Many of us have long known the power of positive thinking, self-talk, and affirmations. It’s easy to say we should be more positive and optimistic, but how do we do that?
It’s not like a light switch where you can just shift the chatter in your brain. And that’s where this month’s book comes in. Kindra Hall provides a brilliant path to silence your inner critic in her latest book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life: Silence Your Inner Critic and Rewrite Your Life from the Inside Out.
To be honest, I didn’t read this book because I feel like I have a huge “gap” in my life or that my self-talk needed to shift. I just love Kindra. She is a masterful storyteller and I could listen to her read the yellow pages – because I know she would create some amazing stories to tell! (She’s also the author of Stories That Stick and has a weekly video email that I never miss!).
But let’s get back to the book….this book is written in such joyful detail that I could actually picture the people and situations she shares to make each point come alive and believable. Why is this important? Because you can finish each part of the book with tangible takeaways to immediately apply to your life, work, and relationships.
So here’s the structure of the book:
Part 1: Why Stories are so Powerful. This sets the foundation as to where your self-stories come from, how they create your reality, and how rewriting your stories can transform your future.
Part 2: The Self-Storytelling Process and How to Reconstruct Your Inner Voice:
1. Identify your invisible stories with specific trigger words or physical and/or emotional moments.
2. Analyze those moments so you can begin to choose a different story.
3. Reauthor a new story that services you. You can choose to write one that replaces your current story, reinterprets it, reroutes it, adopts it from other people in your life, or just flat-out rewrite your new story from scratch.
4. Put your new self-story to work. These new stories are fragile and it takes practice to systematically, intentionally install these new, chosen, better stories as your inner-narrative default.
Finally, Hall shares specific stories of transformation in these categories: business and career, health and well-being, money and finances, relationships and love, and family and parenting – all told in Kindra-style storytelling.
A great read, and evidently quite timely, since I realized, through reading this book, that I have just entered a new chapter in my life where I get to rewrite my story!
Related Articles:
Book Review: Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
Change Your Thinking; Change Your Life
The Power of Thinking Strategically: Plan Your Life Live Your Plan
