Episode 1: Who's Narrating Your Story?
Show Notes
In our first episode, we unpack what it means to cultivate self-love through storytelling.
You’ll hear about…
* Why so many of us have a Negative Narrator living in our heads, shaping our stories
* How our Negative Narrator holds us back from growth and evolution
* An Influential Storyteller [https://www.meganbarnhard.com/influential-storyteller/] who was able to shift a life-long pattern in real time
* What it really means to be the hero of your journey (Spoiler: It’s not having to perform acts of bravery 24/7)
Transcript
Welcome to What's Your Story? I'm Megan Barnhard, your host. On this podcast, we cultivate self-love through storytelling by looking at events in our lives and recognizing firstly, how we have put them together to create a story. Is it the story of, “Man, I'm always failing at that?” Is it the story of “I just can't trust myself when it comes to this.” Is it the story of “I can't seem to get ahead when it comes to that.”
There are numerous ways that we can catalog and categorize what happens to us. And so often we go into default self-blame and self-recrimination mode when it comes to the events that unfold in our lives. We are so judgmental when it comes to ourselves. We may not notice it. We may notice more that we are judgmental of other people or maybe we feel we're being judged, but when we really get honest, when we really hold up that microscope to our internal narrator, we can see that this narrator is picking out all of the negative stuff. This narrator is looking for ways that we've messed up, like a manager who is just waiting for an excuse to write us up.
And no wonder, because we live in a world where, for a lot of reasons, it feels really terrifying not to be doing something right or to feel like we are not getting the approval of other people and there are layers to this right? There is a basic human need to be loved and accepted, and there's our reptilian brain telling us hey if we mess up we might get kicked out of our group and we might not survive right? There are some really deep pieces of this. And yet there are also the layers of social expectations that might not even be what other people actually want or need from us; they’re assumptions we're making.
So, as we start peeling back the layers of that negative narrator in our own heads, we realize, “Huh, I might not be best served by constantly finding fault with myself.”
In fact, it's pretty hard to grow and to evolve into that best, highest version of ourselves when we are continually being nitpicked. You may have had this experience at a job with a manager who really was looking over your shoulder and waiting for you to mess up, or a parent or a mentor or a sibling or a partner. There may be somebody external in your life who's been an example of this kind of nitpicker. And you probably didn't enjoy spending time around that person.
So let's look at the narrator in our own heads and ask, “Is that the person we wanna be spending time with?” “Do I have a nitpicking negative narrator who is continually looking for things that I've done wrong?” And if so, no shame, no judgment. We don't want to add to the nitpicking narrator by saying things like, "Oh, I'm always nitpicking myself." Let's just take a breath and realize this is so common. This is what most human beings alive are struggling with. And It's also something that you can shift.
On this podcast, we're going to be hearing people's stories and giving them the opportunity to decide how they're cataloging and categorizing events in their life, whether big or small, whether moments of great shift or mundane moments that help to reinforce life-long patterns. We'll look at these stories and we'll ask, “What does the self-love version of this story look like?”
We're not about revisionist history. We're not about trying to run away from our own sense of responsibility. On the contrary, this is all about building greater self-responsibility. Because here's the secret: That negative narrator is actually giving us an out.
When that negative narrator pipes up with, "Oh, I'm always doing this," or "I'm never doing that," or "This is always happening to me," what that negative narrator is saying is, "This is an unbreakable pattern. This is just how it is." And how disempowering is that to hear? This is just how it is. There isn't anything I can do about it.
And on the other hand, when we pause and take that moment to go, “Huh, is there a different story I can tell here?” we begin to look for a powerful moment of choice and change, a tipping point wherein we, as the main character of our story, say, "I choose something different.”
And the more we tell those stories, the moments of catalyst of perhaps crisis, but also catharsis, the more we see ourselves as agents. The hero in the story is not the hero because he or she is always doing something wonderful and saving other people. The hero in the story is the hero because of taking action. That's what makes us heroes. That's what makes us the people we want to become — we see ourselves taking action and making choices.
And of course it's imperfect action. And of course we look back and go, “Oh, if only I had been able in that moment to do even more, to make an even bolder, braver, more courageous decision.” Absolutely. And guess what? That feeling of "I wish I could have done more" is you giving yourself possibility to grow.
And so instead of having to live with that negative nitpicking narrator who says, "This is just the way things are. We'll never be able to get any better. We'll never be able to change. This is always going to be happening to us” — who keeps us as a victim, who keeps us as somebody not worthy of heroic status, of not worthy of growth — we shift into the hero of our own journey.
We cultivate self -love, we cultivate self -responsibility. We begin noticing more and more in real time when we're in moments of choice and change. I love hearing stories from people who work on storytelling with me about real-time shifts that happen because of the stories they tell.
One of my favorites recently was from somebody going through Influential Storyteller [https://www.meganbarnhard.com/influential-storyteller/] who had been working on a story that was unpacking old habits, beliefs, and patterns, and they showed up to class one day and excitedly said to the group, "You guys, the best thing happened! I had a crisis!" And then proceeded to share the story of what had happened, and in that moment of crisis, this storyteller recognized, "Hey, there's that pattern again. Here's that pattern and that belief that I've been writing a story about, and wow, it's happening in real time, and how do I want to respond?”
When we become the empowered narrator of our own lives, we cannot help but shift how we act, how we show up, how we influence ourselves and the people around us. Because suddenly we have the insights of a compassionate narrator. We are seeing ourselves go through our lives — again in those big moments when big shifts are happening, and in those small mundane everyday moments. We are aware that we are on an arc, a story arc, that we are moving through inciting incidents and rising action and climactic conflicts and choices and resolutions. And we give ourselves that compassion, that belief in ourselves, in our ability to make choices in greater alignment with who we truly want to be in the world.
So that's what we're up to. We are cultivating self-love through storytelling, helping people step out of being a nitpicking negative narrator in their own lives and step into being the compassionate narrator who says, "Oh, I wonder what empowered choice this character is going to make next."
So stick around, join us for the journey, and cultivate greater self-love through your own storytelling process.
Thank you to Oleksandr Stepanov [https://pixabay.com/users/penguinmusic-24940186/] for the music!
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barnhard.substack.com [https://barnhard.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
