RESTORYING LIFE

A few years ago I awoke from a powerful dream. You know, the kind that comes from somewhere outside of the normal mental shenanigans that our brains work through in sleep. A dream that contained within it a potent message.

I am naked, sitting on a white wooden chair in a room of the same colour. Looking down at my body I see words appearing all over my skin as if they are tattooed. All the words begin with ‘re’.

Restore
Reinvigorate
Reenergise
Remember
Relight
Renovate
Reignite
Reconnect

Restory………..

I am confused and look up to see my Papa sat next to me with a warm, amused and knowing smile on his face. He looks how I remembered him when I was 5 or 6 years old. Seeing my confusion, he leans in close and asks me “Genne, do you really not remember why you know all these things?”. I know I should remember but the knowledge feels far away, buried, hidden…

(extract from Genevieve’s upcoming book Tough Bliss: Restorying Life)

As I lay in bed contemplating the dream, I start to consider the ‘re’ aspect of the words that had emerged through my skin. ‘Re’ implies something that is already known. Already contained within. Something that is coming back to us after being hidden from view. This made sense to me.

So much of our society these days is focused on finding the solutions to our challenges, questions and problems by looking to the outside world for answers. By expecting someone, some book, some model, some pill to provide us with the silver bullet answer. It’s an easy, yet powerless, approach to life in that if the answers lie outside, we need not take any self-responsibility for seeking them ourselves. We can remain subtly victimized by the external processes of life, giving away our power, wisdom and energy to illusionary saviors (a phenomenon that is not surprising given our recent history of messiahs, hero leaders and gurus).

However, the cultural tide is changing. As environmental, social and economic pressures start to threaten the silver-bullet mythology, we are beginning to question whether these supposed external sources of ‘success’ will ever deliver to us the peace, health and connection that we crave. Young and old alike are starting to see that the stories that have supported our human development thus far are changing. Necessity breeds opportunity, but also calls for radical responsibility.

When we step into the world of ‘re’, we are asked to shift our narrative lens towards the inside. To re-discover who we are, why we are really here and what it is that we most long to create within our precious lives. It may sound cliché but when we take full ‘re-sponsibility’ for our lives, we then step away from being the victim of life’s changes and instead become adventurers on the unknown paths of our own unique human story. We re-connect to our past in new ways, we re-member the parts of ourselves that have been hidden from view by the trauma of living in our chaotic world and we re-design our future visions and aspirations. Put simply, we re-story our lives.

Re-storying means that we no longer run away from the pain of living in the world fully. We cease to numb away the agony of our perceived past failures or the fear of our unknown future’s. We step fully back into the game of life, knowing that we are the only ones re-sponsible for our experiences, beliefs and actions. Choice re-enters our awareness and re-silience is built from re-claiming our personal power. We are re-stored as fully functioning human beings and re-lax in the knowledge that all our answers can be found within the skin of our stories.

In a world that is obsessed with newness and novelty, perhaps the greatest innovation is to re-turn to the wisdom and energy that we were born with. To re-connect to our re-sources and stop pretending that someone else will do it for us.

Are you ready to re-story your life? Why not join us on a quest to remember, reconnect and redefine your story?

 

Sign up to receive our weekly storyhacks and restory tools directly into your inbox!

You may also like

4 comments

  • borvest inkral October 22, 2017   Reply →

    I’m truly enjoying the design and layout of your site. It’s a very easy on the eyes which makes it much more pleasant for me to come here and visit more often. Did you hire out a designer to create your theme? Excellent work!

  • Fritz January 25, 2018   Reply →

    Great Design, Great Page!

Leave a reply to Genevieve Boast Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.