Why Your Stories Keep Showing Up
Growth happens at our skill edges, so go easy on yourself.
In this letter, I’d like to share with you 7 reasons why your stories show up. I hope it will help you navigate day to day entrepreneurial life with more kindness and compassion.
It’s worth reminding yourself each day of your entrepreneurial journey that growth happens at your edges. Why does it matter that we hold this truth close? Because maybe in those tricky moments you’ll be more able to show yourself kindness as you grow.
Growth comes with struggle. It’s a thing. Just like the butterfly trying to emerge from her chrysalis. Yet for so many of us, this struggle is the birthplace of our stories.
Your struggle, however normal it is, can cause your stories to show up with wild abandon activating doubt, shame or insufficiency. Your stories can cause you to abandon the work or procrastinate.
And if this feels true, then this article is for you.
1) Entrepreneurs are in full-time growth mode.
As an entrepreneur you have signed up for growth at full tilt. You are constantly growing, and this means you are often at your skill edges. Practically, this means you’ve often got something new you are working on or through.
For some or in some places of our lives, that growth edge might be a cozy zone of happiness and bliss, and it might also be really uncomfortable. This discomfort can triggers our stories and signal to us that things are all wrong.
And because we are perpetually growing we are constantly facing stories of what is possible for us and who we are alive and well.
2) We want to do new things perfectly.
Why is it that when we are learning new things we want it to feel all sexy and graceful? Did your first Facebook Live feel elegant?
We know, already from experience that in many places of our lives perfection isn’t instantly available. When trying a new recipe. When we start a new level in karate. In the middle of a new HIIT workout. When we start an art class. Our minds can easily grasp that grace and perfection does NOT live in the middle of skill acquisition.
And yet we hold an expectation that can keep a high bar of perfection out of reach. We expect ourselves to grow in a certain way (and on a certain timeline) and for the end result to be a certain way.
So when our expectations are unmet, or we spin our wheels trying to do new things perfectly the stories we hold about ourselves can get triggered. The catch? You’re learning new stuff every single day. So the stories stay active.
3) Marketing culture tells us we need to be fixed.
Every time I’m tempted to sign up for another course (and this happens often) I try to check in on my own needs and motivations for learning. I am very aware of the fact that for too long I held a well perpetuated cultural belief within me that goes something like: “if I’m not acing my work with all the big time stories and results then I need to get X product or buy Y course”.
This belief — that we are broken (instead of already whole and enough) is reinforced in the world around us. I no longer choose it as my own. So much of modern day marketing rests its laurels on tapping into our sense of struggle and insufficiency. We are constantly reminded of what isn’t working and then offered a solution to fix our broken lives and self. So the things we buy make us feel better and better about ourselves. And because they do help to some extent, we continue to keep this story alive with our buying and consumption decisions.
4) Comparison can trigger our stories.
Building a business is a vulnerable thing. Building a new course or product is tricky. We can feel vulnerable as we meet with new potential clients. There is so much “squishy” terrain as we call it in my house.
So imagine what happens when the first thing we do upon waking — or when we have a moment of a break in our day is to pick up our phone and scroll Instagram …. As we see some cool piece of content or a reel done with alllll the style, we compare ourselves to others and someone else’s skill proficiency touches us exactly at that place where we are raw and tender.
5) We don’t know how to set old stories down.
Our stories are often painful and challenging, and we can often see they aren’t friendly or needed but we aren’t sure how to set them down. So they continue to occupy a place in our bodies, hearts and minds. They are familiar patterns that are hard to walk away from.
And when we are in times of stress and over-storied it can even be more challenging to know that new stories are possible. In these moments we wonder if we’ll always live with this stories and if the challenge will always be present. Old stories perpetuate so much suffering and needless pain.
6) Our radar scans for what isn’t working.
What if you scanned for what has grown or what is sprouting? What if you scanned for small signs of progress. Or what if you took a longer view and looked back over the year — what would shift?
Instead, we scan for what hasn’t yet been done, or what we didn’t complete, or how much further we have to go with the project. And what this does is reinforce what we believe to be true… that so much isn’t working. But is this really true?
It’s such an important practice as an entrepreneur to constantly focus on what IS working because we are often so oriented to what’s undone or incomplete. Incompletion or lack of progress can trigger our stories as we evaluate our pace or what feels like our partial efforts.
7) Out stories emerge because a New Way wants to emerge
I remember learning this and felt such a sense of relief knowing that my struggles and stories (and all the subsequent suffering that came along with it) wasn’t a signal of something wrong, rather it was the story of something new wanting to emerge.
Imagine that butterly struggling within her chrysalis, all slimey and in the dark and confined. What is life like for her? The struggle is not the story, and the struggle is necessary sometimes because a butterfly is about to emerge. Where do we learn to be with the discomfort of our lives?
I know growth can be uncomfortable. Oh how I know this and I know that it is so important to be kind with ourselves in the face of our discomfort. It is my hope this letter shines some light on why the stories may show up, and may offer you some new ways of considering how your evolution on the entrepreneurial path is exactly right and exactly okay even if hard some days.
I’d love to know y our experience of learning and growth has been. Which of these reasons feel true to your experience? Or maybe your own experience of learning and the stories that show up along the way is different — I’d love to know that too. Share your perspective below.
