Stories That Shape Our Lives: Sean DeLaney Returns To JUST PRESS RECORD

The other day I started to freak out about all of the stories in my head. I was looking at my bookshelf, thinking about all the little stories in one book alone (a fresh copy of “The Canterbury Tales” that I just picked up), and how it multiplied across the entire shelf. The books didn’t have to all come falling over on me for me to feel like the books had just come falling over on me.

And those are just the external stories! They’re kind of in my head, but they’re stored externally. The books can have and keep their own issues.

My head is full of stories of its own. Childhood stuff. Adult stuff. Weird stories stacked on stories (how many stories do I have about watching Val Kilmer (RIP) movies for example - not just the plots of the movies, but where I was, who I was with, why I can remember smells from these experiences, etc.).

Which ones matter? Why? How do I keep them on the shelf and not crushing me?

Sean DeLaney said this to me the other day, it’s crystalized in his return to Just Press Record if you’re interested:

"I've seen that everyone just has a handful of stories that essentially dictate how they live their entire life... A handful of stories dictate their entire life."

For all the stories on my shelf and in my head, I know what he’s saying is true. There’s only a handful of them that dictate everything. Sure, there’s 1000s of them that color in between different points. But the bold lines, they’re the few and far between. They’re imprinted into and across the entire coloring book of my life.

During the 3 or 4 years I spent seeing a therapist on a weekly basis, we talked a lot about these stories. We talked a lot about about how I would pick up and misuse various scripts in inappropriate places. It would mess me up at work, in relationships, and pretty much everywhere. Much like what Sean does with his clients, my therapist helped me understand there were only a handful of these stories impacting a massive portion of my life.

We can’t change our experiences, but we can change our relationship with those experiences. As I learned (and as I’m still learning), if you can see the scripts, you can influence the variables, to move, on average towards the outcomes you want. It’s not easy. It’s definitely not always comfortable. But, it is a start.

Happiness starts with understanding what your core stories are. It doesn’t mean you’re happy there! But it does mean, as Sean told me, you can star to act differently within your stories. You can move “from reaction to intentional,” for example. And “from obstructed to aligned.” These are transformations (and hey, if you missed it, here’s my emotional transformations post). These are OPTIONS we all possess.

And, in the words of Jung - as Sean paraphrased in our conversation too, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I didn’t get happy until I went out and found my stories. It took hiring a professional. There’s no shame in that. At any level either. Because you might need it for some life stuff, or some career stuff, or, who knows - all the stuffs, but the path is the same if you want to be less reactive and more intentional, or less obstructed and more aligned.

Find the stories. Get help if you need to in figuring out which ones matter the most. Life is too short to be stuck on the same page of the same book if you’re miserable there.

What about you, do you know your handful of stories? How has your awareness of them changed over time?

Watch Sean DeLaney and I have this conversation, which is built off of a brilliant point made by prior guest Dylan O’Sullivan, and indirectly, Luca Dellanna too. Plus, how he connects the points I’m riffing on here with principles vs. techniques, and then crafting intentional transitions - he’s so good.