[acb-hsp] FW: Denise Bissonnette's True Livelihood Newsletter
Lauren Casey
lrcasey1 at verizon.net
Wed May 30 09:53:35 EDT 2012
Thanks
----- Original Message -----
From: Baracco, Andrew W
To: Discussion list for ACB human service professionals
Cc: acb-chat at acb.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 5:46 PM
Subject: [acb-hsp] FW: Denise Bissonnette's True Livelihood Newsletter
I always love these newsletters.
Andy
From: Diversity World [mailto:info at diversityworld.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 8:59 AM
To: Baracco, Andrew W
Subject: Denise Bissonnette's True Livelihood Newsletter
Having trouble reading this email? View it in your browser.
This newsletter is intended to support the work of people who are engaged in developing the careers, vocations, livelihoods, jobs and/or work of other individuals. It is our belief that everyone's work life can and should be molded and crafted to be the expression of our finest gifts and a source of great joy. Towards this end, we hope that the content of these newsletters will support you with both practical tools and inspirational ideas.
Hello Andrew .
Welcome to our May 2012 edition!
Please pass this on to interested friends and colleagues!
Unfold Your Own Myth: Reclaiming the Power of Story
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
Allow me to begin with a parable...
Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, there lived a people who thrived on stories as the sustenance of their comfort, their happiness, and most importantly, their sense of place and purpose in the world. Stories were the lifeblood of their families, their community, their culture, and their spiritual heritage. Everyone in the land told stories - the children, the elders, and everyone in between. All day, every day. They told stories around campfires, board rooms, churches, classrooms, and kitchen tables. They told stories to put their little ones to sleep, and then they read them in books or watched them on the screen before putting themselves to bed. Mysteries, thrillers, comedies and dramas - the lives of the rich and famous, the survival of the fittest - the people oohed and ahhed, booed and applauded, in the fierce, absorbing grip of other people's stories.
When they weren't involved in the stories of others, the people conjured up their own. They told themselves wild tales, tragic tales, heroic and stoic tales. Using the faces and names of real people in their lives, they created stories of villains and rogues, fools and idiots, heroes and martyrs, sages and saints. Everything around them, every experience, every encounter, was a thread braided into that day's tale. Engrossed by the powers of their own imagination, soon they took to spinning intricate yarns in their heads, weaving heartfelt sagas into the fabric of their hearts. So ingrained were these stories, that the retelling of them became as natural to their minds as breathing was to their lungs.
Everyone in the land became Expert Storytellers, so practiced in fact, that people could no longer separate truth from fiction. The stories they told themselves were so convincing that they began to shape what the people actually saw, experienced and perceived. Those who told themselves sad, sorry tales, perceived the world as wretched and wanting. Those who embroidered their stories with whimsy, experienced a world of charm and enchantment. So entranced were they by the daily telling of their tales, that the lines between story and reality began to blur, until one day, the lines simply disappeared. Thus, together the people lived, each in their own story, in the Land of Intersecting Tales.
The Universe is Made of Stories, Not Atoms. Muriel Rukeyser
We, too, live in the land of intersecting tales, spinning the strands of everyday experience into story upon story. While our lives may at times seem to be pure happenstance, it is our kneejerk response to give shape, substance and form to our experience in order to make sense of it. We interpret, discover and create meaning in the very act of perception. There is a profound difference between information and meaning, between fact and truth. The world provides the first, we provide the latter. To a great extent, our lives are living clay, begging to be given shape. We shape them through story. Story is the juice through which consciousness and culture move - the currency of human growth. We are natural-born story-tellers. Carl Rogers asserted, "To be a person is to have a story to tell. That's what it means to be human."
We tell ourselves stories about the world around us, about our place in it, about who we are, how we live, what we can and cannot be. We tell stories about what we can create, enjoy, and experience, and we tell stories about what limits us and what stands in our way. Like the people in the parable, we are so entranced with the tales we tell ourselves and the myths of our upbringing, that it is only with vigilant discernment that we are able to recognize the lines that separate fact from fiction, truth from tales, situation from story.
Fierce attention, discernment, and self-awareness are necessary, however, if we are to heed the wise counsel offered by Sam Keen in the preface of his wonderful book, The Mythic Journey. He writes:
To remain vibrant throughout a lifetime we must always be inventing ourselves, weaving new themes in our life narratives, re- envisioning and re-imagining our futures in order to re-author the myth we live by. Our assignment, should we decide to accept the mission, is to transcend the stories we have been telling ourselves, and to re-imagine the present and the future with a story that brings us alive and puts us in a place of power rather than in a place like a puppet on a string.
What would it mean to reclaim the power to enlarge, revise, and edit our life stories and regain authorship of the narratives informing our day to day experience"? Is it possible to take to heart and put into practice the advice of Rumi from the 13th century: to unfold your own myth? It is in the spirit of that noble purpose that I offer the following suggestions.
1. Become aware of the "myths" informing your life.
Carl Jung once asserted that the most important question we can ever ask ourselves is, "What myth am I living?" One definition of myth is "an intricate set of interlocking stories, rituals, rites and customs that inform and give the pivotal sense of meaning and direction to a person, family, community or culture". The myths we live by include not only the conscious celebration of certain values, but the unspoken consensus, our habitual way of seeing things, our unquestioned assumptions, and our automatic stance. Most of us are not consciously aware of the myths that inform our existence - much like a fish does not recognize water. They are simply what we take as "truth", as the way things are. If, however, you have ever traveled to a foreign country, started a new job, moved into a new neighborhood, or married into another's family, you know what it is to see 'the glaring myths' to which others are completely oblivious.
Much has been written about how the myths of a community, a religion, or a family serve to give their members a sense of security and identity, but they also create selective blindness, narrowness and rigidity because they are intrinsically conservative, conforming to their self-interests. (As I have written about in prior articles, it is no mistake that "cult" is at the heart of the word "culture".) If we are to truly become the authors of our own lives, we need to take responsibility for the legacy and the burden of the stories and myths that have been handed to us through various parts of our lives. We must sift through the trash and the treasure, and consciously choose that which we wish to surrender and that which we wish to embrace as part of our larger, continuing story.
Wouldn't it be an interesting and worthwhile exercise to uncover the myths that differentiate each of our families from other families, our professions from other professions, or our workplaces from other workplaces?
2. Recognize how your stories influence your experience.
Our stories shape us and the world around us. There's our experience, and then there's what we tell ourselves about it. The stories we wrap around our experience can add perspective, depth, meaning and encouragement to our lives, or they can rob us of joy, compassion, hope, and forgiveness. Our stories can thrill and delight us or they can scare us into submission. The tales we live by are the blueprints of both our potential and our limitations because once the lines of fact and fiction have blurred and we interpret our subjective perception as "truth", our perspective becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. When we live in a story of shame and victimization, we relinquish our power and squelch our potential. When we live in a story of sovereignty and self-responsibility, we expand our possibilities and transcend our limitations. How we view our life as a story often determines how life treats us.
3. Own your spin.
While there is a lot about life that we cannot influence, we can take control of the stories we tell! If we want to change a pattern in our lives or our feelings about a situation, we can begin by changing our story about it. Own your spin, and you have the power to re-spin! With a switch in story, we can change a nightmare into a miracle, a burden into a blessing, or a fiasco into a fit of laughter.
I remember years ago as my marriage was ending, sharing with a dear friend how sorry I was that my spouse and I had failed in our relationship and had made such a mess of our lives. She calmly responded, "Well, that's one way of looking at it. I think you have succeeded brilliantly in learning that you are not meant to live as husband and wife, but as friends, you can release the other to their highest good. You have a beautiful child together - how could you consider your marriage a mistake, or your lives a mess? It's just a new situation calling you to be bigger people than you thought you were." Twenty three years later, I can tell you that the larger story not only helped me through the turmoil of that time, but has helped sustain me through the years. (And yes, life repeatedly, relentlessly, has asked us to be "bigger people" than we thought we would ever have to be!)
Think about an area of your life in which you would like to feel differently or to make some change. Think about the spin you are putting on the situation and consider:
a.. Is it nourishing or depleting to your spirit?
b.. Is it honoring or dishonoring to you and your choices?
c.. Is it awakening or dulling your imagination?
d.. Is it empowering or disempowering to you and the others involved?
e.. Are you thinking the best or the worst of yourself and others involved?
f.. Does it evoke your cynicism or your optimism, defensiveness or generosity?
g.. Is it based on images from the past or images of hope for the future?
You can't change what you can't accept and own. Just recognizing your spin (and knowing it is spin) can be amazingly liberating!
4. Let go of the stories that no longer fit.
I recall a teaching parable about a man standing on a shore longing to reach a distant island. He had no boat, and it was too far to swim. So with the sticks and mud and long grasses around him, he crafted himself a fine raft which succeeded in carrying him to the other shore. He was so delighted to arrive on the island, that he carried the raft on his back for the rest of his life.
Our stories are like rafts that we created to serve us at some point in our lives, but that doesn't mean we have to carry them for the rest of our lives. Put down the raft already. Let the old stories go.
My most recent example of this is with my move from California to Winnipeg, Canada six years ago. For the first five years that I was here, every time I engaged in conversation with my fellow passengers on airplanes and they would ask me where I was from, I had to tell them that while I lived in Winnipeg, I was really from Santa Cruz, California, which of course, just set another whole series of stories into motion about why I moved, what's it like, what I miss, etc. One of the ways in which I knew that I had finally "arrived" into my current life was when I stopped needing people to know the story of my migration. It's enough that they know I live in Winnipeg. I'm a prairie girl now, thank you very much. I have new stories to tell based on my current life. I still cherish the memory of every moment of the 30 years I spent living in the redwoods, by the sea, (in the coolest town in America), but my identity is no longer wrapped up in that particular part of my history. The story served its purpose when I needed it. What is my new cover story? I'm not sure yet. But as I heard the poet and author, David Whyte, say in a seminar recently, "You don't need to know the new story in order to give up the old one."
Finding the great story(s) that informs our lives is a sacred task. No one wants to live in a worn and outgrown story that is too small for the life that beckons! We need to give birth to larger stories - to stories that inspire, surprise, delight and grow us. Perhaps the first step in finding the larger story is in surrendering the smaller ones, like old clothes that at one time may have fit us perfectly, but no longer suit the life we are living. I recently heard author Iyanla Vanzant suggest that many of our most persistent stories aren't the ones that bring us pride or joy, but pain and angst. "Story" is just another word for a grudge or resentment, and more often than we want to admit, an excuse for not having to be a bigger, more courageous, more empowered person.
Think about some of the old stories that served you for a time, but no longer fit the constructs of your current life or are not in sync with the life you wish to grow into. What would it take to let the old story go - forgiveness, trust, courage? What would be the reward of releasing the old story - peace, freedom, the white page?
5. Consider your six word memoir.
A really cool way to recognize the central themes at the heart of your larger story is to consider your response to the question posed on Oprah's website: What would your six word memoire say? Here are some of my favorites which were sent in and shared on her website:
a.. Recipe for Failure - Changed My Ingredients.
b.. Car Totalled. Lives Spared. Forever Grateful.
c.. Outnumbered Educated Liberal on the Prairie.
d.. Zen Gardener. Can you dig it?
e.. Surfing life's ripples - wishing for waves.
f.. Was Hot. Raised kids. Lost Cool.
g.. I dance daily, watched or not.
h.. Still fit into high school earrings.
i.. Falling gracefully - hope there's a mattress.
j.. Carjacked in the tunnel of love.
k.. Former Doc now wears Artist's smock.
l.. Write. Mother. Sleep. Repeat as needed.
In considering this question for myself, a couple come to mind:
a.. Faithfully following loves' lead. Walk on.
b.. Here for joy - forget moderation.
c.. Kankakee. Santa Cruz. Winnipeg. Thank you!
And for all of you who noticed that I wrote three, not one, and that the one in the middle contains five words, not six, I offer a fourth six word memoir:
a.. Life's too short to follow rules.
6. Mind your metaphors!
Metaphor is a shortcut to story-telling. They hold the most subjective truth (oxymoron?) in the least amount of mental space. And they are much more tenacious than facts! The metaphors we use largely determine both what and how we perceive the world, and how we think about our perceptions. We could go into any workplace and throw the question - "What's it like working here?", and among the responses we might hear:
a.. I've hit the jackpot with this job!
b.. I'm pretty much a cog in the wheel - just hangin' in till retirement.
c.. I finally hit the Big Leagues - I got my A game on.
d.. This is pretty much a dead-end job. I aint goin' nowhere, real fast.
e.. This is a dog eat dog industry - I'm always looking over my shoulder.
f.. Oh, this is just a foot in the door - this isn't my real job.
Notice how this doesn't just represent various spins on the same situation, but with the use of metaphor, invokes completely different realities. Consider, for example, how differently one would approach the world of work and the challenge of the job search depending on which of the following metaphors the person used to imagine his/her vocational life:
a.. Art: Work is a canvas upon which we create the masterpiece that is our life.
b.. A Battleground: Everything is a struggle in which we are either winning or losing.
c.. A Garden: Vocation must be cultivated like flowers or vegetables. It is always growing, flowering, and producing, and it is always in need of pruning.
d.. A Mission: Work is about finding a way to contribute to the world.
e.. A Journey: Work is an adventure, an ever-winding road in which we make choices at each new crossroad. There's no final 'arrival' - it's all about how you travel.
f.. A Building: Starting with a solid foundation, you build upon your career.
g.. A Roller Coaster: Life consists of ups and downs, and we are just along for the ride.
h.. A Mountain Climb: Vocation is an uphill climb and you have to keep your focus on the goal of reaching the top.
i.. A Competition: You always have to be on your "A Game" or you're going to lose to the person who is faster, smarter, better.
j.. The Corporate Ladder: It's one rung at a time, starting at the bottom, working your way up. Just as you get used to the rung you are on, you are ready and wanting to go to the next level.
k.. A Prison: Work is an unwanted obligation in which you have no choice but to "do your time".
l.. A Classroom: We get paid to learn. There is no failure, just feedback. Mistakes help you know that you are taking necessary risks. There's always more to learn.
The metaphors we use to frame an experience totally influence our perception and response to that situation. One way of changing our response to a situation is to change the metaphor. If you are tired of being at war with your boss, is it possible to consider him/her as a fellow classmate in the school that is your workplace? If you no longer want to feel like your pulling teeth in order to get information from your client, what could you begin to cultivate together in the field that is your relationship? For the job seeker who is exhausted from the uphill climb of the job search, is it possible to suggest that she consider one step that she could take on level ground as she nears the next bend on her path?
7. Use labels that liberate rather than limit.
Labels and titles are a necessary and unavoidable function of most cultures and in most workplaces. But it can be a dangerous thing to live within the limits or constraints of those labels. Every job title is loaded with meaning, interpretation and symbolism because words carry their own stories. It's important that we call ourselves by the words that are large and expansive enough to carry our real intentions and our deepest aspirations. I am reminded of the woman who runs the front desk at an assisted living facility whose name plate proudly bears the title, "Director of First Impressions". What a refreshing alternative to "Receptionist."
Consider the difference between the person who describes herself as a "case manager for people with on welfare" and the person who refers to herself as a "dream maker - a life changer - and a purveyor of hope"! Same job, totally different interpretation. Or how about the person who refers to his "ole' lady", "his bride of 30 years", or his "main squeeze"? Same person, totally different relationship. Words matter. Like a metaphor, a label packs a powerful punch in very few syllables. If you want to reinvent and reinvigorate your role, think about giving yourself a title that expands your sense of purpose and contains the larger story you want to be live in.
In closing - Let's take our stories back.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, "Each person must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered, it is something molded." The ongoing process of challenging that meaning, of wresting it from the difficult moments, and fashioning it in the more mundane parts of our lives, is what Viktor Frankl referred to as "the truest expression of the state of being human." That fact that we have such a love and affinity for stories, the natural-born talent for inventing them, and the unending capacity to edit, revise and create new narratives with which to continuously mold the meaning of our lives is not to be taken for granted. It is something to be understood, appreciated, and treasured. Above all, dear story-tellers, it is something we can employ with fierce love, discernment and imagination. My wish for us all is that we may uncover our truest stories, the deep and genuine stories that belong to each of us, and with that discovery, that we may sing, dance and call those stories into being in the precious time that is ours.
To your happily ever after.
~ Denise
© Denise Bissonnette, May 2012 (If not used for commercial purposes, this article may be reproduced, all or in part, providing it is credited to "Denise Bissonnette, Diversity World - www.diversityworld.com." If included in a newsletter or other publication, we would appreciate receiving a copy.)
Read Denise's previous (March 2012) newsletter...
------------------------------------------------------------
We Welcome your comments and feedback on this article!
Please consider sending us your opinions, perspectives, experiences or related resources on this topic. Unless you specify otherwise, your comments and contact information may be edited/published in a future edition of the True Livelihood Newsletter.
Email your comments on this article... TLN at diversityworld.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Thoughts to Consider
"A human being is a featherless, storytelling animal."
- Sandor McNab
"God made man because he loves stories."
- Elie Wiesel
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
- Muriel Rukeyser
"So long as human beings change and make history, so long as children are born and old people die, there be tales to explain why sorrow darkens the day and stars fill the night. We invent stories about the origin and conclusion of life because we are exiles in the middle of time. The void surrounds us. We live within a parenthesis surrounded by question marks. Our stories and myths don't dispel ignorance, but they help us find our way, our place at the heart of the mystery. In the end, as in the beginning, there will be a vast silence, broken by the sound of one person telling a story to another."
- Sam Keen
"I believe that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way, we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value with the stories we tell."
- Hermanne Hesse
"The common root of "authority" and "authorship" tells us a great deal about power. Whoever authors your story authorizes your actions."
- Sam Keen
"For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, and from hour to hour. What matters therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather,
the specific meaning a person attributes to life at any given moment."
- Viktor E. Frankl
------------------------------------------------------------
Poem of the Month
Unfold Your Own Myth
by Jalaluddin Rumi
Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down
and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there's a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins
Suddenly he's wealthy.
But don't be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth.
- Excerpt from The Essential Rumi, © 1995, Coleman Barks, translator
------------------------------------------------------------
Putting It Into Practice
1. What are some of the most prominent myths which informed your upbringing? Consider those that you inherited from your family, your schooling, your religion or spiritual beliefs, and your ethnic heritage? Which of these myths have your relinquished and which continue to inform your life?
2. What is the "spin" you have attributed to your current work life? In the words of Dr. Phil, "How is that working for ya?" If it's not working for you, how could you shift the story to feel better or more empowered about your current situation?
3. What are some of the most persistent and prominent stories about your life that have been important for you to tell people as they get to know you? Which of these stories continue to be important to you and which of these stories have you outgrown?
4. What new stories are you beginning to tell that reflect the life you are growing into and the hopes and aspiration you hold for your life in the future?
5. What are some of your "six word memoirs" which carry the central theme of your life or work?
6. What is the most persistent metaphor you use to describe your vocation, your current work situation, or your job search? Is it a metaphor that inspires and empowers you? If not, could you benefit from a change in metaphor? Go through the list provided in the article and see which one speaks to you.
7. What title or label to you use to describe yourself or your work role? What new label or title would you like to use that could enlarge or enhance your sense of purpose or better describe the work you do and the person you are?
------------------------------------------------------------
Reader Survey
I would love to receive responses from readers to any or all of questions 5 -7 above. Please send your comments to: TLN at diversityworld.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Subscription & Archives
Previous editions of the "True Livelihood Newsletter" are archived on our website.
Click here to see archived editions of True Livelihood...
Diversity world also publishes the "inclusionRX Newsletter" - featuring content on disability and employment issues.
Click here to see archived editions of inclusionRX...
Diversity World "Enriching workplaces and reducing employment barriers."
Email: info at diversityworld.com Tel: (204) 487-0307 Website: www.diversityworld.com
Mailing Addresses:
849 Almar Avenue, Suite C-206, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA
137-99 Scurfield Blvd, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3Y 1Y1 Canada
Diversity World
849 Almar Avenue
Suite C-206
Santa Cruz, California 95060
This email was sent to: andrew.baracco at va.gov
Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend
powered by
MailerMailer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
acb-hsp mailing list
acb-hsp at acb.org
http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-hsp/attachments/20120530/9c403e9c/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ~WRD000.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 823 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-hsp/attachments/20120530/9c403e9c/attachment-0004.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 536 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-hsp/attachments/20120530/9c403e9c/attachment-0005.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 548 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-hsp/attachments/20120530/9c403e9c/attachment-0006.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2447 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-hsp/attachments/20120530/9c403e9c/attachment-0007.jpg>
More information about the acb-hsp
mailing list