“I think I need a new story”, I told my counselor a few weeks ago.

☎️ “I had a call with someone I met at a networking event and one of the reasons she was interested in working with me was because of everything I had gone through – the business crisis…the financial disaster…the nervous breakdown.”

“She seemed to view it as a kind of hero’s story and was bolstered by it. She was impressed and inspired by the fact that I not only made it through all that, but was standing here today, building a new business, and helping other women with what I had learned.”

😩 “And that’s not how I view it at all”, I continued.

“I see it as a story of bad choices, failure, hitting rock bottom, and doing a long, slow crawl out of that hole. Sure, I’m building a business now to create something fruitful…something meaningful…out of that experience, but it’s a challenge and I don’t think of myself as successful yet.”

🤔 “But I think if I could view my story the way she sees it, I’d feel a lot better and I think this anxiety we’ve been working on would go down.”

So my counselor and I spent the next hour discussing my story and rewriting it in a new, more empowering way.

Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed that I hadn’t already done that. This is work I’ve been trained on as a Life Coach and I know how to recognize it and work through it with other people. In fact, much of the counseling session was me leading myself through the process!

💯 But as a friend of mine used to say, “You can’t read the label from inside the jar.”

And, not only had I not recognized the story I was telling myself and the need to rewrite it until that phone call with the woman from the networking event…

…I think I also needed the carved out focus time where someone was holding space for me and reflecting back the words and emotion I was expressing.

That space allowed me to connect my unconscious/now conscious story to my anxiety, which is why I was seeing the counselor in the first place.

You see… …a few months ago, a situation came up that re-triggered the high levels of anxiety I experienced during my nervous breakdown – fortunately, not to the same extent, but high enough where it was having a pretty negative impact on my daily life.

💡 What I realized in that counseling session was that a big piece of my anxiety was tied to that old story of failure and not feeling sure I could trust myself to build something successful.

But as I rewrote my story out loud, I started to see what that woman on the phone call saw:

🦸‍♀️ Someone who answered the call to the Hero’s Journey…walked The Road of Trials…slayed the dragons…overcame The Ordeal…and was returning to her community as a much wiser person ready to share the gifts of the lessons she learned.

I reference Joseph Campbell’s framework of The Hero’s Journey a lot in my work. But I had always seen myself as someone who was still on the journey, far from completing the cycle.

What I see now is that my coaching business is a brand-new journey with a fresh Road of Trials, all its own.

And it’s the culmination of my previous journey: the Hero’s journey to find myself, find my true purpose and bring the lessons back to my community.

🏆 I have, indeed, successfully completed the full cycle and recognizing that feels pretty amazing!

I’m a success.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it 😉

❓ So my question for you today is this:

Are you telling yourself the true story about your life?

If you’re not yet seeing yourself as a hero and as a success – after everything you’ve gone through and overcome…

👉 …my hunch is that your story could use a rewrite. ❤️

P.S. If you’d like help developing a new understanding of your story – one that’s far more empowering and uplifting – I’d love to help! The stories we tell ourselves about our past have a massive impact on our present and future.

When our story feels empowering, we act in an empowered way – and that’s how we get the life we want.

Set up a free Meet & Greet call to find out more about coaching with me ===> https://soulfireshift.com/coaching