Ivy SeaZine - May 2004 - Change Your Stories, Change Your World

How are your stories -- the mythologies you live and work by -- affecting your experience at work, in relationships, in interactions, at home, in the community, and even within you?

This edition of the Ivy SeaZine explores how the stories we've been taught, and the stories we continue to tell ourselves and others, define the quality (and quantity) of our lives. They also define, or limit, our scope of vision and the type of goals we manifest.

Stories run through the culture, the group, and through each of us individually, setting the themes for how we live, what we believe, and how we interact with others.

Often, these old stories run on default or automatic, until we see that we no longer want the outcomes or types of experience the old stories create in our lives. Then we set about to review, rewrite, update, or write anew the stories that we live and work by.

For a personal or project-specific consultation, Ivy Sea's inspiring and insightful guides, advisers, and mentor-coaches can partner with you in asking into these questions, redefining and rewriting your major stories, helping you to move forward in more joyful, authentic ways.

And Ivy Sea's self-study resources spark ideas and inspiration as well.

You'll find more by browsing Ivy Sea Online or scheduling a personal consultation or insight-session to explore the questions and pathways unique to you.

Jamie Walters
Founder, Ivy Sea
Author, Big Vision, Small Business (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) & a few other things.

SPECIAL - MAY & JUNE ONLY! Purchase one of our featured PDF Guides/Workbooks and schedule & complete a tele-dialogue or mentoring series on this topic in May or June and get $75 off of the usual per-session fee!

Learn more about our May-June special.

** Article: New Outcomes and Visions Require New Stories

** Article: Storytelling for Health

** Article: Symbols - Your Powerful Navigation System

** Portal: Stories and Storytelling - It's Time to Refresh Your Story

** VIP Premium Content, PDF Workbooks & Guides, and More - See What's in Store

** Tele-Consultations and Insight-Sessions for Updating and Empowering Your Storylines
** About Ivy Sea, the SeaZine, subscribing and unsubscribing

[Ivy SeaZine is a "voluntary, by request" subscriber-only email zine. If you've received this issue, you subscribed at our web site or someone else has subscribed using your email address. You can subscribe or unsubscribe at any time; just follow the instructions at the end of the SeaZine.]

If your survival needs are taken care of -- food, shelter, relative safety -- chances are excellent that you have at least one or more 'audacious goals' that you'd like to see blossom into reality. Your visionary, audacious goals might be related to your housing, location, wellness, relationships, or livelihood, or something else.

And part of you -- maybe a big part of you -- may harbor doubts about whether this big, visionary yearning, your audacious goal, is possible, or even whether you deserve to accomplish and enjoy it once it's manifested.

Many of us who want to create new outcomes or new realities sabotage ourselves right from the start, by failing to realize that if we want new outcomes, we need new road-maps and routes. In other words, we have to identify our existing 'stories' and mythologies, and determine what about them needs to be rewritten.

Old stories don't support our journey to new destinations; they keep us living the old story.

The great physicist, Albert Einstein, said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." He also said that the problems you face can't be solved by the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Jesus commented that you can't put new wine into an old wine-skin; the Buddha counseled that "with your thoughts, you make your world."

In other words, to change your reality or your outcomes, transform your thoughts and your "ways of doing." Change your stories, which are like your journey road-maps and your routes, and you'll arrive at new destinations that may be more in keeping with your sense of true vocation.

You'll find the true treasure that can only be found at the heart of a 'living story' that is authentically our own.

Mention storytelling, and many people conjure up shamans, children’s nighttime rituals or an Irish shanachie. And yet those very images hint to places and times in history where the story — and the storyteller — were revered forms of communication.

Even now, storytelling is a powerful, mainstream approach to communicating within organizations of all types, emphasizing human connections. Stories put us in context and connect individual bits of information to the bigger picture, increasing our understanding of the details and the vision.

If unconscious, though, our 'guiding stories' can be badly outdated, or even harmful to ourselves, our organizations, or to others.

Modern healthcare offers a prime example of how storytelling can be integrated into mainstream practice. Healthcare professionals — taking a page from their ancient forebears — are prescribing it to help providers and patients learn, understand and interact with each other more effectively.

In a field of practice increasingly criticized for the ways it can dehumanize and detach, storytelling in healthcare helps to personalize and reconnect.

For example...

For those who feel aligned with Cultural Creative values, or feel called to use their gifts and experience to make a more positive 'ripple effect' in the world, symbols, metaphors, and archetypes can be an invaluable 'guidance system.'

They are some of the ways our intuition speaks to us, and also our tools for activating our intuition!

Many of the new ways of working, or yearnings for a new and healthier way of living in harmony with others and the Earth, don't conform to long-established norms or standards of what's been considered desirable or 'successful.'

So the old maps -- the old guiding stories or mythologies -- aren't quite as useful as they used to be, because many people are feeling called to different destinations altogether.

In order to create new maps and guiding stories, many people are turning to ancient and inner Wisdom. And just how, exactly, might you access that?

Find out how symbols (and other signs of Intuition) can help you navigate your power-story; read the rest of the article at Ivy Sea Online.

Telling stories -- and seeking them out -- is a very human trait, and perhaps a very human need. Storytelling has been described as a gift, a craft, an ability and habit. It has, in all of these forms, existed as a mainstay of human culture for many generations over many millennia.

Without stories, who are we as individuals? As people? As groups? As organizations? What keeps us together, and what spurs us forward? What motivated others to survive, evolve, persevere and journey onward? What happens when we surrender a story that's been a key part of our identity?

Stories are ways of knowing ourselves and finding our place in our communities, whether that community be a neighborhood, a place of worship, or a place of work. Or even our place in the world.

If you don't know your story, or if your story seems old and somehow unfitting, you may feel adrift or disconnected. And if that's the case, it's time to write a new story.

The Ivy Sea Online VIP Member 'Premium Content' Center and our PDF Resource Store offer a wealth of articles, workbooks, and guides to help you re-engage with your passion, reconnect with your vision, and catalyze your passion for a new level of skill and purpose.

You'll find our online articles, PDF workbooks & guides, audios, connections to guides and mentors, and more on topics such as:

* big-vision small business, 'Slow Business', and 'conscious' business

* marketing that's 'conscious', authentic, and integrity centered

* communication (interpersonal, organizational, leadership, inner-space)

* vision and visioning

* right-livelihood and good work

* wisdom paths and practices

* personal mastery

* authentic 'heartful' prosperity

… and more, created to help you live into your purpose and potential with skill.

Unravel the Questions & Update Your Stories -- Schedule an Ivy Sea Tele-Session, Consultation, or Mentor-Guide Series.

It's a powerful alchemy to clarify your vision and power-up forward-momentum -- and it's an alchemy that we at Ivy Sea are very familiar with, not just from 'intellectual knowledge' but from our own real-world experience as well as deep research.

Is there a question you're exploring, or a sense of chaos, overwhelm, or 'too many options' (or no clear options)?

Are you in the midst of, or just beginning, a major transition or shift in work or purpose?

Send us an email or give us a call to explore and schedule a tele-consultation, insight-session, or arrange for a more indepth consultation with an Ivy Sea advisor or mentor-guide.

Ivy Sea Online also offers a wealth of self-study resources to help you live (and work) into your authenticity and vision.

Learn more about our May-June special.

** "Tell me, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" ~ Mary Oliver

** "Tell me a fact and I'll learn. Tell me a truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever." ~ Indian Proverb

** "Helping others, that's the main thing. The only way for us to help ourselves is to help others and to listen to each other's stories." ~ Eli Wiesel

** "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance that kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: 'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.'" ~ M.H. Lawrence, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

May your own authentic, inspired, and powerful 'guiding stories' come alive and find joyful expression that benefits all.