The Story You Avoid Is the One That Will Set You Free

The story you most avoid is the story that has real power.

Welcome to the show.

Tired of the hype about living the dream?

It's time for truth.

This is the place for tools, power, and real talk so you can create the life you dream and deserve your ultimate life.

Subscribe, share, create.

You have infinite power.

Welcome to your ultimate life.

Let's get something really clear right up front.

That is every single person has a story.

Now, we use that word or that phrase or that framing in all kinds of different ways, sometimes as an excuse, oh, that's your story.

Or even fun.

Now, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

You know, that kind of feeling.

But the truth is I'm talking about a deeper story, one we've been talking about for several episodes here.

But today I want to focus on one particular aspect, and that is we all know we have stories.

Everybody does, right?

And there are stories that we like telling.

There are stories that we like reflecting on ourselves.

We tell a story and that means something about us.

We're good, we're strong, we're intelligent, we're capable.

And then there's stories we avoid.

There are stories that we're maybe afraid of, their stories that we just don't like.

In fact, I don't know about you, but I used to have stories I hope nobody new body ever knew.

Right?

Yeah.

I've got the matrix numbers behind me, right?

All these numbers flying around, except they're not flying, but that green coding background, secret stories.

Well, I want you to think for a minute about the stories that you want to hide.

The stories or circumstances or things that you hope nobody finds out about.

Now, there's two meanings of story.

One, One meaning of story is simply a recitation of something that happened.

Some facts and events, some details starting at this time and going to this time.

I stood on the corner, I saw five cars go by.

I went home.

That's a story hasn't been beginning.

I stood on the corner, the middle five cars went by.

I went home.

That's the end.

Okay, there's another way to tell that story.

And that is?

Well, I was bored out of my gourd and I just decided to go for a walk.

I went to the corner and just as I was ready to cross the street, I heard a car engine loud.

And I turned.

There was a car racing toward the corner.

So I decided I better hang.

And when I went by, the car was such a weird color that I just sat there and I thought about it just even for a sec.

Right.

What A weird color car.

And then I heard another motor.

And pretty soon before I realized that, five cars went by.

And you know what I noticed?

Every one of those cars was a different color.

And, yeah, you know, there's all kinds of car colors, but five in a row, a different color.

And then I decided, you know what?

It looks like it might rain.

So I went home.

Now, that's the same story, except there's a lot more detail in it.

There's some feelings and there's some reasons and so forth, but it's still essentially a factual representation of things that happened, plus some ornamentation about what I was thinking and feeling during that time.

That's another kind of a story.

Another kind of a story is like this.

I went to the store this afternoon because we needed some groceries.

I saw down the aisle my friend, a good friend in the store.

And they turned, and I thought for sure they saw me.

And then they turned back and walked away and didn't say a thing.

I was so devastated.

I'm sure that's because last week I didn't take their phone call.

I'm sure that I'm on the crap list now.

Oh, no.

I wonder if that'll destroy our relationship.

Maybe I better send them, you know, a present.

Or maybe I should call them and get this cleared up.

Oh, I don't know.

What if they don't take my call?

Maybe I'll wait till tomorrow.

All right.

Now, that's a completely different kind of story.

Story number one was just very, you know, broad outline and some facts.

Story number two included some thoughts that I had about the different cars that went by.

Story number three included a bunch of interpretations where I decided, number one, that my friend saw me before that.

I even decided for sure that it was my friend.

Maybe it was way down the aisle and I wasn't positive, but I thought I was.

Then I.

The facts were they turned and then they turned away.

I decided that they saw me where maybe they, you know, turned part way.

And even if they did see me, I decided what them turning away and walking up.

I decided what that meant.

They were frustrated, ignoring, angry, ghosting me.

I have a whole baggage now, whole backpack full of rocks.

About what that meant.

It could just as easily been true that they were distracted and just didn't register that it was me down there.

And you might think that's nuts, especially if you're really observant, like Joy, my wife, is.

When we're driving somewhere, she will notice in other cars people that we know or if the Drivers are working women or men or if they're old or young or she'll notice all kinds of stuff.

And my head's busy and I didn't notice any of that, even if I saw it with my eyes.

So the difference in the story number three is we invented a bunch of meaning from the interaction.

So that's a really powerful and can be really insidious kind of story.

Truth.

I have no idea if they saw me, do I?

I have no idea if it registered that it was me.

Maybe they didn't have their glasses on or their contacts in that was me.

Boy, that would be a disaster.

And I have gone places occasionally without contact.

You know, if my eye was scratched or whatever.

Now, with these kind of contacts, they were.

Now doesn't happen very often, but it used to happen maybe once a month.

Something would go wrong with my contact.

I'd get a piece of dirt or whatever in the eye and scratch my lens.

Not my contact, but my eye.

And then for a day or two, I couldn't wear them or I could only wear one.

And that affected my vision.

So we don't know if they saw us.

We don't know if they did what they thought.

We don't know if they were distracted or in a hurry.

We don't even know if they thought we saw them.

Maybe they were in a hurry and didn't want to get in conversation and had nothing to do with snubbing me or you or whoever.

So what I want to talk about is the kind of story that carries power.

Now.

None of those stories carry power except real power, except the third one.

Because if I.

If I move forward with all of that made up part, you know, the part that I just sort of colored in is black, gray.

I colored in negativity.

If I move forward with that is now my new factual basis.

They're pissed off at me, they didn't want to talk to me and, ooh, our relationship's in trouble.

Second thing I did is I blamed it on some event last week.

That again, I don't know if that's true or not.

So the point is, I filled in a lot of stuff.

I made up a lot of stuff about what they were thinking about what it meant and what it meant about me.

So there's three or four layers of invention there.

Those kind of stories carry power.

Real power.

And the longer we let them sit, the more the concrete hardens.

So there was a time when, you know, growing up, I frustrated my parents like we all have.

And my mom said something Very.

What I.

My story was, it was very unkind.

I said something about mother or mama, we used to call her Mama.

And she said, you don't deserve to call me that.

Well, that was the most vicious, unkind, cruel thing in my mind.

I was probably 11 or 12 or something like that, maybe maybe a little older, 13.

And it just stabbed me to the core right now.

I know she was mad at me for something I don't long, you know, decades ago.

And I don't remember what.

I took that story, those events and I create, crafted a story of cruelty and abuse around that.

Now there were a lot of other things that contributed and we're not going into that today.

But my point is that stuck with me for decades now it doesn't bother me anymore because I know now and as you do, we say stuff we don't mean and sometimes it hurts others and sometimes we can take it back and sometimes we can't.

And even if we take it back, we can't unsay it.

So there's emotional consequences.

We all know that happens.

But here's the thing.

I allowed that story to fester and take root in my psyche for decades.

And it shaped me for a long time.

And again, there were lots of other pieces to it.

But just kind of consider that in isolation for a moment.

So here's what I want you to think about.

I'm a coach.

I write books, I make music, I sing songs, I write songs that talk about growth and overcoming and forgiveness and all that sort of stuff.

And in fact, I've got a concert on the 18th of February, and this episode's going to be out on the 17th.

So when you see this Tuesday the 17th, tomorrow night, I've got a concert.

And there's an Eventbrite link and if you want to know what it is, go to my Facebook page page, because it'll be all over there.

And here's the reason.

One of the things I learned in my own healing, I mean, you know, the story I. Depression, addictions and a bunch of other stuff.

And what I learned in the process of healing, transformation, growth, and all those beautiful words about personal development is I had to get rid of stories.

I had to get rid of stories.

Now I didn't.

I don't have to get rid of the fact that I went to the corner and five cars went by.

I don't have to get rid of the fact that, you know, in that case, my mom said a thing.

What I have to get rid of is the meaning I have to rewrite that story, because the way I heard it is that was cruel.

There was no other way to understand it.

I didn't make any allowance for whatever I'd done to make her mad.

You know, I took it as a permanent deathstroke across my value and worth, right?

And I can paint that thing entirely differently.

I can choose to hear that and say, there's somebody that's really pissed off, frustrated, mad at me because of what I did or said.

I don't even remember now, isn't that interesting?

I can't even remember what it was.

But, boy, I remember the insult or the hurt or the disowning or the pain.

I could also interpret that as a learning.

I'm going to learn never to do that.

I'm going to learn never to say a thing like that, and I never did to any of my kids.

Now, I've had plenty of struggles with them and plenty of other mistakes, but I never made that one.

So I can.

There's lots of other ways to interpret that.

And I don't mean to pretend it was nice or to pretend it was a kind thing or to pretend anything else.

Not talking about pretending in every situation.

Let me give you a funny example.

If you.

If you buy a red car and you think, I'm going to buy a red car of this brand, because I haven't seen very many of those.

We all know in the next day, two, three, four week, we see a million of those cars in red and we're like, I never saw one before.

Because we're tuned to recognize that.

So that's confirmation bias, right?

We see what we expect to see.

Well, I already had a framework of negativity from other things.

And so I heard emotionally what I intended or expected to hear.

So I want you to take that, that piece of knowledge and ask yourself this.

What if you rewrote your past?

I don't mean pretend anything away.

I don't mean act like whatever things happened, didn't happen.

I don't mean excuse anyone's wrongdoing.

I don't mean that.

What I do mean and what I've done and as I view as a massive opportunity, is I'm going to choose to interpret the same factual events differently.

So one way to interpret that event is, she's right, I suck.

There's no redemption for me.

I'm a dirtbag.

And the rest of that kind of sense.

Another way to interpret that is, she said that she's mad.

She doesn't mean it.

She hasn't said it before.

And I'M not going to let that color any of my opinion of my worth.

Now, when you're a kid, you don't have that facility, right?

Rare to never that you would have the presence of mind or the training or the introduction to ideas.

We take things at face value so they hurt.

But the minute we start taking responsibility.

Here's what I know.

I reinterpret all of those events.

I interpret them now as learning opportunities.

I don't pretend them away.

I don't pretend they weren't hurtful or mistakes.

But I choose to learn from them.

I choose to say, you know what?

I'm taking that as a benefit.

I'm taking it as a blessing.

I'm taking it as a piece of resilience powder, right?

Something like that.

All right, so why would I talk about this?

Well, there's a superpower, and this is awesome, beyond awesome, that we all have to rewrite the story.

And I don't mean rewrite the events.

I mean rewrite the way we interpret those events, the meaning, the color that we ascribe to those events.

Now, why would that matter?

Well, it matters for a lot of reasons.

First of all, it matters because I no longer have to.

I no longer have to buy into the bullshit that I'm, you know, I'm a bad guy.

I'm.

I'm.

I'm.

That I'm worthless.

I'm all those things, right?

I don't have to buy into that.

I didn't know it at the time, but I do now.

I know that.

That does not mean that.

Okay, so here's what.

And that's a.

That's a tool that we get to have another benefit.

Is this when you and I choose to rewrite the meaning of our past events?

Hear that carefully.

If I choose to rewrite the meaning of those things, they no longer mean that I'm this or that bad or worthless, or they no longer mean that I rewrite the meaning.

Then I have even more power.

One, I stop hurting.

And two, I begin to find a gold mine.

And what is the gold mine?

The gold mine is the truths, the lived experience that I have to share with you or with others.

See, as long as I'm interpreting events in my life in a.

In a negative way, that they actually mean these horrible and difficult and hard and awful things.

As long as I carry that interpretation, I'm not very much help to anyone else.

As someone who's lived life and got experience and, you know, can be a friend or a coach or whatever, I. I can't Carry much power there because I'm still carrying the.

The dirt, the turds in my punch bowl, as it were.

The minute I rewrite that and say it does not mean that at all.

Instead, it means I'm resilient and powerful.

It means I have the ability and have chosen to forgive mistakes, even if they were mistakes, bad mistakes, wrong and hurtful.

I can choose to forgive.

I can choose that whether they ask for it or whether someone wants it or not.

I can choose to do that, and I can toss away that.

So here's what I meant when I said in the beginning, the stories we avoid are the ones that have the most power.

They really are.

And here's why.

They're those kind of stories.

And they not only include.

Now I've used one tiny example of one incident in my life that was done to me, meaning someone else did something, said something, in this case, and we talked about how I interpreted it, how I interpret it now, the forgiveness that comes, the love that comes and that increases my ability to forgive and love and, you know, just accept people where they are and love them enough to give them space to get better.

I have all that now.

I want to turn the whole thing around.

If I look at things that.

Mistakes that I've made, stupid or selfish things that I have done, I don't know about you, but those are the ones that hurt me the most.

They're the ones that I, you know, sometimes just think I can never get over or never forgive myself, that kind of stuff.

I did an interesting YouTube video probably six years ago, and it has hundreds of thousands of views.

And the name of the video is how to forgive yourself when you hurt someone you love.

And we still get comments on that regularly and.

And views and so forth.

And here's one of the comments I see a lot.

I hurt so and so my love, my girlfriend, my husband, my wife, and I can never forgive myself.

Okay, I hear you, and I hear you make that declaration.

But I have a question.

If you or me, if I sit under the weight and pain of never forgiving myself, of saying, I did that thing and forever I'm an unforgivable, useless, worthless dirtbag or whatever the language might be, well, then that means people that make mistakes and sometimes serious ones are forever destroyed, banished, and cast off.

That is not consistent with our divine nature.

You and I make mistakes sometimes serious ones or gross ones or grumpy ones, and we can see that's not something I'd ever do again.

Oh, can't believe I did that.

And the next sentence comes out of our mouths or out of our thoughts is, what can I do to fix that?

Oh, I can't do anything to fix it.

Well, most of those kind of things that involve feelings and so forth, you can't ever fix.

You can't ever unsay or undo whatever it is, right?

I mean, that's not available to us.

We haven't learned how to go backwards in time.

Saw Feynman, Richard Feynman episode describing the speed of light and time and so forth, and he said, if you traveled faster than the speed of light, you'd go backwards in time because of the interwoven nature of space time.

Anyway, it's on my mind.

But we can't do that.

At least we sure as heck don't know how now, right?

But what we can do is three things.

Number one, you can fix what you can.

Number two, you can change who you are.

What I mean by that is obvious.

I was a person that did or said such things.

I am no longer that person that does or says such things.

So that's two.

And the third thing you can do is forgive yourself and add good to the world.

That's a compound thing.

Forgiving yourself is simply acknowledging our own common humanity.

It means literally changing who you are so you don't do those things again.

And then add good to the world is just the phrase that I use that means just go do good stuff, right?

Become and act and walk through the world as a different person.

So the forgiveness part, forgiving others, forgiving yourself, everything, all the time, everywhere, not as an excuse.

And the forgiveness is empty, hollow, and useless if you don't change who you are.

You know that cycle of abuse that they talk about where, you know, someone does something abusive and then they feel bad and then they apologize and they give gifts or do a bunch of stuff and then tension builds and they do it again.

That's not changing who you are.

Changing who you are.

Depending on what the thing was, and you know the situation, you might need to go get some help, you might need to see a shrink, you might need to do a lot of stuff.

But the changing who you are is integral.

And when you do as you do that, and after you add good to the world.

Now, why did I say this all had to do with the story you're avoiding is your most powerful asset.

Here's why.

Because those are the stories we avoid.

The hurt, right?

The hurt.

Especially the ones where we can't forgive ourselves.

The comments on that video, I gotta never forgive myself.

You're right.

If you won't forgive yourself, then you're going to be stuck with that for the rest of your life.

Or you could forgive yourself, fix what you can, change who you are, forgive yourself, and then go add good to the world.

And then you have two things.

You have a light heart, and you have a tool, a set of experiences, a new set of stories that allow you to change the world.

All of the books that I've written, I think all of them, nearly all of them, and all the things that I teach come from that process right there.

I have made mistakes.

Some things have been done to me.

I have chosen to learn from them.

I have chosen to rewrite the stories.

I've chosen to fix what I can, change who I am and then add good to the world.

And here's what happens as a result of that.

Every single person, without exception, 100% of the people that I talk to, and not in the grocery line necessarily, but when I get a chance to find out who they are and what they do and everything else, their greatest conviction, and I would say by extension, your greatest conviction, your greatest yearning, is to help, to add good to the world, to do good, give back.

We say that in all kinds of ways.

And the particular area that you are most adept at, that you are the most passionate about, comes 100% of the time from your lived experience or from the things that happened to you or that you did.

The things that were your disempowering death stories, hide them.

I hope nobody ever finds out about this.

Transformed into your love stories, your service stories, the power to do amazing stuff.

Every person that I've helped write a book writes about those transformations.

And they're not just changing behavior, although that's critical.

There's also a change of heart.

One of the reasons that's true is vulnerability.

When we share our mistakes and our efforts at recovering or growing or improving, it is deeply powerful.

We're able to, like, connect with people because no matter what we think, we're not alone.

Somebody else or some zillion buddies else have made the same mistakes or similar and have felt alone, wanting to hide, not be, you know, vulnerable or found out.

And all those who make the effort to fix what you can change who you are and add good to the world.

We all, including you, have this gigantic yearning to do good stuff.

I had a friend who gave a talk and he handed out T shirts, you know, do good stuff.

I love that.

So when you think about your life and the things you are most scared of, I would invite you to consider telling the stories that you're afraid people will know.

I invite you to look through the events of your life and create the arc of your growth.

Arc not ark.

Noah's ark.

Create the ark of your growth.

What I tell you right now, you listening?

The greatest power, the greatest gift you have is the story of your own becoming.

Because as you are right now, you're somewhere on the growth path.

You're somewhere trying to be a better person.

Not because you have to decide that you used to be bad.

Maybe that was true.

There were certainly lots of.

A lot of that in my life.

But you have decided on your own.

I don't want to be that anymore.

I don't want to face life as that person who thinks that way, decides that way, who's a victim of past circumstance or who's hiding in terror and shame because of mistakes that you made or I made.

Instead, I'm going to do the work, make the changes, get coached, get help, do whatever it is so that I become someone more.

Someone more substantive, someone more loving, someone more kind.

Because you can not.

Because someone made me or made you.

That, that journey, that story of growth, that is your power.

That is your gold mine.

That is your pure nuggets of gold.

And there's a really simple reason, okay?

When you talk, you are, or I talk about something, if it comes from our lived experience, it has a certain energy because you know that it's true.

You know that you felt this or that and you went through a given experience and that gives your narration a particular credibility.

If, on the other hand, you or I, we talk about something, you know, that thing, something we saw, something we learned, it may still be true.

But it doesn't carry the same motivating power.

It doesn't carry the same connecting power.

It doesn't carry the same invitation to be in this human experience with someone else.

So the story of your development, your, I call it your developmental story, but you know, the story of how you got where you are, what you did or didn't do, what you've been through, what choices you've made, and how you've grown, that's your power.

And what I've discovered in documenting my own story and helping many others do the same is the most precious and lucrative cash generating and powerful way to do that is to write the book.

Write the book of you.

The book of George or John or Sarah or Jane.

Right?

The book of Lisa, the book of Abby, the book of your name.

And that book isn't a memoir and isn't whining, but it is the story, your hero's journey, the story of your walk through life as you discovered who you want to be and who you claim to be.

That's.

That is your power.

Now, I'm holding a book challenge on February 23rd through 27th, which is just a week after this comes out.

And like the several episodes before, I invite you to think about this.

Because if you want to, if you want to make a difference in the world, and we all do want to make a difference for good, there's lots of ways we can do it.

We can donate to the Salvation army, right?

We can go volunteer it, you know, in a soup kitchen, or we can help in our church, or, you know, we can do lots of those kinds of things.

And they do add good to the world.

And some are more valuable than others.

Some are more powerful and affect more people than others.

Some affect people more powerfully than other things.

So you might say to yourself, what is the most powerful thing that I can do?

How can I do the most good?

Well, power doesn't come from what happened, whether someone did that or to you or you did something to someone else.

The power comes from what you make of it and what you made of an event in the past, yesterday, a year ago, a decade ago, or 50 years ago.

What you made out of it then doesn't have to stay the same.

And that was the point of my initial illustrations.

If I took a whole bunch of events in my life and decided it meant all this bad stuff about me, it would be really tempting to just crawl in a hole and drink or do worse, right?

But if we change that narrative, we are liberated and we have a fistful or a tool belt full of tools to serve others.

So I want you to go right now to a URL.

It's called Dream Build Write it dot com.

Dream Build Write.

Like writing Dream Build Write it dot com and sign up.

Sign up for the book challenge.

Doesn't cost anything, but it will be the most revelation filled week of your life.

It's an hour a day for a week.

So you do have to attend.

There has to be some time given.

It will blow your mind.

It never ceases to tickle my heart.

Actually, I was going to say amaze me, but tickle my heart.

The number of times that people say to me, I don't have a story, I got nothing.

You know, there's nothing I got.

My life isn't exciting or interesting in any way.

I got nothing.

And then I asked questions and we talk A bit.

And it becomes very obvious that that's not true.

They do have a story.

They do have a passion and meaning.

And it's easy, easier than you think to figure out what it is, figure out how to write a book about it, figure out how to turn it into products, services, how to serve with it, and how to make money.

Because you're creating value.

You're creating attention.

Money follows value, and it also follows attention.

Now, following attention isn't always the good thing, because we know lots of crazy people that are doing things to get attention, you know, and then they end up with book deals and so forth.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about pure good attention, intention.

Money follows that, too.

You and I are sitting at a time in the world, a history of the world, where we can do more good for more people than maybe any other time, because of the Internet, because of AI, because of the ability to reach people, and because of the isolation that's happening, the negativity in the world.

Voices of light and voices of truth are so needed and so powerful at this moment.

Here's the other thing.

When you or I talk about something over there, something we know or saw or whatever, it carries, you know, power.

And if you're trustworthy, people believe you.

If you tell story about your own growth from inside in a vulnerable way, ooh, that's scary.

It carries power.

People know you're telling the truth, and it means something.

There's a term called resonance.

And you've heard that, right?

If you hit a tuning fork.

Hit a tuning fork and touch the back of it to something like a glass or a piece of metal, pretty soon that glass or piece of metal is vibrating at the same frequency.

That's resonance.

Your soul and my soul, we have resonance.

We resonate with truth.

And we know when things are true and when they're bs.

The thing that gets in the way is we sometimes are scared to tell the stories that matter the most.

We're scared people won't like us.

We're scared.

If they only knew that I had done this or whatever, they'd hate my guts, right?

Earlier, years ago, 100 years ago or something.

Being born out of wedlock, being a bastard, so to speak.

If people knew that about you, ooh, that was terrible.

Okay, we still carry those kinds of things.

Not about that so much, but all kinds of stuff.

It's not true.

People love someone who gets back up.

People love to know, be associated with and learn from those who refuse to lay down and quit.

How many movies?

How many books and stories of all kinds have been written about those who simply won't quit?

That is you, if you choose the kind of work.

Vulnerability isn't just about what you say, like saying something about myself that nobody knows.

It's way more about how hard that was, what it costs me to say it.

I saw that definition the other day and I really liked it.

It's more about what it costs you in your heart to say it.

The things that cost you the most are the things that give you the most power.

So I invite you right now to go to dream build write it.com we develop that power for you fully in the school now.

This video Today this episode is sponsored by the School of Transformational Authorship and Creation.

The School of Transformational Authorship and Creation is the sponsor of the Dream Build Write It Challenge.

I challenge you to look inside yourself and realize the story you're afraid of is the one that gives you the most power.

So ask yourself some questions.

What story you keep dancing around?

What would change if you integrated that story into your life?

This happened.

It did what it did.

I am no longer that person.

No matter who did whatever they did, you or someone else, it is possible.

Forgiveness is real.

Change is real.

And the truth is, you might help 1, 2, 10, 100, or a thousand people.

If you choose to do that, meet me dreambuildrited.com I'm grateful that you are here.

And you know what I'm most grateful for?

That you're one of those people who says, I'm gonna make a difference in the world.

I'm gonna give, I'm gonna love.

I'm gonna serve.

I'm grateful because I know that about you or you wouldn't be here.

I also know that you are worth anything it takes to completely express and expand your soul.

I know that without question.

If you make the choices and do the work, you can start today living your ultimate.

Never ask why.

Open your heart in this time around, right here, right now, your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you.

Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything.

If you want to know more, go to kellenflueckegermedia.com if you want more free tools, go here YourUltimateLife CA Subscribe Share.