Whether we have good or bad experiences, our basic instinct is to tell someone about them. There’s something magical that happens when we share our stories with others. In this episode, we’ll go through the power of good storytelling with Lisa Bloom.
Lisa is a Professional Storyteller, Accredited Coach, Author, and Leadership Expert. She teaches coaches how to use storytelling to impact their clients and grow the business.
It’s easy for us to adhere to the stories we tell. They can bring us hope and inspires us or these can be stories that make us feel stuck. In the process, they become our beliefs and realities that may or may not serve us.
There are numerous ways we can use storytelling in our business; to attract clients, communicate our branding and utilise it to transform and empower ourselves and others.
By changing the stories we tell, we’re able to shift the reality of our lives and our businesses. Allow yourself to step into the power of your stories and learn more about this once you tune in to the episode.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- How did Lisa get into storytelling? (01:40)
- The outer and inner story (03:57)
- Creating a balance between our inner and outer stories (06:15)
- The definition of story power (10:07)
- Evaluating whether our stories are serving us or not (15:19)
- Discovering the beauty of our inner stories (23:19)
- How to step into your power with your stories (25:20)
- Lisa’s advice for listeners who want to explore storytelling (31:49)
QUOTES:
- “You should never tell a story that you’re not ready to tell and you should never be vulnerable for the sake of vulnerability.” -Lisa Bloom
- “No matter how many amazing skills, techniques or knowledge you have, if your inner story is sabotaging you, you’re not able to maximise them.” -Lisa Bloom
- We all have things that happen to us, all day every day but it’s about the timing when you share that.” -Samantha Riley
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- Free Audiobook and Toolkit: The Story Advantage
WHERE TO FIND LISA BLOOM
- Website: https://story-coach.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StoryCoach/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/storycoachinc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/storycoach
- Podcast: https://story-coach.com/podcast/
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ABOUT LISA BLOOM
Lisa Bloom works with business owners to help use storytelling as a powerful approach to impact their clients and grow their business. She is a professional Storyteller, accredited Coach, Author, Mentor and Leadership expert. Her groundbreaking techniques have enabled her to grow her business and take to the stage where she speaks internationally about this approach to business, leadership and coaching.
TRANSCRIPTION
Lisa Bloom Snippet (00:00):
So hard things happen, but when we can share them with others, and when we can be vulnerable about how challenging it’s been and where we are now, then sometimes it helps us build trust and connection. And trust and connection is what we’re always looking for in business.
So if you can come from a place where you’re telling a story that actually empowers you, it’s like you transform the story. And suddenly the reality around you changes and how you suffer changes, you have pain, but you don’t suffer. And the story is a big part of that. The story helps us move forward and say, Okay, this is the reality. This is the fact that’s purified. Now, what is the story I’m going to tell, that’s going to actually make me come through this in a way that I want to live my life.
Samantha Riley Intro (00:40):
My name is Samantha Riley, and this is the podcast for experts who want to be the unapologetic leader in their industry. We’re going to share the latest business growth, marketing, and leadership strategies, as well as discussing how you can use your human design to create success in business and life. Inside and out. It’s time to take your influence, income, and impact to the level you know you’re capable of. Are you ready to make a bigger difference and scale up? This is the Influence By Design podcast.
Welcome to today’s episode of influence by design, I’m your host today, Samantha Riley, and joined by the lovely Lisa Bloom. How are you, Lisa?
Lisa (01:18):
I’m good. I’m happy to be here.
Samantha (01:21):
I’m really looking forward to discussing today’s topic. This is a topic that I’ve heard a lot about, and I’m sure our listeners have heard a lot about. But I think that you’re going to shine some light into some really different areas for us today. We’re going to discuss storytelling. I’d love you to start off by telling us how did you get into stories? And what made it so important that that was the thing that you got into?
Lisa (01:46):
Yeah, sure. Thank you. You know, my background is in learning and development. And I think from a very early part of my career in organizations, I realized that when I would tell stories in the corporate classroom, something strange happened, something almost magical happened in that people were suddenly really engaged. And they were actually learning differently because I could tell a story.
And so when I went out into my own business, I learned a lot about how story could impact people. And when I then moved into the coaching industry, I realized, you know, there’s kind of two sides of this. On the one hand, we’re not very good at talking about what we do in a way that’s compelling to others. And so we need a strong story, just as a business person, as a person who wants to set up a business as a coach, or whatever you’re doing, you need to have some some really strong story so that you can be articulate, and you can really kind of compel people to want to talk to you, you know, storytelling is super compelling when it’s done well.
But then there was an other side of it, which is, you know, we kind of define our reality by the stories we tell. And I noticed very early on that, when we experience something, a basic human instinct is to go and tell someone. And then what happens is, we tell someone this story of what just happened. And we don’t realize that only a tiny percentage of what we’re actually telling is pure fact. And the rest is our interpretation. And it’s our opinion, and it’s our previous experiences influenced by all these things.
But then this thing that we tell becomes truth in our minds, it becomes just that’s what happens is if it landed upon us, we had nothing to do with it. And it becomes the story that we get very attached to about this thing that happened. And sometimes that story is great. And it’s you know, it’s harmless, and it’s fantastic. But sometimes these stories, get us stuck and get us caught.
And the stories themselves become these beliefs and this reality, that’s really does not serve us. And so I became really fascinated by on the one hand, how do we tell our story? And how do we become successful business people by having strong stories, but also how do we live our story such that we’re actually transforming the stories that hold us back and only working from stories that empower us?
Samantha (03:56):
Hmm. So what I’m hearing is that there are multiple ways to use story in our business, not just in a way that were using it to maybe attract clients or maybe in a presentation, but there are multiple different ways. Am I in the right track here?
Lisa (04:12):
Yeah, and there are multiple ways on both sides of this divide that I’m talking about. So when you’re telling your story out the outer story, which is all kind of the marketing, and the speaking and the website, and you know, and there are multiple ways to sell who you are and what you do your services, your program’s through the power of story, which I think is like the ultimate way to sell because it’s easy, and it’s flows and it feels natural, and it doesn’t feel in any way stressful.
But then there’s this whole other side, which I call the inner story, which is where, you know, it’s the story you tell yourself, and if those two stories are not aligned, then things don’t go well. They just it just doesn’t really work. And maybe I can share with you an incident where this became so so brutally clear to me. You know, I was I was at a big event in California, full of entrepreneurs, many of whom I’d only ever seen online. So it was kind of a thrill to be in the room.
And I remember walking into this room, it was a beautiful suite in a hotel, and it was decorated so nicely. And in the room, everybody was kind of excited and happy. And the great and the talk was all about abundance and success and the whole thing. But I noticed in this two or three day event that every time I went to the bathroom, I would overhear women talking about their divorces, and their children who, you know, they were having struggles with, or illness or like the real kind of the real life, the inner story, I started seeing it as Okay, that’s the outer story. And this is the inner story.
And when there was this massive distance between what how they were showing up in the room versus the conversations I was hearing in other places around, you know, over lunch, in the bathroom, so on, I realized that that person had just couldn’t see the authenticity and that there was something wrong in the integrity of the individual when the stories weren’t integrated. And that’s where I began to really explore and study and try out like, what is this inner story? What is the outer story? And how do we get really clear about bringing our best selves?
Samantha (06:13):
How do we balance that feeling, or the story rather, of what is really going on in our lives, and that story of that outer? Because obviously, there is a way that we do have to show up, it’s not about completely covering things up. But at the same time, it’s not about kind of just like, you know, blurring all over everyone. What’s the balance? What’s the balance? Yeah,
Lisa (06:41):
And it’s, you know, it can be a difficult balance to find, sometimes balances like that it kind of moves around. But I think there’s some very clear guidelines and stories, you know, I always say that every story needs to be told the things they don’t need to be told in a business context. So some stories you tell to your partner, or your friend or your therapist, or you know, whomever, and some stories are really powerful to tell in a business context.
The thing is that the story that you want to tell in your business is a story that always serves the other, it’s not a story for you to figure out what you feel or what you think the story is there in service of the client. And also, I strongly believe that you should never two things, one, you should never tell a story that you’re not ready to tell. And to you should never be vulnerable for the sake of vulnerability, you can be vulnerable because you’re serving somebody else.
And vulnerability is so beautiful and so powerful and so helpful, but not for the sake of vulnerability, because I have to show up vulnerable, you know, that just that just bounces, it doesn’t work. And so I think it’s the ability to work through your own stories. And that’s what story power is about is like really understanding of how do I talk about something that’s challenging, but talk about it from an empowered perspective, that’s really the deep work of story coaching, and talk about it from an empowered perspective. So that so that you don’t feel like I don’t want to talk about this. And something that’s too recent, too raw, too. Unclear in your own mind.
And heart is not a good story to tell, you know, in any business context ever. And sometimes people miss that thin line, and they tell the story that’s too vulnerable or just uncomfortable or not fully processed, and then it makes everybody uncomfortable, and it doesn’t work. I think it’s important to do your own story work first, which is really, as I say this, this idea that, you know, sometimes people will come to me and they’ll say, I have this story. And I don’t really feel comfortable telling it, and we’ll do some work on it, we’ll look at the story. And we’ll look at the perspective from which she or he is telling it. And then once we’ve done this kind of story coaching work, they become comfortable with sharing the story, because suddenly, it has transformed, it has changed. It’s a very powerful process.
Samantha (08:56):
It sounds amazing. I remember someone said to me years and years and years ago, that you always tell the story from the learning, you never tell it from the wound. And I’ve always remembered that because we all have things that happen to us all day, every day. But it’s about the timing of when you share that and exactly like you say, are we sharing it for our sake, to just have a bit of therapy? Or are we sharing it to, you know, to help our audience or our client or whoever that is.
Lisa (09:25):
So I really am sometimes the wound is too painful, we’re not ready to see the learning, we’re not ready to deliver, you know, that kind of learning piece. And we’re just really kind of swimming around in that wound and feeling the pain. And that’s really not a time that sharing is appropriate in a business context. But oftentimes, when you really dive into the story, you begin to see the learning and it becomes so much more real. And then it may still be very close to your heart as you tell it and it may move you and hopefully move your audience quite a lot, but it’s not going to do straw you and it’s not going to be an appropriate for the audience when you share it. And that’s the important thing.
Samantha (10:05):
So you mentioned story power. Can you explain what story power is?
Lisa (10:11):
Yeah, so I feel it’s, it’s like this superpower. It’s this idea that you can find the stories that are holding you back, and you can transform them. And so it’s about really identifying, you know, what is the story I’m telling right now? Like, why am I experiencing this block? Why am I experiencing this pain or this conflict? What’s the story I’m telling right now? And how do I transform that story?
And there’s lots of different ways to do it. But the first piece of story power is really identifying, okay, I’m telling a story here. If I’m experiencing conflict, if I’m experiencing pain, I’m telling a story. It’s probably not true. That’s just the way it goes. It’s probably not true. But how do I identify it? How do I work with it? And how do I transform it? And you know, again, there are lots of different ways to do that.
But that’s the deep work, which I think when you’re able to do that in an efficient way, suddenly, you’re able to integrate your inner and outer stories, you come across more authentic, you feel more relaxed, you’re able to share more things that are true to you. And sometimes vulnerable, and it feels safe, and it feels purposeful. And it impacts people in a way that draws them to you. So they actually want to work with you. And they want to, to interact with you.
Samantha (11:23):
So just to be clear, you were talking about the inner stories there. Right? Making sure that yeah, and the stories that we’re telling ourselves,
Lisa (11:30):
Yes, and ultimately, that’s going to impact the outer story, it’s going to impact how we show up in the world. Because it’s no matter how many amazing skills you have or techniques you have or knowledge you have. If your inner story is sabotaging you, you’re not able to maximize them, you’re not able to implement them.
And I’m sure you know, the same way as I, you know, after working for years with people, you can give them everything, everything you know, and they still won’t take action, they still won’t do the things they need to do to be successful. And you know, for years, I asked myself, Why is that? And I realized it’s usually because there’s a story. They’re telling themselves, there’s a belief in there that evolves out of a story.
Oftentimes, it’s not even their story. It’s a story somebody else said to told them or made them believe or helped them believe. And they’re not aware of it usually. And they’re living through it. And I can give you an example. It’s a kind of a flippant example. But it’s, I think it’s a good one, which is, you know, years and years ago, I moved out of the corporate world, I discovered storytelling realized, Oh, this is what I’ve been doing my whole life. I didn’t know what it was called. And I signed up for a course.
And I became a professional storyteller. I learned for, you know, months and months. And I remember one of my very first performances getting up on a stage in front of probably 100 people. So nervous. And I remember telling a story, and it was very well received, and everybody’s clapping, standing ovation, the whole thing. And I felt great. It’s like, this is what I want to do.
But in that moment, as people were applauding, and as my teacher was, like, you know, talent, give me all the signs of how well I’ve done. I had this very strong sense in myself in my heart that this kind of statement came to my mind very clearly. And it was you are such a fake. And I didn’t understand where that came from. Because I finally found the thing I love, I realized, I’ve been doing it for years. I just didn’t know what it was I trained people loved it. I loved it.
Everything felt great. I got over my stage fright, like everything was fine. Why was I fake? And I didn’t know what that was. And it took me a few days of really contemplating and trying to figure out like, What on earth was that about? And I suddenly remembered, and it was again, it was after reflection and contemplation and trying to journal on the whole thing. I remember the years and years before when I was a child, maybe nine or 10 years old, maybe even younger. I remember one night after dinner, we were all sitting around in the living room. And we’d had a guest for dinner and somebody turned around to my older sister, and said to her, so what are you going to be when you grow up?
And she said, without a moment of hesitation, she said, I’m going to be an actress, I’m going to be on stage. And I remember thinking in that moment, like if there’s one thing I know, that is there’s only ever one actor in a family, and that’s her job. And so even though I might want to do that, I really can’t because it will be copying her and it’s her job. And I live with that for a long time.
Now in reality, she had no interest in theatre, she had no interest in being on the stage. She ended up working. You know, she’s a very senior leader in a corporation. She calls me when she has to do any talks or pull a team together. She like she just doesn’t like and I was in theater groups my whole life. I loved literature. I loved speaking, you know, all this stuff. And yet here I was years later, and I’m talking, you know, it was probably 25 years later, on a stage finally doing the thing that clearly I was supposed to do.
And I felt like a fake because there was this old story that was completely irrelevant, that I was somehow still building You think because I’ve even forgotten the story was there, but it still had a hold on me. So it was astounding. And of course, in this situation, it was so ridiculous the story, it was so obviously ridiculous, it was quite easy for me to let go of it. And I stopped feeling like a fake. But you know, sometimes the stories have a slightly stronger hold, and you have to do a bit more.
Samantha (15:17):
Totally. So. And it’s really interesting, that very last thing you said, because when we speak some of those stories out loud, and I’m not talking about to an audience, as in telling a story, but just in a one-on-one conversation in very safe space. Most of the stories that do come out are ridiculous. They’re stories that are holding us back and have been holding us back for our entire lives.
And then sort of you speak it out to someone and you’re just like, that sounds so silly. That sounds like they’re their childhood stories. Where do we begin to be able to, I guess, stepping into our power, to not let these stories hold us back so that we can bring our inner and outer story into alignment? And even that sounds like a silly question. But those stories, they hold us ransom so much.
Lisa (16:10):
Yeah, it’s true. And again, I want to also make a distinction. We’re not talking about therapy here, right. So you know, there are places where a therapeutic processes is helpful and necessary, and that’s fine.
But we’re talking more about, you know, the stories don’t even have to be old, they don’t even have to be from 3040 years ago, from our childhood, the stories could be from something that happened recently, you notice something and you understand it a certain way, because we’re constantly the point of story is that it helps us make meaning of the world. But sometimes we make the wrong meaning. Because we’re looking at it from a perspective that we don’t notice.
And then the meaning that we, you know, derive from the situation is quite different to somebody else’s experience of that situation. And you may have had, I don’t know if you have siblings, but my sister and I often will talk about something. And then I’ll look at her and say, did we grow up in the same house? Like, Oh,
Samantha (17:01):
Absolutely.
Lisa (17:03):
Are you dealing with your spouse, you go, you go somewhere, or a partner, you go somewhere, you go for a meal, and you remember it as being like, you know, what they remembered as Italian you remember this Chinese food, you know, they remember this green walls. And you remember this being red like you have such completely different memories.
And it’s not that you’re both, you know, that one’s right and one’s wrong, it’s you’re seeing it from a different perspective, it can be as simple as one person is sitting opposite a green wall, and the other person sitting opposite a red wall. Like it’s really astounding how we fill in the gaps of our experience with story.
And then it becomes meaning. And that meaning we assume it to be true, we assume it to be an accurate recollection, or an accurate interpretation of a situation. And so I think what’s really interesting is that, you know, again, once you begin to consider, okay, I’m telling a story here, this isn’t objective truth. This is a story that I have created.
Now let’s look at that. And let’s break it down. And let’s see, first and foremost does it served me and if it serves me, enjoy it, leave it alone, you know, we all tell so many stories, if there’s a story that’s helping you be confident and helping you be successful, don’t go near it, like just enjoy it.
But if it’s a story that’s holding you back, you’ve got to put some attention to it. And you’ve got to say to yourself, like, how is this holding you back? Why is this holding you back? Where does it come from? And there’s a whole process of how we look at breaking down these stories and considering them. And as a coach to be able to do that for others is incredibly powerful. Because it enables frees them up, to be able to actually deal with what’s in front of them and take the next step.
Samantha (18:35):
I love this so much. So I would love it. If you could share obviously with no name or you know what this person did, but an example so that we can really understand this of a story that someone was telling themselves, and sort of what happened and how they worked through that. And you know what the outcome was for them? Yeah, sure.
Lisa (18:59):
So I had a client a few years ago, she’s the first person who came to mind who had had a really successful career in a particular organization. She joined at a at an entry-level, worked her way over 25 years or so through this organization, and then ended up in an executive level, even on the board of directors like really, really successful career.
But at a certain point in time, she became interested in coaching, she did some coaching courses, and she decided to leave her corporate career and become a coach. And so she came to me at the time that she was really setting up her business and she was feeling she had a lot of doubts about being able to market herself and talk about what she did, because she had this story that she kept talking about where she said, You know, I’m so new. I’m so new to some brand-new LEDs all the time.
Samantha (19:44):
Yeah
Lisa (19:47):
I’ve never done this before. And it’s all-new, and I don’t know how to do it and I don’t know how to speak about it. And anyway, I’m just trying out this coaching thing. And so we began to dig into this I’m new story. And what we actually realized, and it was astounding when she did realize that probably for the previous 20 years of her life, she was the person that people came to no matter what her job title was, no matter what position she was in the organization from when she was quite Junior in the organization, right up to when she was a senior leader, people would constantly come to her to try and figure out stuff for themselves. They constantly came to her as a coach.
Now, she never had the title coach. But she’d been dealing with people all the time, it wasn’t by chance that she decided to do a coaching course, it wasn’t by chance that she was drawn to the coaching industry, she had been coaching for 20 years, she just didn’t see it from her perspective. And when she could shift that story and say, Actually, I’m a super experienced coach who has coached people in their organizations, you know, entirely from top to bottom, she began to build confidence. And the result was that it completely shifted the way she spoke about what she did the confidence with which she spoke about it.
And in a very, very short time, it astounded me, she sent me I remember, she sent me these emails, you’re not going to believe it. But she actually booked herself. For the entire This was in May, she booked herself out for the entire year and had to have a waitlist. And it was all because of this shift in her story about who she was as a coach and her credibility, her ability, the depths of her, her understanding or knowledge. And this idea that she was new became ridiculous, it was laughable.
Samantha (21:22):
I really, really liked that story. And I’ve got one that’s very, very similar, because when I moved into the coaching industry, I come from owning a dance studio. And I’ve owned my dance studio for 20 years before that had been a dance of, you know, my whole life, from you know, the time before I started school.
And the story that I told myself is I’m too afraid to speak on stage, because I’ve been a dancer all my life. And as a dancer, we don’t speak on stage, obviously, we, we use movement and facial expression to tell a story. And I used to really struggle with I don’t know what to say. And then one day, it just came to me for 20 years, while I was in this dance studio, I was actually speaking every day to room, you know, large classes of children.
If we had a performance, there would not just be maybe 100 children in the studio, there was all of my tech crew that I was speaking to, there was all of the parents in the backstage crew, there was the front-of-house crew that we were working with. And I was like, wow, I would stand up on stage and speak to all of these people before a performance. And maybe there would be like, you know, three 400 People sometimes that I was speaking to, and I thought that’s a silly story. I’ve told myself, because I’d been speaking to that many people for all of those years. But you’re right. That’s when I had the original story in my head. It was like, I can’t speak I don’t speak I don’t know my words. And it wasn’t until I realized no, this is the actual story. Oh, good now.
Lisa (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, it’s very similar. And we carry around these stories all the time without being fully aware of them. But the police, we become aware of them as when we’re experiencing, like you, you know, I can’t do something, or I’m nervous or, you know, all this these sabotaging ideas of what we can’t do or what we should do, or, or what people will think or whatever it may be. And you know, when we root it out, there’s always a nasty little story hiding out somewhere, and it’s never true. It’s never
Samantha (23:18):
Is there a way that we can discover these stories? Because I, at the time, wasn’t aware that this was even a story. It sounds like your client at the time didn’t realize that it was a story? How can we start to understand or even find these stories that are hiding under the surface?
Lisa (23:40):
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most powerful things that sounds ridiculously simple, but the truth is, simplicity is often you know, it’s the thing that’s hiding, and I love stories because of how simple they are. But it’s honestly, that question, you know, what is the story? I’m telling myself right now? What am I telling myself right now? What is the belief that I’m holding here? And where does that belief come from?
And every belief we have every thought we have? I mean, literally every thought we have has a story behind it. It’s astounding. I remember years and years ago, when I was building my business, I had a coach who said to me, so you’ve got to write a story every week, and send it out to your audience. And that way, you’ll build an audience. And I said, you know, my first reaction was, that’s crazy. My life. Isn’t that interesting. Like what have I got to tell every week? And but I took it on, she said, You she said, You know, I trust you. It’ll be fine. And I started writing a story every week.
And I really did it for 10 years, I religiously wrote a story every week in my blog, it became a way that I attracted clients for many, many years. And it wasn’t that my life got any more interesting it was that I began to notice these moments where there was story happening where something was going on. And so we’re constantly surrounded by these things that happen that we turn into story that we’re meaning making people and we do that through story.
And so it’s to begin to notice like what What is the story I’m telling you at this moment? And to notice, does it serve me? Does it not serve me? If it doesn’t, let’s sit with it for a minute and figure it out. And of course, there’s, you know, there’s more ways to do that. But I think that’s certainly a way to get started.
Samantha (25:13):
Now you’ve got a specific process, once we sort of discover those stories or uncover those stories, can you tell us more about the process that people can work through to? You call it story power? So I guess step into your power with your stories?
Lisa (25:31):
Yeah, I mean, again, the first part is awareness is asking the right question. And then it’s really looking at where does the story come from? A big part of the process. I mean, there’s a few different areas, and it’s fairly individual because some people, we tend to follow our stories and patterns, we, we tend to get caught in the same way. But I think one of the big things that’s really important is to not to in any way disrespect the story that we’re telling. So sometimes we discover a story that is disempowering a story that we’ve been telling, that’s not true. And that doesn’t help us.
And then we think, Oh, I’m so stupid. Why did I tell that story? Like, I’m so stupid, that’s ridiculous. That’s just, you know, and we berate ourselves for telling a story that is there for a reason, the stories are there for a reason, and they need to be respected. Right? Usually, the stories were there to protect us. And they’re there to protect us from something that feels threatening. And sometimes it’s genuinely life threatening, like these stories save our lives sometimes. But they also get old.
So sometimes, it’s important to be able to say, Okay, I understand. And I’m grateful to the story for the time that it served me, but it no longer does so very respectfully, and humbly kind of thank it and move on. Which is a very gentle way in a different way. Most people say, oh, yeah, just get rid of the story. Just move on. You know, and I think it’s more complex than that, I think we have to be very gentle with ourselves. But we also have to put practices in place so that we begin to see the ways that we can move forward in the world, and not get distracted by stories that are not serving us.
Samantha (27:03):
I really like that. I remember years ago when I was going through my divorce. And of course, with divorce, there’s a lot of stories that go on in your head. And I remember someone telling me have gratitude for those stories, and start to think like, what has that story, or how has that story served you? And just going through that practice was, I can still remember how it made me feel because it made me feel so peaceful, to realize actually, I am in control, I gave it that meaning it was still okay, there were these horrible things that that were happening around me, but giving gratitude for those stories because of the learnings that I had, or to bring me where I was then or any of the other multitude of things.
And just, it’s, you know, we don’t often hear about having gratitude for those things that happened to us. And I’m not talking about really, really, you know, bad things happening, like, you know, a terminal disease or something. So I don’t want to, you know, make light of something like that, but to have gratitude for the stories that I was going through made it so much easier to come out the other side.
Lisa (28:13):
I love that. And I think it’s also really important to differentiate between what’s actually happening, and the story we’re telling, because there’s often a very big gap between it. You know, I remember one of the most painful things in my life was my father died very suddenly, just before I was about to get married. And I spent months and months and months telling myself the most incredibly painful stories about how he suffered. And he was all alone. And like all these things that I could not know, I actually couldn’t know, the reality was he died, that was all that was the only thing that I knew for sure was that he was no longer alive.
And the minute I stopped kind of regurgitating these horrible stories that were not true. And I began to remember stories about him that were just my memories. You know some were funny, some were ridiculous, some were sad, so we’re happy. Then it was almost like he came alive again. And I could actually enjoy his memory and not be, you know, deep, deep, deep in this awful place that went on for a long time. And it was so much about the story. And I see this as you know, hard things happen. And there’s no one saying that you should, you know, tell a bright, shiny story and make it all look great. Like that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that hard things happen.
But when we can share them with others, and when we can be vulnerable about how challenging it’s been in where we are now, then sometimes, it helps us build trust and connection. And trust and connection is what we’re always looking for in business. So if you can come from a place where you’re telling a story that actually empowers you, you know, I love talking about my father because it helps me connect to him. It doesn’t mean I’m any less devastated or sad about his loss. It’s been 25 years I still think about him every day. It was very, very close to him. It’s still painful, but I love to talk about him and I love to have him have some presence.
As for example, in my kid’s life, which was never possible, he died long before they were born. So it’s like you transform the story. And suddenly the reality around you changes and how you suffer changes, you know, you have pain, but you don’t suffer. Right? And that that’s the difference. Like people always say, Your pain is not something you can necessarily control, but suffering you can control. And the story is a big part of that, that the story helps us move forward and say, Okay, this is the reality. This is the fact that’s pure fact. Now, what is the story I’m going to tell, that’s going to actually make me come through this in a way that I want to live my life
Samantha (30:34):
for people that have been listening laser, and this is really resonating with and they want to sort of explore this topic a little bit further, where can people go to find out more about what you do?
Lisa (30:48):
Yeah, sure. So my website is story dash coach.com. I have for people who’d like to, I have a book called The Story advantage, and they can actually, I have an possibility to download the audio and a toolkit for free. And that’s at story dash coach.com. And then story dash advantage dash toolkit, I’m sure you’ll put the link in wherever
Samantha (31:10):
I was gonna say, well pop the link in the notes, definitely.
Lisa (31:13):
I also have a podcast called Once upon a business, which is a place to hear stories and hear how stories in Business Connect. And of course, I’ll be having some upcoming training in the next few weeks and months, so they can sign up wherever and we’ll be able to get you on that training, the free training,
Samantha (31:30):
we’ll definitely put all of those links in the show notes so that you can find more about those trainings and the book, and all of the resources that Lisa’s got to offer. So you can go over to influence by design podcast.com, to find all of those links. Lisa, it’s been such a pleasure to chat with you today. If there was one little thing that you would like to leave our listeners with regarding this topic that we’ve been talking about today, what would it be?
Lisa (31:58):
So I kind of touched on it before, but I want to just reiterate, because I think it’s so important. I really believe that we’re able to shift the reality of our lives and our businesses and of our work by changing the stories that we tell. And so I just want to remind people that in the place where they’re experiencing pain and struggle and difficulty, there is a story there that’s hanging out, and it’s not serving you.
And my advice is to just remember that it’s not true. You may not be able to access it yet, you may not be able to see it yet. But don’t forget that that story is not actually true. Because when you tell the true story, you’ll come to a place of more peace.
Thank you so much. That was so fabulous. Such an a very powerful piece of advice to leave us with. Thanks so much for joining us today. Lisa, it’s been a pleasure hanging out with you. Thank you.
Samantha Outro (32:45):
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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