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The Storyteller Tells Her Stories

February 20, 2010

It’s time to take a leap.  Every now and then in your life, more often then I’d like, it’s time to take a deeper plunge, a bigger risk and really go for the gold.  So I am going to be writing and telling my own very personal and sometimes painful stories for the very first time.

Whew!  Breathe.

It’s not easy!  I make it look and seem easy for other people, that’s my gift.  But damn it is really hard to do for myself.  Luckily I have found just the right team as it honestly takes a team to pull these stories out of me.  They don’t want to come out on their own.

These stories are like little long-fingered underwater creatures who are gripping onto the rocks so they don’t have to let go.  Eeeeeek!

Why is it so scary to tell personal stories?  Very personal stories.

Gosh, I could give you a long list of the reasons that it’s so scary.  It seems silly to say but it actually feels life threatening to a part of us.  Telling our stories is a way out of the box that we have lived in.  We are bound by the emotions, the memories and the meanings of our past stories and thus like the famous Pandora’s box, we must liberate them.

Fortunately as I said, I have just the right team - I have my wonderful reliable weekly writing buddy whom I meet weekly at the local Barnes and Noble coffee shop so we can write together.  We’ve been doing this for some months now.

In case you’d want to know my reason for meeting there - it’s because they have sunshine streaming in the windows (I need to feel warm), great Earl Grey tea (I need to have good tea) and a bag of delicious potato chips doesn’t hurt.

Basically it’s a good way to bribe myself to keep on going doing something that is hard!

Then I have my fabulous listening buddy who is helping me tell the stories orally.  Written stories and orally told stories are two very different animals and so I know from my own story guiding of others, that the deeper, more painful and often more powerful stories need to be ‘listened out of you.’

My story Maestro listens to me very carefully.  He is impeccable in his listening, which is what I really need.  He does not trod on my heart nor make those kinds of comments afterwards that make you wish you’d never told your story.  He wears a white velvet glove of purity that makes the telling easy.

To be impeccable in your listening you have to be out of your out of your own way - be really silent and really present.

But here is the best part of all.  He also makes me laugh while I’m crying! Yesterday was a perfect example. Yesterday as I was telling a difficult story (and blowing my nose through the telling), I suddenly heard an indescribable noise, a kind of ‘crkkkkrrrrrr‘ sound.  Hmm, what was that???

He didn’t say anything about it and I heard him make an ‘uh huh‘ sound like he was listening, so I just carried on.

A minute later I couldn’t hear him, so I asked, “Are you there Chief?”  (that’s one of my nicknames for him).  Then there was the sound of scramble, scramble, scramble and then he says, “Yes I’m here.  I just kicked the microphone over.”  Perfect timing!

It was perfect timing.  I started laughing so loudly that my crying and snorting turned into guffawing.  It was a priceless moment.

Perfect for the storyteller to be paused mid-sob for a moment of sheer humor.  My impeccable listener, who was working so hard to be there for me knocked over his microphone and was trying to retrieve it without interrupting.

I am still laughing just picturing him trying to rebound without disrupting my story.  What a riot!

These are the precious moments of storytelling.  In that moment I realized that it’s not just the telling of the story that is important, but every thing beautiful that surrounds it - the bonding that happens between two humans as they listen and share and the moments of pure delight when real life magic happens and humor appears out of nowhere.

This is the true magic of storytelling.

I am proud, honored, scared and delighted to be telling my own raw and real stories.  The deep ones, the raw ones, the ones that matter.  If I can’t lead the way on then I’m not worth my metal.

Gotta leap, gotta take a dive.

Thanks to all my partners for supporting me.  It takes a community to tell a story.  I’d still be on the ledge without you. Thanks as well to all of my blog readers for caring about stories and storytelling.  You make all the difference.

Stay tuned for more of the raw and real, the places we dive deep together and make life more fulfilling from taking risks.

Yours in diving into the heart of the matter and laughing about it all the way,

Annie

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The Transformative Power of Stories for Children

February 17, 2010

Annie: This is a beautiful story sent to me by Mike Blackstone a friend, colleague and blog reader of mine.  He told some stories to his children with truly magical results.  This really invites us to realize the transformative power of story.  Thanks for sharing Mike.  It really opened my heart.

Mike: A month ago I was invited to a lecture that was to take place last Sunday afternoon.  I had completely forgotten about this lecture until it popped back into my mind 25 minutes before it was to begin. Interestingly, I had spent some quality time with my two little boys that morning, had all my “chores” done, so I told my wife Maureen I was going.

When I got to the lecture, I found out the speaker was an “ageless wisdom” guy which I don’t know much about. His theme was “Unfolding the Soul’s Purpose,” and among many things, he talked a little about reincarnation and astrology. I enjoyed it.

When I got home, I did a little research on the internet about him and about some of his subjects. I came across one little tidbit in an online astrology chart about focusing on “raising one’s children well,” and that struck a little heart chord.  Hmm, could be a bit of a life purpose in there?

A couple of hours later I had this impulse and decided to tell my 6 year-old a story, and base it on the concept that we had lived other lives together. I completely improvised it. Here is the gist:

We were young brothers (Native Americans) in the 1800s. Out on an exploratory adventure, we were attacked by a mountain lion. It took all of our wits (mostly his) to both come out of it alive. Later we were attacked by a she-bear when we accidentally stumbled upon her cubs. Again our wits, mostly his, saved the day.

Several times during the story he said, with his head cocked to one side and his eyes narrowed, “Dad, you’re making this up, aren’t you?” Of course I denied it saying that that’s what I “remember.” But each time he asked me to keep telling the story.

About an hour later, my 9 year-old, Elliot, comes into my office and asks, very intently, “What did you tell Euan?” I said, “Why are you asking?” He replied, “Well, Euan said you TOLD him something!” “Do you want me to tell you something, too?” “Yes.” So I told Elliot a story, completely improvised, that went like this.

We were neighbor kids in the tenements of New York City in the late 1920s—best buddies who lived about a block apart. One day we were hanging out in the neighborhood, but I was about a block away around the corner with a couple of the guys. I heard loud voices and we came around the corner to see what was going on.

“I saw you (Elliot) surrounded by four rough guys from another neighborhood, and one started threatening you that they were going to beat you up. That kid turned, looked at his buddies to smile, and as he turned his head back, your fist lashed out, caught him square in the nose and knocked him clean onto his back.

There was blood everywhere. The other three were about to set on you but saw me and the other guys, grabbed their fallen comrade and beat a hasty retreat. They never came back.”

When I was done, Elliot floored me by saying, “Thanks, Dad, for telling me that story. And you know the part I liked the best? I didn’t need you to save me.”

I was dumbfounded in some wonderful way. The next morning, as I was taking them to school, Elliot said, “Thanks again for telling me that story, Dad, I really liked it.” And I wondered again what that was all about. He had never thanked me before for telling a story.

A few nights later I was tucking the boys in bed, I told Euan another story where we were both bridge builders, but he was a bridge designer.  Right at that moment he nodded his head deeply in some sort of  agreement, and he saved my life on a bridge-building site during an earthquake. Remember, he was the skeptic.

This time HE thanked me for telling him that story.

When he nodded his head it was pretty funny because he’s lately been into wearing a blindfold to bed—the kind you get on an airplane. So, I’m right by his face, softly telling him the story, he’s wearing his blindfold, and he starts to nod in agreement when I get to the “bridge designer” part.  It melted my heart.

There have been a few more stories since, and, with how much they seem to love them, there WILL be many more.

I am still digesting all this, but I find it amazing. A couple of clues I’m looking at—Euan (6yrs) loves to build things and is a Lego maniac. Elliot (9 yrs) loves everything about the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and is determined to make his living as a pro wrestler.

Annie: Don’t you love this story?  Sweet, simple ways to make a difference in the minds of children.  Thanks Mike for sharing the transformative power of story.

Yours in always sharing the stories that matter,

Annie

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You Want To Do Bigger Things

February 15, 2010

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Stories From the Next World: Swimming Against the Tide

February 15, 2010

I must be doing it all wrong.  Everyone else is doing it one way and I am doing it the total opposite.  I must be a total failure. That’s what I told myself for many years in the area of marketing my business.

Recently I had a conversation with a colleague who is great at marketing, in fact he has a background in corporate sales.  He and I have similar training in NLP and Hypnosis and some years ago he went out on his own and created his own business.  He’s doing fine but he’s not really thriving.  His struggle is to get repeated clients.

But if you ask me (and no one did!), that’s not the real issue.  The real issue is that in all he’s doing he is missing a certain level of fulfillment.  We all get into the ‘people business’ because we want to help people.  Then we are given the dreaded mandate that we need to market ourselves. Eeek!  Every creative caring person hates this part. 

We didn’t get into business to be in business, we just happened to pick something which required it.

The irony is that even though he is the one with the marketing background and knows all the right ways to do things, I am in fact the one that is thriving.  Better than that though is that I am very fulfilled in what I do.   The money that keeps me afloat is wonderful but more vital than that is the happiness that I have.

I have nearly total fulfillment in my work.  That is the biggest value that my business provides me.  I love my clients, love what I do and am working with amazing people from all over the world.  How the hell did that happen? Me who didn’t have a clue about marketing myself and never wanted to do it either.

I have been swimming against the tide.

When the experts told me to:

1. Have a clear marketing and business plan - I couldn’t.
2. Create an exact target market of who I am selling my services to - Uh no, couldn’t do that either.  Isn’t it the whole world?
3. Get out and network myself with schmaltzy print materials and business cards - Nope, hated that.  I went to Starbucks instead.
   
4. Create a one line description of what I do that would totally grab people’s attention in under 10 seconds - Call me old-fashioned but I  stuck with regular old human conversation.
5. Package my work in a formulaic way that I could sell to businesses - I’d rather have Chinese water torture than do this.
6. yada
7. yada
8. yada
9. yada
10. yada

Anyway you get the idea.  I did it all wrong.  I did absolutely everything backwards from what the experts said I should do and much to my surprise - it worked!

Who are these experts anyway? Hmm, good question!  Well they are might be people who have tried to find a kind of generic formula so that everyone can win the game.  Not a bad idea by any means, many people do succeed this way.

But are they happy? The big question is - can we make money and have personal fulfillment too?  The answer is - we must.  This is just one of the values of the future - a “we can have it all” paradigm.

In the series that I am writing called, Stories From the Next World, I will be talking about the values of the next world - those values, traits and characteristics of greatness and bravery, that if we embody them now, we will be ahead of our time.

So trait number one is this - swim, swim, swim against the tide little fishes.  If the experts tell you to X, Y, Z but you feel in your gut to Q, S and LL then you must.  You need to have the courage to swim against the current of the world that says that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things.

Swimming upstream is definitely hazardous.  You have to be able to tolerate feeling alone, thinking you’re a failure, have people point out what you’re certainly doing wrong and feeling utterly confused.

But for me I just did it from instinct because I could never tolerate having business ’success’ at the expense of my personal freedom or fulfillment.  No go Joe! At the end of the day, I want to be happy AND peaceful.

The world of the future will not be a world of either or - either I am rich or I am happy.  The value of the next world is that it has to be both!

Stay tuned for more in the series of Stories From the Next World and please tune in to my weekly Radio 42 Show where I’ll be sharing more of these stories and secrets of the Universe as well.  You wouldn’t want to miss those!

Yours in swimming against the tide that was going in the wrong direction anyway,

Annie

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Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance

February 12, 2010

Koyaanisqatsi, Hopi word
“Crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.”

Over twenty years ago I was privy to hearing the prophecies of Indigenous peoples first hand.  I heard them through the mouths of the elders and their stories of the future.  But honestly I was naive back then and I wrote them off as ‘doom and gloom.’  I told myself that it wasn’t really true what they were predicting.  I was in my twenties and carefree.  What the hell did I know about the world to come?

It wasn’t until the year 2000 that I suddenly woke up one day and said, “Oh my God, they were right.”  The things that they had predicted were coming true - earth changes, political upheavals, very specific disasters that had been foreseen thousands of years ago.

How did they do that? How did the Hopi and every other indigenous culture around the globe know what was in store for our future?  They just did.  That’s the best I can say.  They predicted it precisely and exactly.

But here’s where a confusion comes in.  They never said that it was going to be the end of the world.  They said it was going to be the end of A world.

Now what’s the difference?  The end of the world vs. the end of a world?  There is a huge difference.  You see to the native people their frame of time was always told like a story.  They hold time as a series of successive worlds, similar to how we have ages, epochs and eras, but their worldview is even more comprehensive than that.

Each ‘world’ had a theme an inevitable evolution.  When you can see it that way, it’s easier to understand how they could predict the future.  They could see in the span of evolution of the ‘worlds’ what was going to come next.

What they actually said was that it’s up to us to create the next world.  This is the part that is always left out when people talk about the end of the world.   The world is not ending folks. That would be the easy way out!  We’re not getting off the planet that quickly.

It’s much harder to realize that a world is ending and that we need to do something about creating the next one.  We can’t just stay asleep.  What they said was that it would be the end of an age of darkness and the possible beginning of an era of light and that it is up to us to make the necessary changes in lifestyle and consciousness to usher in another world.

We can no longer go on as we have been - driven by greed and avarice, with complete disregard for human life and our planet.  That world needs to end.  It is up to each of us to make those small and steady changes every single day day after day, day in and day out.

There is no rest for the bringers of the next world.  But that doesn’t mean that we have to be hopeless and cheerless about it.  In fact just the opposite.  We need to be as filled with light as we can be.

Our hope for the next world lives in us.  Each day, day in and day out - not reacting to the craziness of the world around us but quietly and confidently making the necessary changes in ourselves and helping those around us.

Every change you make in yourself contributes to the balance and healing of the world.  Today let’s reverse the tide and make our mantra, “Life in balance begins with me.”

You are welcome to listen to my Radio 42 Show on this topic.  They can be downloaded any time.

Yours in always making the effort to contribute to a happy and sane world,

Annie

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Featured Story: Courage is in the Heart

October 18, 2009

Courage: from Anglo-French, coer heart.  A quality of mind or spirit (heart) that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, without fear.

I had done a five day intensive retreat with twenty-five, Youth at Risk on the coast of England.  The course had been an amazing experience for everyone and I had been invited back to England to give a one-day seminar on how to deal with difficult emotions, particularly anger.

Many of the youth had “anger issues,” a term I particularly dislike because it labels people in a negative direction and segments anger out of our everyday world.  In reality anger is a powerful force that when used for good, can move mountains.

Working with these youth was a unique challenge for me.  Their emotions were high on the scale of being out of control.  My job was not to contain, suppress or make these emotions wrong, but to teach them how to channel them through the heart.  No easy task.

But I came prepared with my Heartmath presentation which would show their real-time heart rhythms on a large screen .  According to the Institute of Heartmath in California, the rhythm of our heart shows all of our physical and emotional stresses.  Heartmath has innovated a technique that shifts the heart rhythm from stressed to ‘coherent’.  The coherent wave of the heart is where we feel balanced, centered, strong, energized, loving and kind.

The youth, though normally distracted, were immediately intrigued by the presentation.  They seemed mesmerized by the giant heart rhythms moving on the screen.  I asked who wanted to volunteer to demonstrate working with their heart rhythm and right away Ronnie shot up his hand.

“Oh no, not him,” I thought to myself.  Ronnie was the most difficult kid of the group.  During the five day intensive he had been obstinate and angry.  He insisted on doing everything his way and breaking the rules over and over again.

He was the one kid out of all of them, who didn’t seem to soften, even after the numerous breakthroughs that had helped everyone else. Ronnie would have been my last choice for a demonstration subject.  But turning down a kid like this wouldn’t send a good message, so I invited him up front.

Ronnie was tough and I was pretty sure that they only reason he wanted to come up front was because he wanted to show off in front of everyone or prove my theory wrong.  Neither of these options felt great to me.

I taught Ronnie to breathe into his heart area and generate a loving feeling towards someone or something.  I was pretty sure that he was either making fun of me internally or resisting everything I was saying, but I kept on.  I encouraged Ronnie to focus on someone that he loved or cared about.

He was quiet for about 4 minutes which was the longest I had ever heard him silent.  As he focused, the group watched his heart rhythms change in real-time on the screen.  They were changing from irregular and jagged to smooth and rounded waves, all signs that the technique was working.  But I was still not convinced that any of this would make any difference with angry Ronnie.

After we finished the demo, I had asked him to sit back down with the group.  But to my surprise, he didn’t want to.  He wanted to continue to sit by the heart monitor.  I thought that was odd, but rather than choosing to enforce my rule, I let him stay.  I continued on with the demo’s for another half hour or so and then finished my presentation.

At the end of the day, I asked for any of the kids to stand up and share what they had gotten from the presentation.  Ronnie jumped up immediately.  He practically shouted, “I realized that I really do love my parents.” Apparently Ronnie had focused on them during his session.  “and for the first time in my life I feel that something might actually help me with my anger.”

I was blown away and I started to tear up.  I had known the power of the heart in my own life but had never experienced it in someone who was as hardened and angry as Ronnie.  I never saw Ronnie again but his story has stayed with me.  The image of him sitting by the heart monitor, gives me great hope for the youth of the world.

What Ronnie showed me is that underneath of the pain and hardness of anger is the tender vulnerability of deep caring.  When we get hurt sometimes we come to believe that ‘love hurts’ but it is actually in the restoration of our caring, that we regain strength.  Thank you Ronnie wherever you are for being a leader in the power of the heart.  I hope to see you again someday.

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Corey’s Story Journey: A New Epiphany

September 30, 2009

Today, in speaking with Annie and Katie on our weekly call to develop my book we dove into some new waters.

My book has started taking on the appearance of a memoir as I change through the process of putting it together.  It began as a book very much about the two sides of the brain and combining art and business.  But that is such safe territory for me.  It’s overly comfortable.

Thankfully, as we are putting this book together, I am also in pretty intense therapy and my aggressive therapist and Annie my aggressive storytelling guide are having an exponential effect on my growth.  I’m being challenged in new ways.  One of the new ways revolves around growing up.

I’m a 35 year old man who has been trapped in some very old behaviors.  The work I have been doing over the last few months really revolves around the process of recognizing those old behaviors, assessing where they came from and then breaking free from them to release myself from old bad habits that are inhibiting my own joy in life.

It feels like a very profound time as I redefine my relationships with my family, with my wife, with my business, with my self. As opposed to being a victim of my past, I am taking control for the first time and the impact has been tremendous.  This is the hardest work I have ever done, but I am finally letting go of an imprisoned version of myself and giving birth to a much more powerful me.

How this will affect the book?  I’m not sure we know yet.  But we have definitely seen and felt that this is a vital piece of my story…more to come.

Annie’s note: I am very excited for Corey’s continued breakthrough into new ground.  Corey has had the courage to let the story lead the way, rather than deciding where it should go.  This is allowing the real life energy of   the true story to come forth.  We’re breaking new ground and now with our wonderful third partner Katie, who is our writer, we are developing a great structure for the book.  Stay tuned!

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The Barnacle Story - “You Can Be Yourself”

August 23, 2009

A few weeks ago, I did a Webinar on Storytelling and social media.  Afterwards I got this lovely note from one of my listener’s Brian Johnston who wrote to say that something I said was really an awakening for him.

“Annie, you said something in your webinar today that was a spiritual moment for me.  You said, “Be yourself and people who don’t like your stuff, product or services will go away.”  I love that!  I have spent too much time in business trying to connect with people who are not interested in me .  My personality ever since I was a child has been black or white and I tried not to piss people off but then found myself very unhappy.  At this point, I am DONE with that and things are working out pretty darned good.  I realize that I am here to serve my creator, my wife and my kids.  Plain and simple.”

I love this. So Brian’s comment along with my own personal love of this topic, spurred me to write this story of the week about daring to be yourself.  Thank you Brian.

Year’s ago I read a story by Richard Bach called Illusions and his little tale of a barnacle on a rock, always stuck in my mind.  I no longer have the book or remember the story exactly, so I’m going to make up one of my own.

“The Barnacle Story” - take a risk and jump off the rock

Once upon a time in a far off land, there was a colony of barnacles that lived happily and peacefully together on The Rock.

They had always lived this way and they always would.  It was the ancient way of their barnacle ancestors and nothing was ever expected to change about this.  That was until the one ‘rogue’ barnacle decided that he was bored and needed a change.

Some say that in every time and every era, there is always ONE who dares to do things differently. This outlandish barnacle took the risk to ask himself, what else is there besides this rock? This is in itself a very dangerous question since any time you think outside of the status quo, you risk being disenfranchised from the world around you.  And this is exactly what happened to our dear little barnacle.

One day he woke up and said I’m tired of living on this rock and just being like everyone else, never daring to do anything differently or taking any risks.  Life is safe here but so what?

You see the legends of the barnacles passed down from generations, told horrible tales of barnacles that tried to leave the rock behind and swim out on their own.   Especially since barnacles don’t have fins and really can’t swim, this seemed especially dangerous right?  Right.

But our beloved barnacle did it anyway.  There comes a moment, maybe only once in your life when you have to take a risk and jump off the rock.

So he held his nose (yes I know barnacles don’t really have noses), but he held his sort-of-nose and jumped, right into the fast moving current.,  Yikes!

And for awhile he was bashed about by the rapidly rushing current.  As he was watching his ancient rock fade quickly behind him, he began to doubt his foolishness.  Did I do the right thing?

This too is an inevitable moment in the life of an adventurer.  We finally get up the nerve to take the risk and then we doubt ourselves.  This is the moment when we need all of our buddies and allies to surround us with support.  So luckily for our little barnacle, this is exactly what happened.

Just then a big powerful snake came swimming by.  Yes I know, there really aren’t snakes in the ocean, but at that time there were ok?  So this snake swimming by paused long enough to shout, Don’t stop little barnacle.  Just keep going….and let go.

Those were the magic words - let go….and he did.

He rolled over on his little barnacle back and allowed himself to float and instead of fighting the current, he allowed himself to be carried by it.  Ah, what a difference that made!

And eventually my friends, our beloved barnacle arrived on the shores of a new land, safe and sound.  And he made new friends including a starfish, an eel and a porcupine sea urchin, which he never would have done if he’d stayed on the rock!

He was happy in his new land.

And the moral of this story is clearly, “Take a risk and jump off the rock!”

Thanks to Brian and the beloved barnacles of the world for generating this story.

Ask yourself today, ‘Where do I need to take a risk in my life?  What rock do I need to jump off of?’  And let me know what happens ok?

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Stories From the Heart of the Cosmos

May 8, 2009

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