Episode 000 Introduction

Podcast 000

Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. Before we get started in our weekly episodes I wanted to introduce myself and this phenomenal podcast so you know who and what you’re listening to.

Love Your Story – a podcast about the power of story, how we can use our stories to empower us, and take the prerogative to reframe the stories that hold us back, while celebrating the unique heroic journey we each take.

I’m a professional writer and have been for 25 years. I published my first article in an Access Fund newsletter (rock climbing activist newsletter), without payment, the year I graduated from college and was so thrilled that I persisted beyond the future file full of rejection notices to a space of 25 years later having four books published, over a hundred articles on athlete profiles, how-to cook Dutch Oven, which sleeping bag is hot this season, where to hike, snowshoe, find a good yurt, or tackle the top white-water rafting experience in the state of Utah. How does writing for the outdoor recreation industry have anything to do with stories?

Plenty! Who tells more stories than people who climb wild mountains, kayak running rapids, ski steep and deep powder and travel on the trails and waterways of the wild? Of all the groups with stories the outdoor recreation folkgroup thrives on making and sharing stories to define who they are within their own groups. Stories abound with outdoor recreationalist because they are creating new stories every day. I did my master’s research on the personal narrative and found amazing things – I learned that our conversations are rituals, that our stories are serving functions that we often don’t even consciously realize, that tremendous information about ourselves and our cultures can be gleaned from our stories and so much more! But the more I learned and the more research I did, the more exciting the topic became because it’s so wonderful – it’s the language everyone speaks and everyone understands.  Even more than that, while it comes naturally to tell stories, the average person has very little idea about the role that stories are playing in their lives, or the control they have over them to build empires, live dreams, or more often, to hold ourselves in small, scared places. This podcast is about giving you a tool, and the instruction manual and a broader understanding so that you can use your stories to build, empower, celebrate and free yourself.

We are excited to create a community, to share a broad range of empowering ideas from how and why to reframe a story, to how businesses and leaders can use stories to share their vision, branding, and company values. We’ll talk about the hero’s journey, about getting rid of stories – those one-liners in your head that keep you pinned down. Then we’ll celebrate and explore the stories of successes, failures, losses and growth that define the human experience. We have a plethora of ideas and research that revolve around this powerful language that we all speak – and we want to share these empowering and enriching ideas so that your life becomes bigger and better.

Matt, my podcast partner and I, want to make a difference! We want to help others and ourselves shake off the old stories that don’t work and fly high with the ones that hold us high. We both have families – He has a wonderful little family who will be heading out to travel the country next year and recording and creating stories of their travels as they spend a year on the road. I have 2 sons and a cute little yorky, and we create lots of family stories on the ski slopes and traveling adventures. We have a few harder stories, like my son’s diagnosis with Leukemia earlier this year, and a few bad marriage endeavors, but that’s all part of the bigger story! We all have REAL stories.

To create our community we want your feedback, questions and ideas. Subscribe and review the podcast,  then go to our website often to share your wins and challenges, to give us feedback on the episodes, and ask questions that pop up about this broad and beautiful topic!

We’ll take your questions and ideas as we frame future episodes, and as we create our interactive community of people who come to understand the power of this tool and are excited about the difference this understanding can make in how we live.

Now go and enjoy episode 1