The Stories We Tell Ourselves with Gregg Levoy

The Stories We Tell Ourselves...
 
We're storytelling animals, and we create stories to help us make sense of life and give us a framework for our decisions, whether personal, professional or spiritual.

But those stories can sometimes turn on us—especially the negative ones—and become self-limiting when they come up against life's primary goal: Grow. And when they become lies of identity—I am what I do, I am what I have, I am what other people think of me.

Stories become beliefs become behaviors. We don't just tell stories—they tell us. And until the core perceptions at the heart of our stories are confronted, and perhaps deconstructed or updated, the behavior that grows out of them won't change.

This presentation—at both the service and an afternoon workshop—is designed to help you gently identify and reconsider the stories you tell yourself. We’ll work to separate fact from fiction, emphasize the positive in our stories, and understand that they don't keep replaying themselves to torment us, but to offer us opportunities to heal and grow. The soul’s agenda is not punishment, but healing.

Presenter Bio:

Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following An Authentic Life (Random House)—rated among the "Top 20 Career Publications" by the Workforce Information Group—and Vital Signs: The Nature and Nurture of Passion (Penguin), is the former “behavioral specialist” at USA Today and a regular blogger for Psychology Today.

He has Keynoted at the Unity Worldwide Ministries Conference, Microsoft, the Smithsonian Institution, Environmental Protection Agency, National Conference on Positive Aging, American Counseling Association, National Career Development Association, Unity of the Blue Ridge, and others, and has appeared on ABC-TV, CNN, NPR and PBS.

A former adjunct professor of journalism at the University of New Mexico, former columnist and reporter for USA Today and the Cincinnati Enquirer, he has written for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Omni, Psychology Today, Christian Science Monitor, Fast Company, and many others. His website is www.gregglevoy.com.