’m writing about here, the changes I’ve been going through recently. […]
I just went and read Andrea Hess’ post and then yours. It’s right where I’m at. I recently lost a job, money is tight at the moment and my job search has been difficult. It’s been difficult because I have a terrible work history due to some bad choices in the past.
I started a blog (the one in the link) because I wanted to put a different spin on my past. I wanted to use the tragedy in my life as fertilizer for a new one where I can be of benefit to others. Everybody enjoys a rags-to-riches story.
I have my moments of fear and anger, but there’s is this strong feeling that I am doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. It’s that feeling that keeps me motivated.
Thanks for the post. I look forward to studying more about this. It’s a type of meditation (Spirit Guides) that I haven’t explored much. I did the Contacting Your Spirit Guide Meditation and had a wonderful experience.
[…] Working to make sense of your life — whether events that have already passed, or situations you’re in the midst of — is an act of storytelling, placing a structure on events to give them meaning. Recognizing the structures you’re using will not only give you more control over the stories you construct, they’ll allow you to recognize your true role in your life: not Victim, not Victor, not Bystander or Schemer or Lover or Savior, but Author. […]
Slade, gotta love the spin man. I admire the honest way we’re taught to spin when using Emotional Freedom Technique.
“Even though I may be facing challenges right now I know I’m on the verge of delight.”
I find the “even though” phrasing more refreshingly honest than an affirmation that’s too far from the present for me. Using “in the midst of and on the verge” of are favorite ways I language my spin.
I like the movement in those phrases. I also liked the way you translated Mike’s story into a powerful recognition of who he really is. Good stuff man. Thank you.
Thanks Tom!
Your phrasing suggestions are awesome — I really appreciate your contributing these spin alternatives.
“Even though…”
“In the midst of | on the verge of…”
Very practical and powerful.