Re-Writing Stories

Welcome. Welcome to the recap.

Call the first one in april 2025 to the creators club, the Small Business Club, the coaching club, whatever we’re calling it. It’s your club. If you are a highly sensitive, purpose driven creative who is bringing a business or creative pursuits online while you’re trying to live your dang life in peace.

this week, we are starting our whole month of April, which is all about the stories you’re telling, and not what you’re currently telling, although that’s very important, but how to rewrite the parts of what you’re telling yourself rewrite part of the stories that aren’t serving you, and what to do and how to rewrite them that you can move forward, and whether it’s one degree shift for your future or a whole bunch of changes at once. Because I know us highly sensitive creatives to make a whole bunch of changes at once sometimes. I have a little riddle for you to start the recap call tonight.

What do optimism, anxiety, excitement and worry all have in common? What do excitement, anxiety, optimism and worry all have in common. They require you to think about something that hasn’t happened yet.

if you can stress about the future, that means you can also imagine a better one, I said this week and this whole month, we’re doing the sacred, powerful and sometimes intense work of looking at our stories, the ones maybe we’ve had on repeat since we were six, and we’re deciding what serves us and what doesn’t and exactly what we want to do about it. By doing this work together, we’re declaring that we have enough trust, enough strength and enough desire to allow ourselves to feel some murky waters and feel our way through them and come out the other side. Emotions are going to come up as you look at your stories or your overarching life story, and that’s okay.

We’re here for them, and now we know how to allow them and process all the way through them, not resist them, not eat a Snickers bar instead, not go shopping, not do all the things, because an emotion will never overwhelm you. It will never swallow you whole, my friends, even though it will feel it’s going to swallow you whole right before you let it move through you, this work of rewriting your stories also touches into a territory where your brain might start getting sneaky on you. It might give you thoughts this is seeming toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing or gaslighting myself, you might get worried that you’re getting cocky or full of yourself, or that you’re narcissistic or even downright delusional, because either way we play it, there is a little delusion going on.

if you questioning things that, or feeling you’re telling a funny form of lies to yourself, that’s okay. We are here to talk that through, talk to the parts of you that are struggling, and give them some peace with some gentle, honest discipline that comes with emotional adulthood. What I love me some emotional adulthood.

There are thoughts all the time, bubbling up in our brains. Right on the low end, they say it’s around 60,000 thoughts swirling through our brain every day. But I adventure for some of us, highly sensitive, purpose driven, creative folk, it might be double that we are managing many things, let alone the creativity and the past and the future and the present, and many of these thoughts are old and recycled, they go unnoticed.

They’re ingrained, they’re practiced, that they feel our personality. We say things , that’s who I am, and if we’re not listening in the right way, sometimes to at least catch them long enough that we can be aware of them and consciously decide if they’re serving us and we want to keep them, or if we want to choose new ones to replace them, and then, even then say we do choose a new, better thought, We got to get to work repeating that thought over and over. it stands a chance in becoming an actual belief and holding its own against the old autopilot thoughts.

let me give you a real life example of how subtle, quick and harmful some of these thoughts can be. I was reorganizing some of you all know I’m on a mission to get my house into militant levels. Hi, cat of organization right now, and one of the little areas I was working with, because what I didn’t realize when I started this, when I was a different person, and I was on the recycled thought pattern was I wanted to get a dumpster, clean everything out of my house, and put it in there, but then all these other thoughts would come up, , I don’t want to waste all the stuff that I bought.

I don’t want to put plastic. Stuff in the ocean I couldn’t ever make the move of getting a dumpster and cleaning my house that way. the alternative was to become the person that goes through every single drawer, every single picks up every single piece of paper and makes a decision, a person who can handle decision fatigue, a person who moves through hard choices, feeling feelings of loss and saying goodbye to things and making choices.

here I am this last past weekend, working in a towel drawer. I picked my 15 favorite towels, and that’s even generous, right? Who needs 15 towels?

But I picked they’re all basically the same towels too. They’re white cloths. What do they call?

Them? flower sack towels my grandma used, and they’re very dear to me. And I rolled them all lovingly, and I stacked them in the drawer, and I shut the drawer, and I went on, happy that now I have a nice little set of towels.

Well, when I went to pick from the towel drawer the first time I needed a towel, I realized I hadn’t made a decision yet of how am I going to pick am I going to pick from the top? Am I going to pick from the bottom? I realized this is a small example, but listen to what’s coming when I finally did pick, I picked straight from the middle.

I don’t know that’s what I did. There was a nice separation. For some reason, I picked it, but it rearranged the whole drawer in a way that immediately I had more information, that that was not the way I had wanted to pick.

But instead of going, Oh, I have more information, I would to choose differently next time I have a new plan for next time my brain offered me this thought, see, I never choose right. And I felt the deflation. I felt the little moment of, you’re right, I never choose right, and what’s the point of it all anyway?

I felt all of that that’s associated in my brain. And then I slowed it down, and I realized the other thought I could think is, well, I had a 5050, shot, and now I have a bunch of new evidence, and I’ll probably pick very much better next time I have all these data points in an instant of choosing right and wrong right, I could have shortened it to cool. Now I know when we’re younger, when our little kids, when we’re teens, when we’re in our 20s or 30s, I think the balance of optimism and anxiety, or optimism and worry feels a little more equal.

We don’t know yet when we’re younger, all the things that are gonna go wrong, all the choices we’re gonna make on a very normal, very reasonable side of life, which is 50% oopsies and about 50% Hey, I got it. We haven’t made all those mistakes yet, and we haven’t made those mistakes mean something about ourselves and our potential. I’m not saying when we’re kids or when we’re younger we don’t have worries or anxiety or pain, but I am saying that you haven’t thought all those sentences on repeat, I’m a failure, or what’s the point, or it’s never going to work out, and wondered if something was wrong with you as many times yet, right?

over time, those sentences, they keep coming, and they get buried, and they’re almost silent, but they’re still there. today I want to give you a new framework, a new scaffolding to hold on to, to anchor into, as you’re considering rewriting some of these stories and starting to hear these thoughts come through that you might not even be hearing at first step, one of your scaffolding is when you hear a thought come through. Flesh it out a little bit.

Listen to it a little bit more. Oh, you, Kendra, you pulled the wrong drawer or towel from the drawer, and you thought, see, I never get anything right. Tell me what?

What do you mean? You don’t get anything right. Listen to what those parts of you say.

Hear the story all the way out what you’re working with. Step two, decide what serves your highest self out of that story. Maybe you’re asking for forgiveness, maybe you’re needing a little compassion.

See where that those parts are crying out for help, and decide on how you want to retell and re, see and re, speak to yourself. Then once you make a decision and get coaching and get help with making these new decisions, go out and start doing it. Start trying it out in the world.

Find Evidence, build evidence that supports this new thought, this new way of looking at the world. This is, I said, Where coaching can be very helpful, because you have an outside perspective, with neutral, new perspectives being offered that you can try on or taste you’re at a restaurant. And then the last step is to once you start acting with this new thought in the world, and you start seeing evidence and building evidence, no matter what the evidence is, you use it for you, not against you.

We’re going to talk a lot more about that as we build your stories. I also went into this week, some good news that’s going to sound bad news. as I tell you, remember that it’s good news.

Here’s what I want to say, the bigger your life, the bigger your life, the more mistakes you’re going to make, the bigger your success, the more problems you’re going to create for yourself. Yeah, the longer you live, the more opportunities you have than to put all these things in their highest perspective. Sometimes that’s going to mean zooming out, sometimes it’s going to mean zooming in.

Sometimes it means take taking responsibility or forgiving, or saying I’m sorry, and here’s how I’m going to make it right. But as we do this work of rewriting your stories that are pulling you down, we’re going to start speaking more and more to our higher brain, to our higher self that wants to grow while acknowledging the reptilian part of our brain that wants to stay the safe by staying the same. When it comes to rewriting stories that are not serving you, you all at all.

Some of the most sneaky but important stories are the ones where you as the main character have to move forward and intentionally create completion when things still feel incomplete. Maybe you lost someone special to you. Maybe you lost a fur baby.

Maybe your kids aren’t speaking to you. Maybe there’s an estrangement somewhere. Maybe a someone said that’s it.

You’re canceled. You’re out of my life, and you don’t ever get to know why things are gonna happen as you as you love more, as you expand more, as you grow more. We know this.

The good news is you’re already an expert at all of these things. We’re gonna bring that wisdom and clarity out of into the forefront now, that we can use it for good and not evil. Because part of creating conviction and becoming unwavering, unstoppable and keeping going until you get the things that you’re trying to get or create the things you’re trying to create, is getting fluent in writing these new stories, finding the evidence, making that evidence work for you, not against you.

think for a moment, drop it in the chat, drop it in your mind, drop in your journals. Think about some of the scenarios that come up for you when you think about feeling incomplete, situations you wish you could solve or talk to that person one more time or change the outcome and that maybe you’re not going to be able to situations with your family, your kids, that are ongoing and not yet resolved and may never be resolved, past relationships, current relationships, future relationships, that you desire to bring into your life But you don’t have yet unfinished projects, unmet goals. You are subtly, or not subtly, making all those things mean something, and we want to know what you’re making them mean about yourself, about the world, about your potential and about your future.

I gave you three examples this week from my own incomplete areas of life, where I will still take all the coaching that I can get, to keep getting perspective and keep coming back to my seat of power. I gave you a light example, a medium and a pretty heavy, significant one that I am convicted to keep moving myself towards completion, even though sometimes it’s impossible in the real world, not because everything’s turning out great for me, but because it it’s not turning out great for me, and I’m deciding how to be complete about it and use it for me and not against me. please start thinking about yourselves as I share with you some examples, and feel free to put them in the chat, because, , that fuels how I go forward speaking.

a light example is I once had a hairdresser fire me. And not fire me from, , I don’t want to do your hair anymore. Fire me from, I don’t want you in my life anymore.

And not only had she become a client of mine too. She had also brought family members and friends in on referrals and and it was she was one of my greatest referrals. at some point she loved me, and at some point she stopped.

And that’s had never happened to me before, and it’s never happened to me since. But the only explanation she gave me, even though I said, please help me understand what I’ve done. I would love the opportunity to make it right.

Was she said, you are emotionally and spiritually intelligent, I’m pretty sure what you did, and that’s the last that’s how it was left. And the feelings and the sensations that washed over me, this was years ago, but it it took me down for a little while. I was searching all over for why she was wrong, what was wrong with her, why she would want to make this and my friends and people who love me would say, this isn’t about you, this is about her.

And I knew what they were trying to do. They were trying to help me feel better. But that didn’t solve for the completion.

I can tell you at a later time what I did, how I’ve retold that story, and what I was able to do through this work of retelling our stories a medium. Example is I had a boss once right out of school, after all my perfect straight A’s and teachers who love me, and other bosses through college that love me. And here’s a boss.

Us that wasn’t loving me as much as I wanted, as I was accustomed to and thought was important, and in fact, the less she loved me, the less I loved her back. Wasn’t my proudest moment, but she, in my eyes, was doing some pretty bad things that I didn’t agree with. her way of dealing with me, though, was to continue to tell me at various points that if I did this, or if I said that, or if I didn’t do this, that she was going to have to put a letter in my file.

And that feeling, that sensation of her having the power to put an invisible letter in an invisible file that I never even had known existed, and I didn’t know if it would follow me for the rest of my life, or what took some resolution, some new storytelling in me about what that file even meant or represented, or how much power I was going to give it in my life. And a deeper example is my own father’s death. He died by suicide.

And there was a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of sensations. And if that’s ever happened to you, or you have been in a situation, I know we’ve all lost someone, there are sensations and feelings that we have to reconcile without being able to talk to that person in the flesh. what that led me to was a serious depth of spirituality, religion, seeking, searching, and the very story work that we’re talking about was the healing that came out of it, such that it led me to greater relationships with other parts of my family, my grandkids, my husband.

It led to the work we do here with you. it also led to what I let in from others and what I received. It made me who I am, and that’s how I choose to tell the story, not that I wish anybody any pain or myself.

But will I take it every time and use it for me, not against me? Yes, because I’ve seen what it can do. And here’s the best news, some of our clearest thinking.

Hap about a situation or a relationship or a painful situation, happens when we are outside of that situation, outside of relationship. We tend to be more humble, more open, more coachable, more self regulated, but we’re still in touch with the pain, we can access some deeper answers and wisdom and perspective. And your ability to shift perspective in your stories, to use your emotional, spiritual and mental intelligence to create completion out of nothing, without the situation or the relationship changing, is always sharper when it’s informed by your experience and you are in your seat of power.

lastly, we talked about the hero’s journey, and I called bullshit on it this week, because as much as I love it, I don’t mean to be harsh, the hero’s journey is quite beautiful, and I thank Joseph Campbell for his work, figuring it out, discovering it, naming it what it is, and then all the movies and stories that have taken it up and created great Hollywood blockbusters, great literature, viral social media posts, funny advertisements about deodorant, all the things. But here’s where I take issue, because the hero’s journey, and I’ll describe to you what that is in a moment, because it is good, relatable, perfect for us, our human experience. We have taken it as humans, as a society, and perfected it and made it into a formula and tied it up with a fancy bow every time.

And now we use it everywhere. And we use it to sell movies and masterminds and classes and programs and vacations and, I said, even deodorant. And since we have this tendency to take something amazing and then put it on repeat, much that it’s saturated in the market, the hero’s journey seems to sometimes come across too simple, too easy, too perfect.

if you’re not familiar, this is the time I want to tell you what the hero’s journey is, while we’re in this month of learning how to do this work of rewriting our stories. the mono myth the hero’s journey is goes this. It’s a little too simple and a little pretty, but here’s what it roughly comes down to.

In our stories, in our movies, we got a main character. We’re introduced to the main character in your life. This is you in the stories, though, the main character has a problem, or a couple problems, and something, usually an inciting incident, makes them wake up and hear the call that they have to set out on an adventure or to solve the problem.

They’ve got to do something for themselves. they set out, and pretty right away, they find out they don’t have what it takes. They don’t they’re not made of the stuff that they need.

Yet they fail, and then miraculously, they find help, a map, a guide. Some friends, some support, and they start learning, and they start winning, and then we usually get a little montage with some music of them winning, right? Okay, no problem.

Have a wonderful night. Okay, they meet the guide, they start winning, they start learning, and then they encounter another problem, and they have to slay a dragon, and they have to go inside to, , find the strength. Yes, they can call on their friends and their guides, but it really has to come from them growing and getting the transformation and becoming who they’re going to become.

But ultimately, good movies, good blockbuster hits, they do it, they slay the dragon, they get the transformation and all the loose ends that happen along the way usually get tied up we can leave satisfied going home, tossing our popcorn that’s left over in the bin Hollywood, make some money, and we can’t wait for the next one. But in real life, and especially the real life of creatives who are sensing a lot of things and maybe have some neuro divergence they’re working with, but they’re still bringing a real business, real bank accounts, real life online. The Hero’s Journey is a little more , alright, we’re the main character and we’re okay, but we got a lot of problems, and we’re struggling with a whole list of to do items at the same time.

And yes, something happens that make us hear the call, and we’ve had this inner Whisper, whisper to build a new business. But usually we don’t have time, or we got stomach problems, or we’re on the pot, or we got too much to do, we missed the call, and we feel a little late in behind, but we finally set out, and maybe it even feels forced that we have no choice, because we really got to do something with our lives, or we really got to make some money or something, and then we start failing, but not once, not twice. Usually it’s a lot of times, and it’s excruciating, and we get embarrassed, and we feel all these feelings, and we’ve never been taught to process our feelings.

And yeah, we eventually meet a guide, or we go out and we find them, but by that time, the guide might be in such high demand, they’re charging $25,000 for their upcoming retreat, and it only lasts four days. But still we double down and we figure it out, and we find the right guide, and we pay the money, and we start learning, and we’re still struggling, and we start winning, and we’re still struggling, and there’s even more problems that we encounter along the way, and maybe our health goes bad, and we have to pause for a while. You’re getting the picture right, and we still have to slay the Ultimate Dragon, and we still have to go deep inward, and we have to call on our friends and our guides and find the inner strength and the newfound capacity to get the transformation and move into the part of us that’s going to be up leveling.

And this takes months, maybe years, because if we’re not immersed in a community with people who are pulling for us, it takes a lot longer, but eventually we do it, and we do get some transformation, and not all the loose ends get tied up every time, and we have to deal with the emotion and the fallout from that. Sometimes we lose friends, sometimes we lose money, sometimes we feel we lost some time. Somehow Hollywood still make some money, but next time, we’re gonna stay at home and wait for it to come out on Netflix.

It’s not all that dire, but then we got to do it again, because then we have another goal and another dream, and we do it over and over and over. And my stories that used to circle me around the drain. I would feel exhausted and stuck.

And many of you come going, I’ve done this for long, we’re not able to see the results that we have created and use them for our for ourselves, because we’re still freaking out and failing in our minds, and it’s loud in our brain. Sometimes I wish I could have seen the transformation I got as I was getting it and use it for me to keep going for the next goal, but I would always see it as the next goal was, I still wasn’t there. I still wasn’t enough.

There was still a lot of lack, a lot of not enough yet. today, this week, we started turning our attention to your projects, to your businesses and your bank accounts. I want to hear now as we go into coaching, what are the stories?

What are they? Don’t, don’t filter them. Let’s hear what the parts of you are saying, and we’ll, we’ll make one decision that there’s a one degree possibility of inserting a new thought, a new memory, a new story.

you can go out there and build evidence. Remember before we go, here’s how it goes. Step one, we’re going to hear what’s in there.

Pick one thing, it can be light, medium or heavy, some belief, some story in there, the way you see the world and why you see it that way. Let’s listen to those parts. Then we’re going to make some decisions about what’s serving you, what you want to keep, what you want to retell, and how you want to retell it.

Then we’re going to go out there and we’re going to build evidence, we’re going to retry it out in the world, and the first thing you’re going to see is all the reasons why it feels a lie. And then we’re going to look harder, and we’re going to stay at it. We’re going to stay coming to coaching that we can then start to use what we find even when it seems opposite.

we can start using it as evidence for us. I remember when I started to think, I feel I’m gonna throw up a lot, and I started to say, then that must mean I’m on the right track. That feels that nerve wracking and that new and that different.

I must be doing something right. That’s a pivotal moment that I want for everybody to start seeing the problems that are coming up as a evidence that what you’re doing is starting to work. I love you all.

Thank you for being here. Now let’s coach on your stuff. Do.