So, what's your story?

A theme that has been coming up a lot for me lately is story telling. It seems to me that everything comes down to the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Our stories, our friends' stories, our society's stories...how much of a role do they play in our lives and what are they, really?

Memories as Stories
Life is one continual story made up of millions of little stories. Memories, for example, are stories we've created for ourselves. Have you ever talked to an old friend about a memory you share and realize that their memory of the same event is quite different than yours? Perhaps you remember it with a positive light, perhaps they remember it in a negative light? Or perhaps you each remember completely different details? What details do you remember? What lense do you see your life through? If you and I lived the exact same life but saw it through a different lense, we could have totally different flash backs on our death bed. I guess the question is: what kind of flashback do you want on your death bed? It may be helpful to keep this question on your mind as you collect and share your stories.

Personal Stories
Beyond memories, we are inundated daily with stories we've created for ourselves and others. "I'm grumpy today." That's a story I've created and chosen to project to myself and those around me. I could just as well change that story to "I'm in a good mood today." The funny thing is..either one would become true. Sometimes it's easy to forget that we have control over the stories we tell ourselves, over our perspectives and so, over our lives.

Waking up grumpy and redefining your mood to one that will serve your highest good is an easier example, as you've only had that story for a few minutes or hours by the time you realize. Other, more challenging stories  have deeper roots to dig up and can be more challenging to let go of and redefine. "I'm shy and never have anything to offer in conversation" would be a harder story to shift but I've seen it done!  "I have to have coffee in the morning before I can talk to people" is another example. Really? Do you really have to? Or are you telling yourself that? "I'm not one to commit." Okay, but if you wanted to be, you could.

A personal story I've noticed is "I'm not a group sports person." What does that even mean? Who decided that? Do I really think that some power greater than me decided that Karen Stroebel is not going to be suitable for group sports? That's ridiculous! I have two legs, two arms, and a love of spending time with people. I'm sure I'm a good candidate for enjoying group sports. Only I have control over my story and only I can let go of that story and create a new one for myself.

All my life, I've stuck to this story: "I don't like horse-radish." Funny though..as soon as I started to become aware of all the stories I've been telling myself, I became more flexible and open to things. This attitude lead me to try horseradish with a new perspective..not with the old story. Guess what? I found out that I kinda like horseradish! Crazy? It may not seem crazy to you, but it's blowing my mind how much influence "stories" have had over me my whole life and how freeing it is to become aware of them!

Stories We Project onto Others
Stories get even more complicated. The next level is one which we project onto other people. These can really influence our relationships. "A good friend checks in every week." This is an example of a story we could create for others..but really, it's us who has designed it. It could get followed with a further story "If a friend doesn't check-in every week, they're not a good friend." Hmm..interesting. So now, we're expecting others to live up to our own stories and if they don't, we get upset and let down and we blame them when its our own story that's making us upset. What if their story is different? "You can go months without talking to a good friend and when you do talk, you can pick it up like old times and you know you're always there for each other when needed." Who has to live up to who's story? This is where it gets confusing. This is where it's helpful to become aware of our own stories and at the very least to acknowledge them as that: Stories. There's no right or wrong story. Friend A isn't right or wrong and Friend B isn't right or wrong. There is no absolute truth here...just stories.

Society's Stories
Now for the biggy: stories created and continued by society. There are soooo many of these...

•  "I need more money to live a happy life." - It's more likely you need more time (and less money) to live a happy life.
•  "If I'm alone on Saturday night, it's lame." - It's perfectly awesome to spend a Saturday night alone.
•  "I need to find true love to be happy." - Actually, you may find you have to create true love and work on it. You may even find you don't need true love at all to be happy.
•  "I need to have a good job, own a house, and be married before I can have kids." - Really? What if it doesn't happen in that order?

I'm sure you can think of more. This is even more stressful, because we feel stressed to live up to these stories and we aren't even aware of them or who created them.

The magic in all this is that once we start to unravel and become aware of the stories that affect our daily lives, we can begin to free ourselves from their grasp. They can be there and play a part in our lives without having to control our lives and our emotions. So..just for today..begin to notice..what are your stories?

A Rise in Collaborative Consumption?

What do Craigslist, car co-ops, shared office space, and clothing swaps have in common? These mediums are shifting our economic model and our mindframes away from consumption and toward collaboration. So what? They’re helping to build community, balance our pocket books (not that many of us keep a pocket book these days), and decrease unnecessary resource use and waste. And their popularity is increasing by the minute!

When I search for the root cause of many of the big picture challenges our world is facing, I always come back to the “Buy-Use-Chuck” culture we’ve found ourselves in. This culture contributes to the accumulation of waste in our landfills and the consumption of finite resources. Meanwhile, it forces us to work more hours to pay the bills, which contributes to stress, health issues, and erosion of community. Because this inhibits us from meeting our basic human needs (subsistence, understanding, creativity, leisure, participation, identity, affection, protection, and freedom), we feel motivated to buy more to satisfy these needs that aren’t being met. Unfortunately, we’ve become so disconnected from the impact our choices have on ourselves, our neighbours, and our home that it’s easier to make daily choices that are detrimental to us than to take extra time to think of an alternative to the item we think we need to buy. Imagine if you had to walk past the landfill every day. Would you re-think your purchases?

But wait, isn’t this blog titled “Good News” ?!  The good news is this: The “Buy-Use-Chuck” culture is a relatively new phenomenon. We’ve lived far longer as a species that relies on collaboration and MacGyver-like resourcefulness than on the ability to swipe a credit card. So, it makes sense that we’re starting to shift back toward this model…and with a modern twist. Suddenly, thanks to the internet, we can share with a far larger community than our own circle of friends.

In her book, "What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live" Rachel Botsman encourages us to consume "smarter" by moving away from the outdated concept of outright ownership towards one where we share, barter, rent and swap assets that include not just consumables, but also our "time and space".

This is interesting because it’s shifting our trust. People are becoming less trusting of centralised (and faceless) monopolies and are putting their trust back in the people of their communities (whether online or in-person). For example, I love using craigslist as it allows me to get things I need from people who no longer want them (a win-win that leaves everyone satisfied).  AND I’ve met some pretty cool people in the process (for a neat story about Craigslist and how it brings people together – check out One Red Paperclip).

So, collaborative consumption mediums can help you feel more connected to people, decrease your ecological footprint, and ease financial pressures..how do you get started? If you’re interested in diving into the world of collaborative consumption, Botsman’s advice is to begin by drawing up an inventory of your assets. Gumtree.com estimates that the average UK home has nearly $1,200 worth of unused items – old gadgets, books, clothes etc – collecting dust. Wow!  And that’s just the beginning. Botsman says to think more laterally: consider the spare storage space you might have in a garage; the electric drill you could rent to neighbours; your unique skills – dog-walking, accountancy, shelf-fitting – you could hire by the hour, or exchange for someone else's skill.

Start putting it out there in your friend group and you may be surprised by what you start! Happy sharing!