What genre is the story you’ve been telling yourself?

Dear friend,

I was out walking the other day, my mind was full and I was trying to find my way back into my body. Consciously, I brought my attention to each foot step hitting the ground - feeling the echo of each step reverberate from the ground up, reminding me that I could be present in my body and in each moment as it unfolds into the next.

What started as one of my own coaching practices has become foundational in my life and I find what I now think of as conscious-embodied walking to be self-healing; a cathartic release and a homecoming of sorts. Part grounding and part energizing, I find it supports my body and mind to be in open dialogue. My body invites my mind to share its anxieties, worries, and narratives. My mind invites my body to offer up wisdom and deeply intuitive inclinations. And I often find this internal dialogue takes the form of a story.

So much of my own self work has been connected to the stories I tell myself and the meaning and interpretations I pull from my lived reality informed by the hardships of my past. (And thank you, Brené Brown for teaching me the practice of “The story I’m telling myself right now is…”)

And it occurred to me the other day, while I concentrated on the rise and fall of my feet on the ground, that the stories I tell myself often have a genre. They tend toward fiction masquerading as non-fiction, as fantasy with highly imaginative dystopian plot twists, as mind-bending sci-fi filled with anxiety inducing suspense, darkness and intrigue; all of which does a number on how I perceive my immediate reality and deeply impacts how I show up in the moment.

And I asked myself: Without minimizing or disregarding what’s real and what’s hard, what genre of story do you want to tell?

These days, I invite myself to couch my narratives within a queer-affirming young adult coming-of-age that happened post teenage years. I weave my day-to-day experience, however banal they might seem, with appreciation into a historical fictitious romance that honours the lineage of all the stories that existed so I could have the banal experience of walking down the street with a gender affirming haircut and not one head turns to give me a second glance. And I explore collective liberation infused prose into my future of everything that can be possible if I have the courage to bring my imagination, dreams and hopes to it.

All this got me wondering: Am I my stories? Are my stories me? Where are the boundaries between who I am and the story I tell myself about who I am? Is there a distinction worth making? What can I consciously shape moment to moment with some specific and selective genre choices? Maybe even some conscious literary devices within them?

Dear friend, if you too find yourself caught up in the stories you tell, let this be an invitation to consider other genres: Storytelling is a natural and deeply human art form and there are endless ways to do it.

We can tell the same story in a different genre; and for me, it’s made all the difference. I know how my body feels when I engage with horror versus fantasy. Which is not to make light of our hardships, self-gaslight or emotionally bypass what’s real without denying ourselves the opportunity to be with what's arising within us and honouring our authentic truth.

Is the genre of the story I’m telling a habit versus my current reality?

Consciously shifting the genre of our stories is not about looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses. We can (and need to) call a spade a spade - and there’s a power to that. This is not about indulging a sense of toxic positivity. It’s about discerning between what is old and what’s current. What’s default versus what’s true at this moment. What serves and what doesn’t?

It’s about holding the perspective that we are more than any story we can tell. We are the endless and boundless source material, we each contain multitudes, and we have the agency to choose what perspective is going to serve us as we decide what the best next thing is to do is while finding momentary liberation from the dominant narratives of our earlier chapters.

And for me lately, (and it may be different for you), it’s been about not minimizing the joy I’ve worked so hard to be able to feel, it’s about leaning into hope - even though I'm afraid, and it’s about holding myself with a gentle grace when I find things hard. I can feel my fear, I can hold space for it, I can explore it and it doesn’t have to be wrapped up in a dystopian story that doesn’t serve me. It’s about being in a practice of consciously noticing if the stories I tell match with my reality and bringing discernment to what action I might need to take to show up in a way that honours myself. It’s about being open to new genres of stories in my life that offer me a space to practice engaging with joy, wonder, and the beauty of my own humanity.

And so dear friend, what do you notice about the stories you tell yourself?

Is there a story inside you that hasn't yet been told in the genre that best serves you?