Stories are everywhere / Are you creating a storm or a calm?

 

Before we get to today’s story, how are you finding the stories so far, are they helpful?

My goal is for you to see that you have stories all around you, once you start seeing the world that way. And you have a rich history of learning through experiences, all of which are potential stories.

STORY TIP #7: The BEST stories are often the ones where you, either at the time or thinking about it since, had a GENUINE personal ah-ha!

To jog your memory, here’s what we’ve looked at this week (to read them in full you peruse this blog if you want):

Monday’s story: A special story for a special girl

It was Eliza’s birthday, so this is a story about Eliza. But it’s also a story about unconditional love. It’s a story about everyone is perfectly imperfect, just as they are. And it’s a story about accepting yourself as you are. Depending on how it is used, anyone of these (or other points) could easily be built upon.

 

Tuesday’s story: 1975

This was something I remembered driving my car. I hadn’t thought of it for ages! It’s a story about learning to snorkel and then snorkeling in Spain aged 6. It’s a story about the confidence of a beginner and it’s a story about perceptions changing and EVERYTHING changing. It’s a story about perception not necessarily being the same as essence. It’s a story about being optimistic and pessimistic. Any of these themes could easily be built upon .. or others. 

 
Wednesday’s story: Swimming lessons
This story is more direct in its attempt at influence. It’s a story about me being stupid, but then aren’t we all a little like that at times? As I learn that help is available, the inference is that help is available for all of us. It’s a story that puts in the audience’s mind, ‘If I’m not getting the results I want, why don’t I get the help I need?’ This could be built upon in many different directions and for many different topics – health, weight-loss, strength, any skill development, making money etc.

Thursday’s story: Too busy to listen

This is a story about being convinced I’m right when I’m wrong. It’s a story about thinking I know, when I really don’t know. It’s a story about not wanting to be told what to do. It’s a GROSS story! Unfortunately it’s a completely true story! (All the stories are true, we’ll come back to made up stories in a few week’s time.)

Here’s today’s story .. have a think about the point the story is making. Is it direct or indirect? What other points could this story make?

 

 

Just a few months into Susan’s first pregnancy she announced one day ‘I’m thinking of a having a home birth’

‘What!!’ I said, ‘Are you mad?!!” (by the way, never infer your pregnant spouse is mad...)

‘I’ve been looking into it for a few months and I think it’s what I want.’ she said.

‘But we don’t know anything about it, is it even safe .. we need to find out more first.’ I stuttered, a bit panicked.

‘Great idea!’ she said, ‘I’ve booked us on a weekend hypnosis in childbirth course. They train husbands and wives to have completely natural home births with no pain killers or unnecessary medical intervention.’

‘When is that?’ I said. I could tell that any resistance would be met in the harshest possible terms!

‘Next weekend!’

And so that was that. We attended the course, and I have to say, it was fantastic. I had been studying hypnosis and hypnotherapy for about a year and so I found it particularly interesting. Taking time to stop and really think about the body’s ability to grow a baby and give birth to it and the mind’s role in how this process goes. And the experience of pain in the body. It was very educational, very reassuring, and I found we were very focused, as this was something we were actually going to do!

It was on the first day of the course that Vikki, the instructor, said something that I will never forget. She was talking about the importance of removing all stress from ‘Queen Bee’ (Susan) during the delivery.

‘Mums, imagine you’re in the African savannah giving birth, very naturally. And your labor is progressing well, baby is coming down .. and then you see a lion!  How do you think your body is going to react?’

‘Or Dads, for you, imagine you’re out hunting and you need a poo (yes, she said those exact words), so you find a good spot, and you’re about to have a poo .. and then you see a lion. How is your body going to react?’

And as she said it, I kind of sat up straight.

‘Exactly!’ she said. ‘Your body goes into abort so you can escape. Stress is not good. We want a nice, even, progressive labor, nice and calm and relaxed over many hours, so your body has a long time to adapt to what it has to do.  So dads, your role is to remove stress from the environment.

‘Now’ she said ‘listen to this because this is very important: your body responds that way, whether you actually see a lion, or whether you just THINK you see a lion.’

Wow! That one hit me right between the eyes. I had never quite appreciated our mind’s ability to actually CREATE our internal experience of the world, independently of what is happening in the outside world, before she said that.

Our body responds in the same way whether it’s true or not. I’d heard many people say your subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined, but it had no significance to me until that day.

If you really think about this, it is utterly amazing. Wherever you are right now, reading this, a single thought could pop into your mind, and then depending on the nature of that thought, you experience a feeling in your body.

And that feeling is dependent on the thought isn’t it? So it could be real sadness or real happiness that you experience. Perhaps it’s a lustful thought or maybe you experience anger, even rage! Your body then does things differently. Your pancreas, your liver, your whole body creates things that weren’t there a split second before. An enzyme created here, a hormone secreted there, capillaries constricted or dilated, blood flow altered, muscles of the body prepared, immune system shut down, creative thought affected.

A mass of physiological responses rampage through the body .. and what was the cause of all of this?

A thought. That’s it, just a simple, single, solitary thought.

‘Whether you actually see a lion, or whether you just think you see a lion’

That thought doesn’t exist anywhere except in your mind, and only then for the briefest of periods, and that thought may have NO relevance to reality .. it’s just what you THINK. Yet it creates a storm or a calm inside of us.

Epictetus said many, many years ago ‘We are disturbed, not by the events of life, but by the views we take of them’

We are creative and our ability to think is the center of our creativity.

Oh, by the way, the birth was a great success all things considered, and the world changed forever that day . but that is a story for another day!