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In this session we’re answering the question:
 
What is a story? 
Scroll down to find key takeaways + homework. 
Webinar 1

Webinar 1

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Key Takeaways from Session #1 - What is a Story?

 

Defintion:

story (noun) - description

a description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events

 

A description of events that actually happened or that are invented:

  • There was a news story on television about flooding on the west coast.

  • My daughter won’t go to bed without hearing a bedtime story

A story can also be a lie:

  • Don’t tell me any stories, I want to know what really happened

 

More Key Takeaways:

  1. Signs that you are in your story include guilt, or shame, imposter syndrome, failure, and most especially, resignation. 

  2. There’s the facts, and then there’s what we make up about them.

  3. Two different kinds of stories

  • All-day, everyday stories 

  • Big stories that are running your life.

 

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Excerpt from our video: Becoming Aware of Your Stories - Byron Katie

 

“I often use the word story to talk about thoughts or sequences of thoughts, that we convince ourselves are real. A story may be about the past, the present or the future: it may be about what things should be, what they could be, or why they are. Stories appear in our minds hundreds of times a day - when someone gets up without a word and walks out of the room, when someone doesn’t smile or doesn’t return a phone call or when a stranger does smile; before you open an important letter, or after you feel an unfamiliar sensation in your chest; when your boss invites you to come to his office, or when your partner talks to you in a certain tone of voice. Stories are the untested, uninvestigated theories that tell us what all these things mean. We don’t even realize that they’re just theories.

 

Once, as I walked into the ladies’ room at a restaurant near my home, a woman came out of the single stall. We smiled at each other, and, as I closed the door, she began to sing and wash her hands. 'What a lovely voice!' I thought. Then, as I heard her leave, I noticed that the toilet seat was dripping wet. 'How could anyone be so rude?' I thought. And how did she manage to pee all over the seat? Was she standing on it? Then it came to me that maybe she was a man …. Singing falsetto in the women’s restroom. It crossed my mind to go after her/him and let them know what a mess they’d made. As I cleaned the toilet seat, I thought about everything I’d say to them. Then I flushed the toilet. The water shot up out of the bowl and flooded the seat. And I just stood there laughing.

In this case, the natural course of events was kind enough to expose my story before it went any further. Usually, it doesn’t; before I found inquiry, I had no way to stop this kind of thinking. Small stories bred into bigger ones; bigger stories bred major theories about life…”

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Homework(fun) from Session #1 - What is a Story?

 

Watch Real Housewives of Beverly Hill episode #19 from Season 9, then identify 3-5 places where one of the women makes up a story about the facts.

 

BONUS - Here’s a link to The Work of Byron Katie. You can also download her Judge Your Neighbor worksheet  here. 

 

We are honored by your trust in us, and it’s our deepest wish that you enjoy this and are finding value in this work. 

 

Let’s go sisters, 

Pam + Amy

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