From childhood on, one of my super powers has been a gift to tell stories. A gift that’s has served me well in situations ranging from quelling a dangerous drunk to earning me the honor of winning Chicago Sun Times’ number 1 commercial real estate broker back in 1987 to making a feature documentary about Dr. Patrick Flanagan in 2019.
A professor at a Northwestern speech class spotted my story talent and gave me sage advice to never abuse this power, to always be truthful because people would believe almost anything I say. Something I’ve adhered to my whole adult life. I never take on a client or market a product I do not believe in wholeheartedly.
Blessedly, through teachings with my love and yogini Elizabeth I’ve learned that I’ve not been so kind when it comes to telling negative stories to myself about my future. I see in meditation this negative energy, like a spear aimed at my own heart, evolved because it felt better to punish myself rather than have my drill sergeant dad do so. In other words, I chose self abuse over parental abuse. Bad lessons from childhood I now release!
Conscious at last of this negative story telling behavior and the self hatred it enfolds, I’ve been able to catch myself and stop telling negative stories about my future and enjoy my happy life with Elizabeth in the paradise of Sedona fully.
I caught a doozie of negative story loop the other day that I’ve been repeating since I was eighteen concerning monthly bills. It went something like this in my internal dialogue, “Ah, I paid this month’s bills but what about next month’s bills? That might not work out…” And the subconscious unspoken part… “and I’ll have to move back under dad’s roof!”
Analyzing the rare times I’ve not been able to make the bills since I was 18-years-old amounts to a tiny fractions of my adult life; like right after a divorce or at the depths of a skyscraper I built losing $80 million.
The truth is 99.9% of the time I’ve met my bills each and every month for over 40 years. And yet, until just now really, I repeatedly have been telling myself the negative pattern story that this coming month might be a financial disaster. That’s a nutty waste of energy on a negative program. Even in that rare 1/10 of 1% of the times things have gone to hell and I could not make the monthly bills I somehow managed to somehow make life work.
For example, in the Great Recession of 2008 when all my Chicago investor money evaporated overnight and my film business teetered on the brink of destruction, I opened a social media company called BuzzBroz to survive on fees versus equity. To this day, ten years later, BuzzBroz pays the bills and gives me the freedom to make my own films outside the closed Hollywood system with my work seen by millions.
In the past I’ve only overcome my negative self-abusing-story telling pattern with a great deal of positive thinking and action. But that takes a lot of energy. Today I simply free myself from negative stories about the monthly bills, health, relationship, business and more by shushing my mind when it begins a negative story. After all, decades as a mostly successful adult shows I’ve proven to myself I can handle anything. So why worry?
And this letting go of negative stories applies the world at large as well. Negative “news” about global warming, crime, cancer, GMO, flat earth believers, Trump setting our nation backward, chemtrails, you name it, I can handle them all on personal level. If for some unforeseen reason I cannot I’ll trust spirit has a lesson for me. And you know what? I’ll deal with that too somehow. So why worry?
The rise in my mood as I’ve let go of negative stories is amazing! I feel emotionally like I’ve learned to fly. The result is that I have far more brain space and energy for manifesting the good stories I typically create in a life filled with blessings; unfettered by the dark side of my gift for story. I hope you’ll join me in not creating negative stories in your life, otherwise known as worry.
And in my life as a filmmaker I promise you ever more brilliant positive stories to uplift your spirit, as I’ve become mildly famed for over the past 23 years. I gladly leave stories of dystopia and wide spread dysfunction to other writers and filmmakers.
Don’t worry, please, I say to myself too, this will result in pollyanna storytelling. Tension does make for a good story after all. An amazing reality series on Netflix THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF shows there is a global market for stories where people can compete and still love one another.
Check the show out sometime yourself on Netflix. 5 stars and delicious to watch.
On March 11th I told the hospital doctors, determined to scare me into better self-care, that they’d find my heart was in decent shape when they examined me. I knew this not just because am I blessed with being pretty psychic, but because I had just hiked the Grand Canyon 6 months earlier with zero heart trouble.
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