Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason and Jana Banana

Rewrite Your Story

• Jana and Jason Shelfer • Season 8 • Episode 88

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Rewrite Your Story: From Victim to Victor – The Power of Your Personal Narrative (Living Lucky® Podcast)

Have you ever noticed how some transform their deepest struggles into their greatest strengths? It's not what happened, but how they tell their story! On this deeply insightful Living Lucky® Podcast episode, Jason and Jana Banana unlock the profound power of narrative perspective for ultimate personal development.

Inspired by legendary Les Brown, discover the crucial difference between speaking from an "oozing wound" and standing triumphantly on top of your story. Learn why sharing unhealed pain can create a "vulnerability hangover" and how to instead empower yourself (and your audience) with a story of resilience and triumph.

This episode is packed with self-help wisdom:

  • Shift Your Questions: Instead of "Why me?", adopt the trailblazer's mindset by asking "Why not me?" and "How is this happening for me?" – transforming obstacles into opportunities for growth.
  • Heal to Empower: Understand the therapeutic value of processing painful experiences in private safe spaces first, then sharing from a place of strength and lessons learned, not raw emotion.
  • Embrace Your 100% Success Rate: Remember, you've overcome every single challenge life has thrown at you. This episode helps you fully recognize and claim your perfect track record of survival and resilience.
  • The Diamond Metaphor: Just like diamonds gain value and polish through pressure, your hardest experiences contribute most to your character and purpose.

Ready to reframe your past struggles as gifts, cultivate a positive mindset, and become the empowered author of your own life? Tune in to Rewrite Your Story and discover how to Live Lucky® by letting your narrative define your ultimate victory!

How to reframe your personal story. Transforming struggles into strengths. The power of storytelling for healing. Overcoming victim mentality. Les Brown storytelling lessons. How to build emotional resilience. Changing your mindset about past trauma. Public speaking from a place of strength. Self-help for rewriting life narratives. Turning adversity into opportunity. What is the difference between victim and victor mindset? What does 'speaking from an oozing wound' mean? How to tell a story of resilience? Wha

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The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Jana Shelfer:

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer:

Good morning.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm Jana, I'm Jason and we are living, lucky you are too.

Jana Shelfer:

Jason was telling me this morning about one of his colleagues that is helping people write their stories. Yes, write, tell video, and it's really about teaching the next generation lessons in life program and your colleague Marius is actually helping older people tell their story in an empowering way.

Jason Shelfer:

Is that what I heard you say? Well, yeah, and I think that's one of the things is helping people see the empowerment in the lives they've lived. And a lot of times we'll get stuck in some of the harshness of the life or we'll tell a story.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, we get stuck in. This happened to me. Yes, exactly.

Jason Shelfer:

I just got goosebumps when you said that, because a lot of my clients, when we first talk, they'll tell me these are the things that have made me who I am. These things happened to me.

Jana Shelfer:

And deep, deep, deep within, there's like this small little whisper that's like why me, Yep, why me, god, why me universe? I'm not who I am or where I want to be, because these things happen to me. And I just recently heard that the trailblazers, the legends, the titans of the world, they asked the question why not me? Yeah, why not me?

Jason Shelfer:

And how is this happening for me? Like what's happening for me, yes, and then they utilize that as stepping stones. So in a lot of times, so we can look at our stories and we can find an alternate truth in the past, or we can take what has happened, quote unquote to us and get it out so that we can examine it.

Jana Shelfer:

So Jason and I worked with Les Brown and his daughter Iona Iona Brown.

Jana Shelfer:

Do you remember that? I do.

Jana Shelfer:

And he taught us some valuable lessons. I remember one particular class that we had with him. A woman got up and she started telling her story and it was raw, it was straight from the heart, it was beautiful. However, all of us in the audience felt so badly for her that people actually, when she was done speaking, people actually got up and went over and hugged her. When she was done speaking, people actually got up and went over and hugged her. Now she was talking about her husband had cheated on her and like she was trying to get this story out and write it as life is better now that he's gone, but she was still in so much pain and hurt. He's gone, but she was still in so much pain and hurt.

Jason Shelfer:

Les's advice to her was when we tell our stories.

Jana Shelfer:

We don't want to speak from the oozing wound.

Jason Shelfer:

We want to stand on top of our stories.

Jana Shelfer:

Would you agree with that and a?

Jason Shelfer:

lot of times it's hard to do that, Like it's sometimes. Sometimes we just need to get it out and that's where she was at.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, she just needed to get the pain and hurt out of her, and she needed someone to hear that.

Jason Shelfer:

And I think, as an audience, one of the things we can help our audiences with or maybe just as people, one of the things we can do is recognize when someone gets it out, we can allow them to be the person who has gotten it out and not push them into it. So not come in and say, oh, you're covered in the pus or the juice from that wound, yes, but say I recognize you as the person who is getting that out, so that you can stand on top of it and it's no longer standing on you.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes. I feel like this is a lesson that I have experienced, because sometimes when I go to tell my story, you know there's all these coaches that are like get deep, get vulnerable, tell them how you really feel.

Jason Shelfer:

And when I really started to open that Pandora's box, I realized that there were a lot of hurt, there was a lot of hurt and I think our natural tendency is as an audience or as as just humans is to feel what the speaker or the author is feeling.

Jana Shelfer:

Right worked against me is that I would get all this out, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I just totally gave my soul to this crowd and they're all just sitting there with their mouths open and I can feel the energy where people don't know how to react.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah. So then it becomes the author or the speaker's job to educate the audience on how to embrace the new you.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, and that's the step I missed.

Jason Shelfer:

Right, because then I left going.

Jana Shelfer:

I don't understand. I did what the coach has told me and I bared my soul out here, and now I feel naked and afraid and afraid.

Jason Shelfer:

Just like the movie. Yes, you often say energy is contagious, it is. So, basically, what you did was you've taken someone on this roller coaster ride and now we're in this emotion, this feeling, and everybody's feeling it, and people want to feel it because now they know they're not alone, right, but because you're talking to hundreds of people now you're feeling their energy and now you're recognizing I wasn't alone all that time and I thought I was alone. You know what I'm saying. So now you're accepting that energy because before you were pushing that energy away that is true so, before you were saying no, no one else feels like this, I'm alone.

Jason Shelfer:

And this is what we often do, is we say I'm alone in this, I'm the only one that feels like this. And this is why Me Too movements are so big, when someone says this has happened to me, and then the masses come in and say oh my gosh, this has happened to me also.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, so that is a step. However, I will say, from some of my experiences now of growing to be on top of the story. I will say there's vulnerability hangovers and I'm not sure it is really in the best interest of the audience to get pussed.

Jason Shelfer:

If you're going to pop the zit, do it in the privacy of your own bathroom. Is that what you're?

Jana Shelfer:

saying Well, I wish, looking back, if I could do it over again, because you know we all learn from our, our experiences. I wish someone would have said you know what, jana, let's write your speech out and let's maybe get a group of really close friends and let's tell your your story the way it is now to those friends.

Jason Shelfer:

See how it feels and then let's burn it. Oh yeah, so there's so much therapy in getting words out, like getting getting this feeling out and then just letting it go and burning, like that's the burning, the burning of what it was that happened, letting it go and creating a new.

Jana Shelfer:

And then now let's reframe everything and realize that all of those steps that we took are actually working in our favor, because they are making us a fantastic speaker and they make us do you know what I'm saying, just a fantastic person.

Jason Shelfer:

So this goes back to a podcast several days ago or several, maybe a week ago, that where we overcome the hardest things in our life, like we have a 100% success rate over all the shit storms in our lives.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes.

Jason Shelfer:

Right, so that they go back and listen to that one, because what we'll realize is that the person that went through it is not the person that is today.

Jana Shelfer:

It's almost like a diamond in the rough, and the more that it rolls and is beat up, it actually becomes shinier and it becomes polished like you say yes and gains value. Oh my gosh, and oh my gosh.

Jason Shelfer:

So what you're saying is all of those times I've been on stage and I've survived it, I've now added value to myself no-transcript, and if we accept that and adhere to it, it gives us a whole new level of confidence and determination towards our next step.

Jana Shelfer:

That is so good, jason. I mean, that is so good, and I feel like that applies to anyone and everyone that is listening to this, because we all have stories in our life. We all have things that have happened to us. They are gifts when we start thinking of them as gifts.

Jason Shelfer:

However, when you're going through it, when you're in the storm, all you can think about is the lightning and the rain.

Jana Shelfer:

It doesn't feel like a gift. You're like okay, you know what? I didn't want a gift of a heart attack, right, I didn't want the gift of going bankrupt. I didn't want the gift of a friend telling me to go F off Right.

Jason Shelfer:

There's so much, and when that storm is over, you still feel soaking, wet, heavy and like the next steps are so difficult. However, what you've realized is you've gained in perseverance and tenacity and grit, all these things and you've also probably gained in perseverance and tenacity and grit, all these things, and you've also probably gained in empathy, love. There's so much that we gain in those things, and that's where that question is is how did this work for me? How did I grow through this and recognizing I'm here? It didn't beat me. I'm still here, like I love that song. I'm still standing Like Elton.

Jana Shelfer:

John, you know, I did recognize that You're getting better.

Jason Shelfer:

But it's one of those things where it's like, hey, recognize your freaking power, recognize that you are a champion, not only recognize it, embrace it, lasso that power and hold on to it. And start telling your story from that. And if you need to get your story out, get it out. Get it out and then just start crafting it so that it is the most empowering version.

Jana Shelfer:

I will say I look back at my TEDx and I'm like, oh God, that's where I was at at that time.

Jason Shelfer:

But you got it out.

Jana Shelfer:

And that's where I need to lasso that power right there, because I got it out. It's not the TEDx that maybe I want and maybe that is a clue that I need to do another TEDx yeah, and this time stand a little higher.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, because now that story is not standing on you. You're standing on that story, and that's a beautiful place to be.

Jana Shelfer:

I don't know about anyone else, but I listen to our conversations. Sounds so narcissistic. I listen to our conversations and, jason, you help me so much. I just want to say thank you.

Jason Shelfer:

You help me too, because a lot of times I wouldn't think of these things if we don't put attention on them right. We just let things go past. Often in life we go through the motions of the day and we don't pinpoint the things we want to get curious about.

Jana Shelfer:

So the question I ask anyone that's listening today is how are you telling your story? From what point of view are you telling your story? From what state of mind are you telling your?

Jason Shelfer:

story and if you want to tell it from a point of Living Lucky®, reach out to me and let's do that. Thanks for joining us. Keep Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer:

Bye-bye. If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at www. LivingLucky. com.

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Jana Shelfer

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Jason Shelfer

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