Who are you without your story? Take away the job, the labels and the roles, and what is left?
You were born a blank canvas and other people handed you the colours. Parents, teachers, the lot. Everything you do today comes out of that. I put a photo of myself in an odd hat on Facebook and watched how quickly a label arrives. You have a thousand voices in there and some are braver, wiser or kinder than the one that usually speaks. Drop the story and you are not becoming somebody new. You are just allowed to pick different colours today.
One thing to try: Go somewhere ordinary today and look at it as somebody with no history of it. See what you notice.
In this episode
(1:52) Doctor, carer, dad, councillor. Which one is you
(3:09) The blank canvas and who hands you the colours
(4:11) The wake of the ship, as Alan Watts put it
(5:33) The hat, and how fast a label arrives
(8:51) A thousand voices, and you choose which speaks
(12:49) What if I bring a new role to this moment
(13:51) Become friends with the ego and play with it
(16:51) Dropping the story is not becoming a new person
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Who are you without your story?
Somebody asked me that a few years ago and it has come back round while I have been thinking about where my life is. Take away the job, the labels and the roles, and what is left?
The heart of it
You were born a blank canvas and other people handed you the colours. Parents, teachers, whoever was around.
Dropping the story does not mean becoming somebody new. It means you get to pick different colours today.
Ask who I am and I will say dad, granddad, city councillor, charity trustee, podcast host. Every one of those comes with a story of how I got it.
Where the colours come from is the bit worth noticing. Your parents hand you a few. Maybe a religion, depending on where you happened to be born. Maybe, we were never any good at maths in this family, so do not bother. You are not painting with every colour that exists. You are painting with the ones you were given.
Your story is mostly everybody else's story, because you could only write it inside what was handed to you.
I put a photo of myself in an odd sort of hat on Facebook and lots of people said it suited me, and I still felt like it was not me. Why would it not be me?
I learned my own way early. I have a sister who has always seemed at war with the world, and being the younger one I worked out a different route through: humour, listening, being flexible. Not better. Just a different set of colours. At school I was the one teachers apologised to while giving me a detention. Sorry Steven, but you have broken the rules like the rest of them.
That was not me. That was me learning to play the game, and then living up to the picture.
People used to say I was so laid back I might as well be lying down, and I lived up to that too. Had they told me I was trouble, I would have lived up to that instead.
Then there is the advice about living each day as if it were your last, which I think is terrible. If today were my last I would be in the doctor's demanding to know what was wrong. Try it as a brand new day instead. Same canvas, no history on it.
One small thing to try
Go somewhere ordinary today and look at it as somebody with no history of it. See what you notice.
Then pick three voices to bring to the day. You have a thousand in there, some braver, some kinder, some wiser than the one that usually speaks first. Choosing three is not pretending. It is remembering that the usual three were also a choice, made a long time ago by somebody else.
Questions people ask
Does dropping the story mean forgetting who I am?
No. You keep everything you know and everything that happened. What changes is how seriously you take the description.
Why does trying something new feel so wrong?
Because comfort lives in the known version, even when the known version is not making you happy. Better the devil you know, as people say when they are explaining why nothing changes.
Do I have to paint anything at all?
No. Leave the canvas blank for a day and let everybody else paint it, and see how that feels. That is a legitimate answer and sometimes the honest one.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
ego · acceptance · spiritual-journey
Read the transcript
So I was asked a really good question a few years ago, and it's
really come back at the moment as I'm thinking about my life and
all at the moment. And the question was, who are you without
your story? Who are you without your story? I thought that
was absolutely brilliant. So we're going to discuss that on today's
podcast. I'm Steven Webb. This is Stillness in the Storms, the podcast
that helps you to get through life's toughest challenges with a
little bit of inner peace. So just talking about that question,
because I like to dive straight into my podcast rather than
have lots of other things going on and just imagine waking
up and suddenly realizing you did not have no history, but the
whole world was an adventure that you could do anything in. And
I think that's what it felt like when someone said, who are you
without your story? But where does our story come from? So, okay,
when we're born, we are a blank canvas. You know, yes, we got
some of the leftover genes and all that from our parents and grandparents
and grandparents beyond that. And yes, they all have a bearing
on us to some degree, but not really. In our story, there is some
evidence that whether we're having a substantially good time
or a substantially bad time in the generations previous, if they
had a really rough decades, that that may be passed down to some
degree. But I'm talking about the surface level story of when someone
says, who are we? And we say, oh, well, I'm a doctor, or I'm a
carer, or I'm currently disabled, or what we think we are
at any given moment. For example, I'm a dad, I'm a granddad.
I'm also, I do some charity work, I'm a city councillor. And
all of those come with a story of why and how and how I become it.
But what would I be, what would I do today if I did not have
that story? So just going back to where the story comes from, and
the story is the ego, the who are we, who am I? And it comes from
our childhood influences, you know, from the friends we hang out
with to the friends of our parents, to our parents, grandparents,
our teachers, our peers, all of them have a bearing on how we
live a life, what we believe in, what we do. And I think we end
up accumulating so many different labels of our professional
student, professional parent. And those things all help shape our
lives and to some way that they highlight how these stories
become our constraints and limiting what is potential and things
like that. So the wonderful analogy that I Like is, you imagine
you are born a blank canvas and you've got that canvas on the
wall, and that canvas, that picture is going to tell your story.
The people that hand you the colors are your parents, what colors
you can use, for example, what religion you are. Maybe depending
on where you were born and what parents you were born to, they'll
land you a specific colour that you can paint. Or maybe they
have a certain belief. Maybe your parents say, well, I was no
good at maths. Your grandparents were no good at maths.
There's no point in trying to study math, so they'll hand you another
colour and they hand you all these colours that you can paint
your picture. So you're not painting the picture with every possible
thing that you could do, you're actually painting the picture
with what people are handing you. So although you think you've
got your story, your story is really mostly everybody else's story,
because you could only write it in the constraints of what was
handed to you. Everything you learned, everything you did and everything
you're doing today, just the same as me, I'm no different. Everything
is based on our past. You know that wake of the ship, as Alan Watts
would say, you know, that wake of the ship is our story, is how
we got there. You know, anybody studying the ocean wouldn't
have to see the ship to understand, just by looking at the
wake, to understand roughly what went before it. So you can look
at a person's life and what they're doing and their story and
all that to tell you what kind of person and how they would react
in certain situations. So you become that story. So with a blank
canvas, you end up painting a picture and then we end up living
up to that picture. If someone comes in and says, well, look, let's
try a different color again. No, no, that's not me. That's not
who I am. It's like, well, how do you know it's not you? How do
you know it doesn't fit? How do you know that colored top that
you don't normally wear would look terrible on you? Because you're
putting yourself in this category or labeling it in a certain
way because someone said to you, it won't look good or won't.
I tried a hat on the other day and it's quite an unusual type hat.
I don't know how to explain it, really. I have no idea what it's
called. It's got a peak and it's quite flat on top and all that.
And I put it on Facebook as a midlife crisis. And I put the picture
up and loads of people come back and say, that really suits you.
That looks really awesome. But I feel like it's not me. Why would
that be me? And getting changed into these clothes and then
going out and about and being part of that, it'd be like. Feels
uncomfortable because we become comfort comfortable in the
story of what we are so trying to drop that story. Yes, it opens
up to all these possibilities, but that's where it comes out of
our comfort zone. But I want to talk about it in more of a context
of reducing our suffering, because that's what stillness in
the storms is all about. You know, if you can find that stillness
when everything else is going wrong and we're trying to live up
to this current situation with the framework and the tools we have,
then it becomes hard work because maybe we don't have to change
the situation. Maybe we can relish in a different way. Maybe
if we did have different colors, we can paint a whole new
picture. So it's like resetting the whole trajectory. You
know, you can at any moment, you can change direction at any moment.
You could go, no, I've always used that color. But let's try a
different color. Let's wipe the canvas clean. What would you
create if you had a brand new blank canvas now? So you wake up
tomorrow not losing all your knowledge? You have all your knowledge
to function in the world, but you just don't know the structure
and the framework of your story. So you don't know what you
like and you dislike. You don't know what foods you like, you
don't know what careers and things like that. You don't even
know what experiences normally you like. So you suddenly have this
opportunity to try things. Do you think you would find out about
new things? Do you think you would find out about new foods and
new colors? Do you think you would end up with a different canvas?
But then you end up with another story, another. A masterpiece,
I guess, another ego. But here's the thing with mindfulness
and the thing with reducing suffering is at any given moment,
you can paint the canvas in whatever colors you choose. So in
this moment, I might choose. I'm going to paint this canvas with
compassion and I'm going to paint it in lovely greens and blues
and calm colors. Another day I go, wait a minute. What if I want
to paint the canvas a different color? And while I'm using
the analogy of painting the canvas, it's just a way of showing
up. Pick your three colors. Pick Your three moods, Pick your
three voices. And we all have these massive amounts of voices inside
of us. I talk about this on the podcast quite a bit. You can
choose which fingerprint of voices. Let's say you got a thousand
voices. Some of them are more abrupt, some of them are more compassionate,
some of them are more wiser, some of them are a little more brave.
And they all have a certain length between naught and a hundred.
And every single day, they're going to be a slightly different
number. They're going to be roughly the same. What if you could
just. Do you know what? I want to bring a completely different set
of voices to my experience today. And by doing this, you just
mindfully start choosing to experience a love life a little bit
more instead of trying to mold the situations into your story and
your framework of who you are. You know, you're not your thoughts.
You have thoughts. You're not your thoughts. You have a story,
but you're not your story. You have this ego, but you're not the
ego. The ego is just something that's been constructed to help you
to survive in the world. And what an incredible job it's done.
You're here now. You listen to this podcast. You've been through
all kinds of stuff in your life, and you're here. And because
you're here, you probably want to reduce your suffering a little
bit, improve your life in some way, or just take your story a little,
a little less seriously. Very much. People would say to me, so
what's Stephen like? Well, he's very laid back. And I remember
they used to say, he's so laid back, he may as well be lying down.
And really that was just an ego, a story that I created that
because many people told me that I lived up to that. If people
tell me when I was a child that I was some kind of evil and
I was naughty and I was always. I would have lived up to
that as well. Not saying I wasn't naughty, of course I was.
I was one of those children that was pleasure to have in the
class, just wish you would do some work. And the teachers used
to be really annoyed with me whenever I'd done something really
wrong. And they had to. So sorry, Stephen, to have to give you
lines and all that, but you've broke the rules like the rest of
them. You really need to do it. And they were always apologetic
when they were punishing me. I guess I took it nicely. I guess that's
a good thing. It's like, I'm so sorry, Stephen. But you're going
to have to do lines at lunchtime where you're going to have
to have a detention at lunchtime. And the rest of them,
like, you can stay in here. That's it. I'm so sorry, Stephen.
You got to as well. Just makes me laugh now when I look back. And
all I did was I learned to play the game. I have a sister that
seems to be very much at war with the world. And being a younger
brother, I just learned to. Well, they're at war with the world.
How do I do it? And I've done it through humor, I've done it through
listening, I've done it through compassion, I've done it
through being a little more flexible. Not because I'm some kind
of better or worse than her, it's just because I learned a different
way. She's learned her way, her story, her ego. I've learned
my way, my story, my ego. It's our canvas. That's what we're showing
the world. But we don't have to live up to every single moment
in that framework. You know, look, I've got my framework for stability,
but I want to step out of it. I know I can step back into my story.
And I know at times I have to be the grandparent, I have to be
the parent, I have to be the podcast host and all that. I get
that I have to take on these roles, but what if there's moments
where, hey, what if I bring a new role to this moment? What if
I. When I'm going out for a walk and I'm looking around, I look
at it through a different eyes. What if I take the role of
bird? You know, what can the bird see looking down from a tree?
And I think these, when we look at life a little more in that
way, when we question what would we do today if we did not have
a story? There's another way of looking at this, and that is when
people say, you should take each day as if it's your last day.
And I'm like, no, that's terrible advice. If this was my last
day on earth, I'd be like, freaking out. I'd be like running
the doctor and going, what's wrong with me? Why am I going to
die today? But if you've seen today as if it's a brand new day,
wow, I've got a canvas. Wow, what a brand new color. Wow. I can
paint what I want. I can tell my story. So then we become friends
with the ego and we can play with the ego. We can play with the
story, we can invoke the story for a healthy way, and we can drop
the story when we need to. And it's beneficial. We don't have to
stay so rigid with it. And that's what it means more about dropping
your story. It doesn't mean forgetting who you are. It doesn't
mean not knowing your family or not knowing any of your past history.
It means take it less seriously. It means that just because
you've got the wake and you are the ship, it doesn't mean to
say you can't change direction and then change it back and then
a bit more and then. And the more we do this, the more we just
play with the ego. We play with the self, we play with who we
are. And children do this all the time because they haven't, they
haven't had that direction of. The older they get, the more they
fit into the category, the more rigid they become, the more
structure and ego and story they have. And when you, when you
speak to someone a bit older, oh, I've been doing it 30 years.
You're not going to change me. Why not? You're only. The only reason
you're saying that is because it's uncomfortable to change or that
you're just comfortable and you're happy with your life or whatever.
And you may not even be happy, but it's more comfort knowing the
devil you know than risking finding out about new devils, I guess.
Not sure if I got that phrase right, but you know exactly what
I mean. It's easier to be the victim. It's easier to be, oh, that's
who I am. Nothing I can do about it now because doing something
about it feels like hard work, but it isn't. You don't have to actually
do anything, you know, have a blank canvas, you don't have to paint
the canvas, leave it blank. You know, today I'm going to let
everyone else paint my story. I'm going to sit back and watch.
And tomorrow I may paint it myself. And the day after that, I
have no idea. And then you can slow it down to each given single
moment. In this moment, I'm going to show up as compassion, because
that's what the world needs. In this moment, I'm going to show
up as something different because that's what the world needs.
In this moment, I'm going to be grandparent, doubting over my
granddaughter, 11 months old, because that's what the world needs.
And then also it's what I need. What canvas do I need. What
colors do I need to reduce my suffering? To enjoy life in this
moment? So to recap, to drop your story doesn't necessarily mean
you have to become a brand new person and write a new story. It
means that you have the possibility to write the story in
any given moment. Your story was wrote by the people that handed
you the words you can use, the pens you can use. They wrote the
chapter for you, but you're just trying to put it in your words.
What I'm saying is you have a blank page or a blank chapter, you
know, put it in your words, take your words, use what you want,
Pick the colors of your choice in this given moment. It doesn't
mean they're a permanent fixture. Doesn't mean if you pick
those three colors today, that's it for the rest of your life.
But this is what most people think with stories and ego. Well,
that's me. That's who I am. Says who? You. Because you're attached
to your story. So that's my podcast today. I'm Steven Webb and
this is Stillness in the Storms. And thank you for supporting
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