My Friend Harold Rhenisch wrote a book called Carnival, inspired by the stories his father told him. His dad said after telling them to Harold one last time fir the book, he would never tell them again. And he didn’t.
Ok. I studied with a group of Jungian cultural anthropologists in New Hampshire, after I left my corporate gig in Toronto. One of the stories that emerged was from an indigenous tradition of retiring a story that we’ve told too many times. We all have them, and the reason we keep repeating those stories, is that they are useful to us in some way, as a tool of some kind, to describe ourselves to ourselves and to others. The tradition is to find that story, and recognize where it’s just an old story that needs to be retired, for whatever reason. We pick a story to tell one last time, and pick someone to tell it to. Then we tell the best version of that story we’ve ever told, and commit that it is the very last time we’ll ever tell it. And we tell the listener all this, so they know you have picked them, and that this is the end for that story. I’ve done this a few times. It’s an amazing experience, and it opens new opportunities to shape your own narrative in new ways, and finding new opportunities to pick a better version of the stories we tell others about ourselves.
I have a story about stories we have told too many times.
Do tell…
My Friend Harold Rhenisch wrote a book called Carnival, inspired by the stories his father told him. His dad said after telling them to Harold one last time fir the book, he would never tell them again. And he didn’t.
I don’t think I could ever do that.
Ok. I studied with a group of Jungian cultural anthropologists in New Hampshire, after I left my corporate gig in Toronto. One of the stories that emerged was from an indigenous tradition of retiring a story that we’ve told too many times. We all have them, and the reason we keep repeating those stories, is that they are useful to us in some way, as a tool of some kind, to describe ourselves to ourselves and to others. The tradition is to find that story, and recognize where it’s just an old story that needs to be retired, for whatever reason. We pick a story to tell one last time, and pick someone to tell it to. Then we tell the best version of that story we’ve ever told, and commit that it is the very last time we’ll ever tell it. And we tell the listener all this, so they know you have picked them, and that this is the end for that story. I’ve done this a few times. It’s an amazing experience, and it opens new opportunities to shape your own narrative in new ways, and finding new opportunities to pick a better version of the stories we tell others about ourselves.