Karen

What’s Your Story?

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What's Your Story?

Everyone has a story to tell! In fact, it’s impossible to live a life without creating a rich and compelling backstory!

The thing is, that story – YOUR story – is a very special thing.

For a start, it’s totally unique. There is literally no one on this entire planet that shares the same story as you, which in itself is pretty amazing!

BUT what’s more, the clues lurking within your story also hold the key that unlocks your future. And therein lies its magic!

Now I know that some of you reading this may well feel like you don’t HAVE anything special or magical lurking in your particular story. Nothing remarkable worth telling. Nothing unique to offer.

These feelings are often more acute at life’s transition points, when we’re forced to let go of the familiar and face the future with a feeling of vulnerability about where we fit in the world. Our Third Age is very much one such transition point! 

I know these feelings all too well, having struggled with the same thoughts myself, as I grappled to find a sense of purpose and a new place in the world. 

In this blog I’d like to encourage you to do this one simple thing that made a BIG difference to me and now makes a difference to my clients.

And it’s this:  explore your story.

There's power in your story

Power to do WHAT exactly, I hear you cry! 

Well, within your personal story you’ll discover SO much about who you’ve been, who you are and who you aspire to be. It’ll be there within the things you’ve done and experienced, the things you truly care about, the things you’d like to change, the things you yearn for.

When you look back at your journey so far and explore your own stories – your passions, your ah-ha moments, your successes and failures, your high points, low points, and turning points – you’ll find signals and signposts guiding the way to your purpose and to a happy, fulfilling new chapter. 

You see, it’s precisely because your story is uniquely about YOU, by exploring it, you get to find out who YOU are, the light YOU alone are here to shine and the difference YOU alone are here to make. Making this one of THE most powerful things you can do to help you successfully transition into your Third Age.

It can completely transform your perception of yourself, your past and your life and – this is the exciting bit – it can help you create new plotlines for the next chapter in this adventure called LIFE!

Connecting the dots

Your story has a crucial role to play in times of personal transition such as moving into your Third Age.  Your story has the power to connect your old self with your new self, to link your past, present, and future into a compelling whole. 

One way to start your exploration is simply by free-writing your response to prompts such as these:

  • Where did you come from? What aspects of childhood do you carry with you today?
  • What circumstances led you to choose what you wanted to do with your life?
  • What is your proudest achievement? Why?
  • What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome in life? 

If you are reading this and thinking, ‘But I’m not a writer!’ I would just like to say that this is absolutely nothing to do with being a writer or not – it’s all about the insights gained from the exploration.

I encourage you to start small. I regularly ask my clients to explore their stories and very often the most revealing insights come out of an exercise where I ask them to tell their story in just 6 words – to write a 6 word memoir.

Impossible you may think… but it’s the premise of a book I absolutely love called, “One Life. 6 Words. What’s Yours?”

It started when the book’s originator, SMITH online magazine, asked their readers for their own six word memoirs. The magazine was inundated with entries, from famous writers to first time story tellers, all sharing their lives in six words.

Six words can say so much

‘Everyone who loved me is dead’, and ‘Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends’ are just a couple of examples of how six short words can express so much emotion and experience.

Along with the angry and the bittersweet there’s also the inspirational, the motivational and the downright funny – here’s a selection:

  • ‘Any chance I could start again?’
  • ‘Ditched the map, found better route.’
  • ‘Born London, lived elsewhere, died inside.’
  • ‘Wasted my whole life getting comfortable.’
  • ‘Married childhood sweetheart. Two kids. Content.’
Your Story

If my own attempts (straight off the top of my head, I might add) are anything to go by …

‘Inside mature woman lurks irrepressible adolescent’ and ‘Someone else waiting to get out’, the results are quite revealing and say more than an autobiography ever could!

If you fancy giving it a go, stick to the advice of the editors and try not to think too hard. You might even submit your own on their website or alternatively, send them to me here and we can share them in next month’s newsletter (anonymously is fine!)

If you’re looking for a way to get to the essence of who you are and what matters most – this is a great place to start.

Exploring your ever-evolving personal story will help you reconnect to who you are NOW, to what really matters NOW, and to who you are ready to become NOW. 

And remember, you’re not merely a character to whom things just happen, but you’re the creator of your story as well and YOU get to write the next chapter. 

Coaching Corner

So when you think about your story – the story that you tell yourself about your life right now…. is it uplifting and encouraging? Or limiting and judgemental?

In this short ‘Coaching Corner’ audio, I explain how this can be the difference between moving forward feeling determined, positive and confident and staying stuck, unable to move forward because you feel frustrated, defeated and disappointed.

Have a listen!

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Regrets and the Panic of Closing Doors

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Are you feeling the panic of closing doors?

My German is limited to say the very least. In fact, it doesn’t extend far beyond ‘Doppelgänger’ and ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’! But recently I came across a magnificent addition to my vocabulary: ‘Torschlusspanik’, which literally translated means “gate-shut-panic” or ‘the panic of closing doors’.

The thing is, despite being in a different language, I know EXACTLY what it means… or rather, I know the complex emotion that Torschlusspanik sums up…. regret, combined with the fear that time, and hence opportunities, are running out.

It’s an emotion that many of us experience – even if we sometimes struggle to fully express it. I hear it time and time again from friends and clients when they try to give voice to some of their more unsettling feelings about ageing as they move into their Third Age.

It is without doubt a powerful, gut-wrenching emotion

Let’s face it, everybody has regrets – missed opportunities, paths not taken, ideas not pursued.

They say that in the end you only regret the things you didn’t do, not the things you did and you know, when I look back, I’m aware that of ALL the things I truly regret NONE of them – not a single one – was about things I did do.

Even when some of those choices were difficult, challenging or heart-breaking, they were – and still are – incredibly precious and valuable experiences that I look back on with a degree of pride in knowing that at least I went for it and gave it my all.

The dull ache of regret

However, what I STILL struggle with are those harder to reconcile ‘woulda-coulda-shoulda’ moments – the ones that linger on in the memory, resurfacing at regular intervals, accompanied  a churning feeling in the pit of the stomach – quite literally gut-wrenching!

They’re the feelings that keep dragging me down that well-worn path of ‘what if?’ without ever leading anywhere new! Regret for roads not taken can be particularly agonising as we transition into our Third Age where we often struggle to come to terms with who ‘we might have been’ and the sinking feeling that ‘it’s too late’.

The panic of closing doors

There’s no getting away from it, staring at that shut door hurts! It’s completely natural to respond with mixed emotions – including panic – as we say goodbye to one significant life stage and move into the next.

But let’s not forget the purpose behind the pain.  

It is important to make peace with the things that are changing or ending so that we are ready to explore our future options unhindered by feelings of loss and resentment. The upside is that these ‘endings’ are nothing to do with finality – they are simply a pre-condition of self-renewal and the start of a whole new chapter in our lives.

How do you deal with endings? Are you someone who holds on to your old ways for dear life, trying to avoid the pain of change? Or do you just move on, dismissing the old as if it didn’t count?

Well, you’ve probably discovered that neither option has served you particularly well. The first simply postpones the inevitable and the other fails to recognise that without closure on the past, moving on is difficult. The result of either option is that you forego the advantages of moving into a different stage of life.

So what do we DO with our regrets?

We ALL have them but have very different ways of dealing (or not dealing) with them. None of us can do anything about what’s gone but we can do an enormous amount with the future ahead of us. 

If we are willing to confront our regrets and disappointments and engage in an honest process of self-exploration, regrets CAN serve a very positive purpose – they can inspire, motivate and provide real clarity about how you want to live your life going forward.

Turn your regrets into a potent force for change

  • Acknowledge them!
    What are the things that you most regret? List them!
    What are the things you think about along the lines of, ‘If only’ or ‘What if I’?
    What do you repeatedly think about but dismiss as being ‘too late now’?
    Who was the person you wanted to be?
    Who is the self that you feel is now gone for good?
  • Listen with compassion to what your regrets are trying to tell you.  
    What lessons can you learn from this?
    How can you grow from it?
    What aspect of yourself is still waiting to be expressed?
    What can it tell you about the opportunities for renewal in your next evolution? What needs will you have to find other ways to fulfil?
  • And finally…. take action
    What can you now say yes to?
    What’s waiting in the wings ready to make its entrance? (You may not KNOW, but I bet you have a sense of what it could be.)

When one door closes...

I’ve come around to thinking that maybe a little Torschlusspanik is actually a healthy thing if it encourages us to engage in our transition and in doing so, motivates us into action!

So, is it time for YOU to close the door on your ‘shoulda, coulda, wouldas’… time to turn your back on them and walk forward, towards the adventures awaiting you behind the next new door?

While you’re thinking about that, I’d just like to leave you with this wonderfully appropriate piece of advice by Helen Keller:

“When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

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