Rewriting Your Story for Unstoppable Success | Toolbox

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2:21Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use code charm at monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with code charm. What's up, Art of Charm family? It's AJ here with Johnny, and we've got something pretty exciting to share with you today. That's right. You know, we spent a lot of time on this show talking about the power of rewriting your story, transforming your life by understanding your past, setting visionary goals for the future, and really just finding those core values that make you, well, you. Absolutely.

2:55And here's the thing. We know it's not always easy to figure out where to start. That's why we've partnered with a team of experts who developed an incredible tool to help guide you through the process of using AI. Imagine having a conversation that helps you unearth your core values, craft goals that truly resonate with those values and even start writing a narrative for your future self. A narrative that's so powerful and motivates you to leap out of bed every morning, ready to tackle today. And you want to know the best part? We're offering a free 15-minute call to dive into this AI-driven experience.

3:28It's like having a personal coach in your pocket, one that knows exactly how to help you rewrite your story in a way that sparks real change. So if you're ready to take that step to really dive deep and discover what makes you tick, what drives you, and how you can align your life with your deepest values, this is your chance. Don't let the past define your future any longer. It's time to take control, to make the conscious choices that lead to a life filled with more joy, success, and fulfillment. And it all starts with that free 15-minute call. Head on over to theartofcharm.com slash AI now to book your spot.

4:05Let's rewrite your story together and set you on a path to the life you've always dreamed of. We have 10 spots available for driven podcast listeners. And remember, it's not just about changing the past. It's about empowering your future. See you on the call. Welcome to the Art of Charm podcast, where we break down the science of powerful communication and winning mindsets so you have the cheat code to succeed with people. Every episode is jam-packed with actionable steps to unlock the hidden superpowers inside of you. Level up with us each week by listening to interviews with the best in business, psychology, and relationships.

4:42We distill thousands of hours of research in the most effective tools and the latest science so you can start winning today. Let's face it, in order to be seen and heard, your communication needs to cut through the noise and we're gonna show you how. I'm AJ, successfully recovered introvert, entrepreneur, and self-development junkie. And I'm Johnny Zubak, former touring musician, promoter, rock and roller, and co-founder here at The Art of Charm. And for the last 15 years, we've trained thousands of top performers and teams from every background. We have dedicated our lives to teaching men and women all they need to know about communication, networking, and relationships.

5:18You shouldn't have to settle for anything less than extraordinary. All right, welcome back to the show. On today's Toolbox episode, I have Johnny and Michael joining me, and we're talking about rewriting your past. Now, why this is a myth that often keeps us trapped in old behaviors? We also discuss a simple strategy that you can take to write your future more successfully. We break down what to actually do with those past events that have had a negative impact on your life, and how important it is to recognize these patterns to write a more successful future for yourself. creating goals and finding your core values to navigate you towards success.

6:00All right, welcome back to the show. Today we are talking about a hot topic on social media. You've probably encountered it surfing around rewriting your story. And for many of our clients, they recognize that they have a self-story, a vision of themselves based on past events, actions, and behaviors, and probably some chapters in that story that they would love to go back and edit and change. to influence future behavior. There's a lot of pop psychology online about how to rewrite your story, how to go back and be the editor. We want to share today what that actually means, why story is so important to us in how we navigate the past as well as the future, some strategies that we can actually use to take that self-story to create behavioral change in our lives and how we work personally with our clients to create values that orient their goals in a way that they can take action on the next chapter of their lives, what their future holds.

6:57So I know many of us probably have a past memory, a negative event that has influenced us. And we have written a story around what that event means to us, why we act the way we do, and what patterns have persisted in our lives because of this past event. And that's totally normal and natural. As humans, we all love stories. You're probably clamoring to go see Dune 2 in the movie theater because we love great stories on TV, in movies, in books, even sharing stories amongst friends. That's how we connect with one another as humans. And there's an evolutionary reason for this, right, Michael? Yeah, and the evolutionary reason here is simply that our brain is amazing in predicting what's going to happen in the future and how is our brain able to do that.

7:48It looks at the past, at what has happened before in similar situations, and then extrapolates out. A very simple example that hopefully none of you have gone through is touching a hot stove as a kid. Now, you do that once, and then your amazing brain writes this story that says, if I touch a hot stove, I'm going to be in a lot of pain. And then our brain acts on that story. It's amazing. You're never making the same mistake again. that can also happen in adult life when you are asked to do a presentation at work and you're kind of like screwing it up because your storytelling, your presentation skills, your confidence isn't quite there.

8:26So you're getting a few laughs from the audience. The story your brain learns is, if I give a presentation in public, I'm going to get laughed at and that stings, so I'm not going to do that again. And so you see how our hunter-gatherer brain has this ability to log those things write them in the pages of our life, in the self story, and then act on it. Prefrontal cortex is what does that. The human brain is a predicting brain. And it's amazing until these stories start to hold us back. Now these stories are an opportunity for us to seek certainty in those experiences. So we don't deal well with uncertainty.

9:06What's going to happen when I walk into that presentation room? What's going to happen on that first date? How am I going to be perceived? Am I going to be liked? Are things going to go the way I want them to? So naturally, we gravitate towards those past experiences to become the narrative of future events for us. And you made a great point, Michael. Sometimes those stories are negative and they impact our confidence in a very negative way, making us fearful, making us feel like we don't want to do that or we're going to fail in the future. But sometimes the stories can actually be good and helpful and create confidence and create action in our life if those past experiences were positive and we wrote positive narratives around those experiences.

9:45Even though we have this negativity bias, everyone is really good at pointing, hey, AJ, Michael, hey, Johnny, I have this one story and it just holds me back. No one ever says, hey, AJ, Johnny, Michael, I have this amazing story, it's really giving me a confidence boost. We just see the things that creates obstacles in our life and our negativity bias just highlights those for us. But yeah, there are definitely two kinds of stories out there. And neutral ones as well. If I buy cucumbers in the grocery store, nothing big happens. Totally neutral, unless you're allergic to cucumbers and then you have a negative story at your hand.

10:26I also want to add here that I'm really glad that we're speaking about this because stories have come up in this show many times through all of the psychologists that we have on this show, from all of the researchers that we've had on the show, but also the lawyers that we have talked to. They have to build narratives and stories in order to present a case. The advertisers and marketing people that we've had on this show and all of the marketing folks that we have talked to and working with in this company over the years, it's all story-driven. In fact, when you build marketing funnels, there is aspects of Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey because these are the stories that we track.

11:14This is why movies are so important. We're looking at billion-dollar industries that specialize in storytelling because storytelling is what pierces our worlds and hits us emotionally and stirs us up. So what we're going to be talking about, I want to make sure that you guys understand the power and how our brains work to create these stories, but also every industry that is story-driven. I mean, the list goes on where we go to art, we go to music. It's all story-driven. Even finance. Yeah. So for those that we work with in investment banking, they're telling stories with their pitch decks. They're turning numbers into stories.

12:04And many of you right now are probably very adept at storytelling because you're persuasive. You get people on your side, on your team to join your venture, to agree to fund what you're going after in your life. So we are naturally drawn to stories. We're probably very adept at creating stories. So what's the natural conclusion? Oh, great. I just want to go back into my past, open up that deck of slides. I just want to make a couple deletions. I want to rearrange a couple chapters of this past story and poof, I'm confident now. Poof, my fear disappears. Poof, I don't have to worry about that past failure in my life.

12:41It's a very natural inclination to want to grab the red pen and scratch out chapters of that book and go back and furiously rewrite chapters so that amazing opportunity that you saw as a fearful situation can turn into something that powers future behavior and confidence. but there are problems with attempting to just rewrite and wholesale edit and delete stories from our lives. The biggest problem is it doesn't work. This is the reason we're doing an episode like that because this is one of the number one patterns that we see with clients coming in. If I can change that story, then I'll be good.

13:22Then I won't be afraid of rejection anymore. Then I'll be confident. I just need to change that story. and it's an understandable approach for a couple of reasons. One, that's how a Word document works. That's how we edit a movie script. That's how we edit a pitch deck. We go in there, we take the parts that didn't resonate with the audience, we change them around. Not so with our brain. The second reason that this is in the forefront of our mind when it comes to solving problems is that it's easy. It's that quick little thing. I don't have to put in the work. I don't have to learn new skills.

13:57I don't have to step outside of my comfort zone and try something that's a little bit scary. All I have to do is go back into my brain and turn some knobs around, change things a little bit and be good. And we humans, we have this tendency to go the path of least effort. And what's easier than just to go in and change a story unless we've tried it for a couple of years and we realize, you know what, actually this isn't working. This is the best we can do is maybe understand where that story is coming from. But we can't go in and change it. That's not how the brain works. I think there's a lot involved with how those memories of these stories get burned into our minds.

14:42And because they're imprinted, with them comes a lot of emotion. So, Michael, you had brought up touching the stove earlier. Well, with that, there is pain involved. There was heightened emotions. So that imprinting is incredibly strong. So if I just go back and just try to delete that story from my brain, the imprinting is still going to be there. I'm in a contradiction with my mind over, I'm not scared of this stove. That happened a long time ago. But that imprinting is so strong. It drives behavior through those emotions. And this brings up a lot of the work that we do because we want our clients to understand when they're in a heightened emotional state.

15:32That heightened emotional state then goes to default behaviors. And if you don't know that you're in a heightened emotional state, then you don't know that you're resulting to those default behaviors. So this is why in moving forward and creating new stories is so powerful, because these new behaviors are going to rewrite that story in your mind. Very, very good point, especially in moments of high tension. That's when our prefrontal cortex, the logical part of the brain, likes to go offline because we want to preserve energy and our thinking brain takes a lot of energy. So put someone in a stressful situation, be it being chased by a tiger or giving a presentation or seeing that person at a networking event that's really important to talk to, high stress moment, prefrontal cortex goes offline and we're doing what we've always done, which is what we've learned in the past removes that uncertainty and means we're just standing there in the corner, not making eye contact, not talking to people.

16:33And that psychological need for certainty can also lead us to create the wrong stories around those past behaviors. It can color our memory of what happened in a different way than how it was actually unfolding in real life. So it's very easy and it feels very fulfilling to be like, okay, now I know why I have this fear. Now I know why I lack confidence in this one arena. It's because this one thing happened in the past and now if I just spend time ruminating and thinking about it and replaying and visualizing it, I could do that in my pajamas. I don't have to go out and talk to a new stranger.

17:10I don't have to prepare a new pitch deck. I can just sit there and daydream that the pitch actually went swimmingly and I got my idea funded. but that doesn't actually lead to real world behavior change and results in your life. No, that's delusional. Sitting there and telling myself that I didn't get that job interview because I was totally overqualified and they were intimidated by me. I can tell myself that all day long, but it probably doesn't improve my interview skills. It's not about rewriting in your mind the stories that happened in the past. We actually want to impact our future behaviors.

17:44And what we are doing is we're staring at a blank page today and future chapters to be written. It is great to reflect on the past. It is great to recognize patterns. It feels very relieving to understand, oh, this is a behavior that I tend to do over and over again because of these past experiences. But what if tomorrow you don't want to behave that way? What if in the future you want to be able to walk into that room confidently and pitch effectively and know when you leave that room that you're going to get funded? Well, you can't do that by just daydreaming and thinking about all the past failures and pitches that didn't go your way.

18:21Yeah. For myself, I've spent many nights staring at the ceiling, going back through old stories, trying to figure out, well, what had went wrong in those situations? What could I have done better? Why is this memory still haunting me or that I'm ruminating on it? Well, it's because I'm looking for problems. I'm looking for issues. I've drawn myself to those moments. But the most important piece to that is to understand that all of those past events, all of those memories that I'm ruminating on are taken without any context. So let's say it was a social event. Maybe I said the wrong thing, upset somebody that I consider as a high value person, and now they're mad at me.

19:10So now I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about what I had said. Could I have said something different? Was it as bad as I think it was? Or is that what I had said? Is that even why maybe this person doesn't like me or I'm having issues with this person? But you can't put yourself back in that moment. You're not there in that emotional atmosphere. All of that is gone. All you have is these bits of fuzzy memory that you're trying to draw conclusions from. And there was a piece by Michael Shermer that had stuck in my mind. In fact, I've used this very scientific research to get out of jury duty, which is your memory of past events, especially if there was trauma involved or there was a lot of stimuli going on, your memory of those events are going to be distorted.

20:16And that distortion is going to cause you to draw out all sorts of things that make no sense, that have no relevance to what you're trying to do. So that rumination only gets worse. And your conclusions that you draw from that only get worse. And this is why a lot of people feel frustrated and then eventually exhausted by the whole thing because they notice a pattern. They're trying to figure out what is the cause of this pattern. And that abyss is endless. The cable knit sweater I picked up from Quince is getting me through this cold weather. It's warm, structured, and looks way more expensive than it was.

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23:22That's$15 a month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes when the network is busy. Capable device required. Availability speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Or you might be in a situation where you recognize the pattern. You've understood the behavior that's happened by looking at the past, but that behavior is still going to present itself in the future. So I was at a point of pure exhaustion. my fiance at the time turned to me and said have you ever drawn a boundary with your family? and it was totally foreign to me what she was saying I want to be a great son, I want to be helpful, I want to be supportive of everyone but I was taking so much on my own plate I wasn't even taking care of myself and she was like I think you should talk to a therapist and I took her opinion very strongly and said you know what I'm going to do it and I reached out and found a therapist after a couple sessions we started to talk through some of my past experiences with my family and how I felt like they were just stacking all of this stuff, all of their problems onto my plate.

24:25And I felt like I had to clear my plate of their problems first before I got to anything in my own life. And my therapist said, have you ever put the oxygen mask on first? You know, you're running around the planes on fire. You're helping everyone get off the plane, but you're running out of oxygen yourself. You're going to die on the plane. And I said, well, I want them to feel that I love them. I want to show up for them. I want them to know that I care. And he said, this pattern that I see you riding a white horse, you're the knight in shining armor who comes in and sweeps everyone off their feet.

24:59And I had a light bulb go off. I said, that is the pattern. That is me. I'm the white knight. And of course, it felt good in the moment to recognize and string together certainty around these past events, why everyone was giving me their problems and their stress and why I was the first person they called and why they called me The Rock and why I was so supportive and stabilizing in their lives. But guess what? Having that recognition, it didn't change my family's behavior. Their problems were still being thrown my way. I was still the first person they were called. I was the person that they were so excited to talk to about negative things in their life.

25:38So here I am recognizing that I'm the white knight, but their behavior hasn't changed. I'm forced to have to change my behavior. And having that recognition of that pattern, although it feels good in the moment and it can be helpful in clarifying around past behaviors, it doesn't change how I show up when that future phone call hits. It doesn't change how I show up when they have a legal problem that they need me to solve or when they need some money for me to help them overcome some struggle in their life. So it can feel really good in the moment that you have this clarity around past events.

26:11And sometimes that rumination can feel really good of like, aha, I unlocked a pattern in my life, but we want to change the behavior. We want to break the pattern because the pattern has created suffering in my life. The pattern has held me back from accomplishing what I want to do in my life to grow my family, to handle my own problems. AJ, you brought up a very good point, which is recognizing that it was going to be up to you who is going to have to change your patterns, your behaviors, because they're not. And that's taking responsibility. And the minute you take responsibility, you get choice.

26:54You can leave it, you can stay the same, or you can figure out what you're going to do to change those outcomes. And I want to point out that that recognition didn't change anyone else's story. So what we're talking about here, oftentimes we like to think that if we take the red marker and we just delete and remove some parts of our story that it's going to change the whole scenario. But oftentimes we're dealing with other people who are running their own story and whose story is enmeshed with ours. And just because you decide that you want to break this pattern doesn't mean that everyone else who's influenced by you is going to start breaking their pattern immediately when you've had this recognition around your past story and your pattern.

27:36Recognizing where a story comes from, what the origin story of that story is, can be very interesting. But most of the time, it doesn't change anything at all. Just because you do a lot of work at a lot of rumination and churling, and you find out why you're afraid of dogs. You suddenly have this epiphany. It's like, oh yeah, when I was five years old, I got bitten by the neighbor's dog. That's why I'm so afraid of dogs. Finally, I found it out. I know what the reason is. You're still afraid of dogs. It still requires the work that needs to be put in, moving on from here and out on the new pages in the life story, on the blank pages saying, no, you know what?