Category: LYBS

Hold on to What You Know – TinaO

September 28, 2020

Drivers

Listen to TinaO read this poem here.

Four wheels don’t make a driver

Some of us are gap fillers

Never considering how long it takes to stop before we start

or leaving a space between the cars

or a breath before the accident

–

Drivers read the room

they notice the way the rain hits

the window

It’s the rhythm of our repetition 

and our listening through the weather

that keeps us rooted,

We drive through the exhale we can no longer hear

–

Drivers always take in

what doesn’t move around them

they drive conversation so they don’t sputter and fall  

they grab up all the discomfort 

like doughy circles of bread

squishing them into cubes

between our fingers 

and palms

smaller and smaller

until just dense enough to stomach them

in one 

efficient swallow

–

We drive the impossible 

into the wreckage of exhausted potential 

–

We’re weird like that

Drivers

–

We think anything can be done,

rescued,

revitalized, 

made into something it’s not 

and never has been

–

We tell ourselves 

capacity 

is a moveable thing

and not a boundary 

or a sign of where something ends

where we’re so full we simply cannot take any more in

Drivers look at these lines as cartoons, 

something we can erase and redraw

or pick up and put down wherever we need them to be

–

But drivers don’t read maps this way

on paper

on the road

or in actual life

where breathing back and forth 

can happen,

No,

valleys, cliffs and deserts are not

merely suggestions 

there

We are drivers

and we will drive til it’s done

–

I am a driver

I have driven the things I want into what I want them to be

Til I see a moment like it’s not 

Til it’s better

Because I made it that way

–

I get shit done,

I make up new rules for the road

and I can see in the dark

–

So why?

Why would I stop driving now?

–

Listen to this poem ready by TinaO here.

Story Hit #3 – Hold on to What You Know

(or How Live Your Best Story Came to Be)

From Where We’ve Been: TinaO’s Story Hit’s Compilation

From October 2016 – almost three months post cancer treatment

These vlogs track where we’ve been together over the last seven years. I share them with you to close one story and open another.

This year on December 25th, which is both Christmas Day and my 50th Birthday, I am stepping into a new story…and I know what I know what I know about how stories work:

Stories won’t let go until they’ve been fully heard.

This is release #3 of sixteen weeks of Story Hits (vlog) from as far back as 2013. Some are my favourites, some are yours. If you missed week #1 and #2 and want  to start from the beginning, you can start here with: Out of the Water. 

I will be writing more about these moments in both my upcoming book: STORY STONES (coming fall 2021, and in my one woman show: O MY GOD (touring spring 2021).

On my 50th Birthday, if you’re on my VIP list, I’ll be sending you 50 Days of Christmas Story Gifts from Dec. 25th to February 12th. If you want some story goodness filled with sneak peeks into the creation and rehearsal process, plus be able to pre-order the book, and order tickets to the show, click here and the let the gifting begin! (You’ll get a bunch of cool story right away).

Thank you for listening.

xT

Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.

If you’d like to know more about TinaO’s approach to STORY and receive updates about STORY STONES the book, and O MY GOD, her one woman show, click here and you’ll be added to her ‘stay in touch’ list plus she’ll send you a few short intro videos about what story means to her. CLICK HERE for TinaO Story stuff.

This is Fifty with TinaO

May 27, 2018

This is 50. But I’m not quite there. I’m 47 and like every milestone, their whisperings begin around the 7 mark: 17 begins 20, 27 begins 30, 37 to 40 and now this, fifty. A half century.

I’m already blessed because I have made it this far.  In 1962 the average life expectancy was 65 which means a whole lot of people in my circle (even me) could’ve been dead by now fifty five years ago. In 2018, our average life expectancy for women in Canada is 83. I wonder what it will be in twenty years. I’m guessing closer to 95. If that’s the case, right now, (if all goes well) I’m probably at the half way point. In these moments I wonder… good gawd, what on earth am I going to live through next?

I suspect everyone has an approaching 50 list. Here’s mine:

At almost fifty I am:

  • Shocked to be soon divorced.
  • Overwhelmed by how many more years I am willingly and yes lovingly carrying my children as a single parent (another decade).
  • Aware, grateful and still a bit raw about a journey through cancer.
  • Kind of ashamed by the financial collapse of my life, now twice, both post a marital breakdown.
  • I forgot that part, I’m soon to be divorced twice. Ugh. Twice. I’m a statistic too.
  • Almost 50 and I’m pretty awed by my psychological and physical constitution. I have endured many stories and I still smile, just not all the time.
  • Appreciative of this body of mine which carried me through my first triathlon months post cancer (seriously, what was I thinking?). I’m astounded by what this body can do, and how I can recover.
  • I am kind of disssociated from the achievement because I don’t really understand how it all happened and where the motivation came from. Have you ever felt like that?
  • Heartbroken by the randomness of loss I know to be part of this thing called life.
  • Lost in my own romanticism of possibility.
  • Drowning while still breathing my almost-50 yearnings.
  • Blown and breathless by the mystery that is Love, Art and God.
  • Clear that I never need to be ‘saved’ by any one person again.
  • Solid to be my own hero yet deeply aware and moved by the knowing none of us are here to do this or be alone.
  • I am almost fifty.
  • I am my own hero, my own sunflower, my own carpet of magic, and my own story stone in the ocean.

And still,

Life kicks my ass sometimes, cracks my heart open so wide I swear my heartbeat meshes with the pulse of the sun, and life and all it’s messiness can bring me to my knees in utter helpless, and hopeless beauty.

This is 50.

If you’re familiar with my writing you’ll know ‘this’ is what I do. Something wild this way comes and ‘this’ is what it looks like when my story tells me. After coffee and scrolling through travel adventures online, followed by deliciously facebook messaging a dear friend across the globe with my findings, I began to scribble some thoughts on a big hunk of paper.

This is 50. I wrote.

And then ‘that’ impulse came. Gahhhhh the familiar nudge, push and shove forward I know so well. That feeling launched my first vlog series which tracked my journey post cancer through to the Vancouver 5i50 triathlon in 2016. I turned my computer on.

Welcome to my next series on TinaOLife.

This is 50.

I’m three years out from five-oh and closing an old story. In the work I do as a story coach, I call this swimming between ripples.

The visual I use is this: it’s as if we come in to this world as a story stone and are dropped into the water and who we are, or our story ripples out. Every circle is the next, expanded version of the first one. Every ring another layer of who we are.

Swimming between ripples is letting go of one to follow the ease of the next. I’m going to share this next journey with you. I’ll be posting regularly here.  This is 50 with TinaO.

As always…

Thanks for listening.

In storyland, listening is loving.

xxT.

TinaO is a Writer, Story Coach, and Host of the TinaOShow, collecting and telling Stories from the Core. She’s the co-owner of The LEAP Learning Lab with Gina Best, and the other half of The Writer’s Compass with Meribeth Deen. She says: Stories are like toddlers, they will follow you around, tugging, hanging off of you until you listen to them.  TinaO is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening using writing, storytelling, nature, nourishment, art and connection as a way to listen to the personal story within. The retreat is held in various locations around the world, and is always offered 3x/year in British Columbia where she lives. All are welcome.
As always… let me know your thoughts. They’re always welcome.

Pay What You Can and Pay it Forward to Live Your Best Story – VIDEO

July 21, 2017

 

I didn’t get to where I am in life by doing all of the heavy lifting myself. The truth is, almost every significant experience, and I do mean life changing, has come to me through a leg up. I have rarely, if ever had a breakthrough in my professional or personal life getting there on my own. For real.

Sometimes my social conditioning gets the better of me and I can feel embarrassed about it. I too hear things in my head like:

  • If it’s meant to be it’s up to me.

  • Raise the bar.

  • or this ugly one, raise the bar – trim the fat.

  • The cream will rise to the top

  • Your only limit is you

  • I can and I will

  • It never gets easier, you just get better

But my experience has always been this:

  • If it’s meant to be, ask for help

  • Raise your bar by receiving the gifts coming your way

  • Raise the bar of humanity by allowing everybody in

  • Your only limitation is your unwillingness to lift and be lifted

  • I can because we will

  • Community makes things easier

 

Live Your Best Story

I grew up in rental housing. My dad fell apart after our mom died and when he was laid off in his 50s he never recovered emotionally or financially, leaving the many of us (blended family of 11 – some at home, some not) to get by on my step-mom’s slightly above minimum wage bakery lady pay. The only reason I did, or had anything was because one, I worked for it and two, people helped me and three, I understood what it felt like to be grateful.

I somehow missed the pride gene around this stuff because I didn’t seem to care when someone bought me lunch, I said thank you instead. I wasn’t ashamed to wear my sister’s hand-me-downs. Are you kidding? I was thrilled to wear her grown up stuff!  I learned how to get by on busfare in my pocket, and if I didn’t have that, how to walk and read at the same time (and walk I did!). My practice was: yes please, thank you and what can I do to help?

And I didn’t feel like a charity case either.

Weird right?

Well, not to me.

The first act of kindness I remember learning from was just after my mom passed.  I’m pretty sure it had happened only weeks before and my grade three class was going to Stanley Park. The field trip was really kinda no big deal but the student teacher, Ms. Soleil was. She was the first one to show me what lifting others looks like. After a long day at the beach and hanging with the geese, we were on our way back on the public bus when one of my classmates, Sukvinder was targeted. He was only eight years old, and two young men flipped his melting icecream cup over on his head because of his ethnicity. Our South Vancouver neighbourhood was changing and the once uuber white community was rapidly welcoming an influx of East Indian and Asian families. You know what I remember about my childhood? I didn’t see skin colour. I didn’t notice hair texture. I didn’t register differences. I had friends. That’s it that’s all. So when Sukvinder was picked on by a bunch of teenagers, I couldn’t make sense of it. I was shocked and totally spellbound by Ms. Soleil’s response. She stood up like a super-hero with a furrowed brow and laser eyes, and with fierce, active indignation, she marched those racist boys off the bus so fast they didn’t know what was happening. She was awesome, and her protection of Sukvinder’s self-esteem left a lasting impression on me.

Her action said to me We are all worthy.

She’s also the teacher who sent me home with a photo from that day with a note on the back saying “what a pleasure you are to teach and I’m so sorry about the passing of your mom”.  She was the only teacher who said anything. I remembered that. She wasn’t afraid to acknowledge, or to lift.

Live Your Best Story

Because of this and so many more countless situations where I was the kid, or the grown up who couldn’t figure out how to make it work – and yet was still offered an opportunity to rise up, I’ve never really had an attachment to the belief of CAN or CAN’T.  I won’t say I’m an eternal optimist, because trust me, I’m not. I’m wicked skeptical. I don’t believe in rules though I do recognize them. I don’t follow deadlines, though I’m aware of them. When someone says you’re not allowed, I think, really? We’ll see.

It’s not that I’m cocky (though I can be),

or that I’m irresponsible (though trust me, I can be that too).

It’s not that I’m contrary (though it can look like that),

or that I refuse to follow the rules (I just don’t sometimes).

It’s not that I think I’m above it or that I live in some kind of Steve Jobs reality distortion field (I wish!).

It’s just that my experience has always been LIFE MOVES when WE DO.

Sometimes, there’s a way.

Sometimes, there’s a hand.

Sometimes, you can even when it looks like you can’t.

That’s been my experience.

For this reason, Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat reconnecting you back to your own voice of timeless wisdom has always been made accessible to anyone who wants to come. The weekend, created and facilitated by Nicolle Nattrass, Carolyn Nesbitt and I, and held at Xenia Retreat Centre on Bowen Island is now starting it’s fifth year.  As such, we’re ready to make our accessible pricing official.

New Pricing for Live Your Best Story

#1 PAY WHAT YOU CAN (with a $100 non refundable deposit)

or #2 PAY IT FORWARD ($695)

and yes… you can pay what you can now and pay it forward later. 

 

Here is how it works: for as little as a $100 non-refundable deposit or as much as $695, (and anything in between) you can book one of our 36 spots/year (we hold the retreat 3x with 12 participants in each weekend Oct/Feb/May).

I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and here’s what I know about me, neither financial position was a reflection of whether I deserved something or not. Afford it? Maybe, maybe not, but deserve? No.

And I’m going to rattle a few cages here. The whole conversation about ‘if you want it you’ll find the money to make it happen’ – is part of an old paradigm which no longer serves us. While it’s original intention was to EMPOWER people to raise their head, square their shoulders and keep bravely stepping forward, it’s now become a way to price based on perceived worth or even worse, fear of not being worthy. The price points for work meant to help people is beginning to divide us. There are those who can afford personal development, and those who cannot. Or worse, there are those who are empowered enough to attract money into their lives, and those who are not. Yikes… stretch the concept a bit farther and we can get into the whole winner/loser perspective. I’m speaking with broad strokes here of course, but I think you follow me. Here’s a prime example (and I usually like Brian Tracy): 

Live Your Best Story

 

Who wants to be a part of that kind of divisive and disempowering conversation?  The way I see it, we’re the ones throwing ice cream now – only our target is the loser who is choosing not to ‘start’.

Here’s what I see… some people sell stuff at a price more than my mortgage or monthly grocery bill for a family of five. It’s not that their product isn’t WORTH the price – it’s not about worthiness at all. It’s about accessibility, and as someone who values deeply those who have lifted me, I’d like to fan the flames on that kind of practice.

BTW – Accessibility is not about charity, it’s offering a hand.

and it’s not about rescuing either, it’s about creating a space.

Because time and time again I’ve been on the receiving end of such grace and as such, I get it. Now it’s my turn.

On Friday night at Live Your Best Story we always open with “and my wish for you this weekend is…”, and so today, my wish for all of us is to offer more accessibility in our pricing out there. What if we started asking:  How can I help more? How can I serve more? How can I offer what I do in a way that honours as many people as possible AND myself.  

Now that’s abundance:  many, more, all – not just some. There’s no scarcity thinking here.

Imagine if our pricing wasn’t a reflection of ”worth”, but rather of our humanity.

That sounds pretty worthy to me.

You?

Live Your Best Story

Want to check out REGISTRATION DETAILS for Live Your Best Story? We only host the retreat three times per year with a maximum of 12 spots per retreat or 36 spots/year.

You can place your $100 deposit now and choose your dates later!  Click here for more about the weekend, and click here to register. 

 

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist and a Program Director of PUBLISH with Meribeth Deen for The LEAP Learning Lab. She’s a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub to Live, Give and Be Your Story, plus the deep listening weekend retreat Live Your Best Story. She’s been in the PR and Marketing world since she could put words together and has been a professional network marketer for over twelve years. She teaches: selling isn’t slimey, marketing isn’t make-believe and writing won’t give you an aneurysm (it’s not hard). You can be yourself in all that you do. In fact, that’s what the world is waiting for. 

We Learn from our Story – BLOG

February 21, 2017

Our story is a personal invitation to learn. It’s not our curse nor our blessing. It’s not our label or paradigm or racket or reason to blame or run or justify. It’s not our grandeur or accomplishment or title or goals. Story just is, and it never ends, while we have breath in our body, blood in our veins and synapses firing between our ears, it is our story that invites us to keep on learning. Why? Because an experience of living doesn’t happen in what we know, it’s in the minute after minute of discovery, and it’s vital to our happiness.

Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, comparison did. You know what happens when we stop learning? We start believing that we know stuff and God help us when that happens because that’s how comparison creeps in. You’ll notice when you start using position statements like: I’m right, they’re wrong. She’s good enough, I’m not. They can do it, I can’t. Why me? Why her? We begin to use words like always and never, as in…I always have to… or I never get to… as if there’s another option out there that we’re not allowed to have.

Comparison killed the cat.

The remedy? Operate in the learning and living zone. Let your story unfold. Be curious. Can we have knowledge?  Yes of course it’s just that we mustn’t stop there. We must develop skills and gain wisdom, be guided by our experiences, but the very second we stop learning it’s as if we’re saying I’ve had enough of my story thanks. That’s enough learning for me.

Really?

How about this: what makes an unbelievable book? Some fictional character or person’s real life experience takes us on a roller-coaster ride of happenings that move, inspire or transform us. Most importantly, it’s a journey that we can see ourselves in. Memorable books reflect our human experience and that’s why a killer book compels us to turn the page. We are addicted to learning. We have an insatiable desire to answer the question: What next?  Think about your morning routine. When your feet hit the floor and you raise your first cuppa, doesn’t the little voice in your head ask you that very question?  Isn’t that why you move forward? What’s next? 

That is the juju of our story. That’s what learning is.

We say: Teach me. What else is there? I want to know. I’m ready. More please. I want to be better at this. I want to try something new. I want to expand, to stretch, to lift, to enjoy, to be thrilled, to be moved. I am a life-long learner.

Life IS learning.

In today’s seemingly chaotic world governed by technology, at-capacity-thresholds and relentless change, those of us who embrace life by continuing to sit in the learning seat, (dare I say it?) will be HAPPIER than those who don’t (there I said it) because it takes more energy to hang on than it does to let go and learn.

It takes more energy to hang on than it does to let go and learn.

If you’re in business, and you don’t get story, you’re in trouble because today’s marketing is steeped in it. If you’re still selling pain instead of freedom your days are numbered because today’s consumers are done with adrenaline based marketing. Fear hurts more now because it’s difficult to get away from. If you have a website (and come on now, you must if you’re in business) and you don’t have a book: you are totally missing it. Today we are story based. That is how we learn. That is what we respect and that is what we are yearning for.

Enough with telling me what you know.

Teach me what I want to know instead.

I’m a program director with The Leap Learning Lab and along with Meribeth Deen, the two of us lead a program called PUBLISH supporting the stories of Canadian women from concept to publish ready. And while I can tell you about the tangible benefits of writing your book with us, it’s not the ‘how to’ stuff like this that you’ll take with you once you’re done.

HOW TO: 

  • craft a title that connects to your core.
  • conduct a research based interview.
  • link one chapter to the next so your reader is compelled to turn the page.
  • bring the vibrancy of your inner story up and out to live on the page.
  • magnify your voice to cut through the noise of other books in your genre.
  • etc… etc… etc…

Those are just some of the writing take-aways of PUBLISH, but what about the intangibles? Because this is where life as a committed learner enters the picture. This is where we follow, and yes possibly even run along our path to happiness.

TAKE AWAYS:

  • Honouring the roots of where you’ve been so that your wisdom is a gift.
  • Connecting to the core of your why to make sense of why any of it matters.
  • Trusting the story that wants to tell you instead of feeling the pressure of having to drive it all the time.
  • Allowing a relationship with your creative side to lighten your load a bit more.
  • Developing a greater sense of confidence in who you are, where you come from and your place in the world.
  • Finding deeper meaning in all of it.

How do you put that into a curriculum? You can’t because it’s a bi-product of showing up and doing the work whatever that may be. In PUBLISH it’s about getting your book written. In Live Your Best Story (a retreat I lead), it’s about listening so as to lead your life. Whatever it is, take it on as the life-long learner that you are designed to be.

Happiness is connected to our sense of belonging, to understanding what brings us peace, and to doing life within the design of who we truly are. None of us get there by standing on a mountain of what we know.  All of us will get there when we’re committed to living by learning.

Our story is an invitation to learn and as we do, we invite more happiness in to our life.

xxT

 

If you are a Canadian woman entrepreneur, leader, innovator, millennial or your business offers services to women in Canada we invite you to find out more about LEAP Learning Lab.

We are a team of 10 fabulous Canadian women creating opportunities for other Canadian women to accelerate their success and their results across multiple disciplines. We also offer corporate learning solutions for businesses committed to the development of their women leaders.

We are looking for fabulous Canadian women to learn, live and lead with us. Collectively, through learning, we will make each other better humans.

Want you FREE COPY of TinaO’s Core Story Playbook?  Click here. 

_______________________________________________

Here’s where you can find out more about Tina’s upcoming retreat: Live Your Best Story. Here’s where you can find out more about PUBLISH and become a VIP in the Leap Learning Lab.

 

That Money Thang #5 – VIDEO

November 1, 2016

that-money-thang-5-avoidance-tinaolife

Money, it’s been my silent partner for years.

Avoidance, there’s another one who has been taking up space as a stow-away and not so quiet friend of mine.

Worth, yuck, yup, that one is here too, she lives in my shoe laces because then I can hear two voices. On one foot I hear awesomeness, I know it, I own it, I rock it, and I celebrate it. When that lace speaks I’m totally there holding hands and stepping forward, but then there’s the other shoe…

You see, it depends on the subject I’m lacing up.

Have you ever put skates on a kid?  I’m a hockey mom and while my husband has been running the sports department in our house for the last decade, we’re now out-numbered with our third getting on the ice this year so I’m the one in his locker room doing my darndest to keep his ankles from rolling in. Let’s just say that I’m doing a better job with his alternate foot than I am with mine.

I totally wobble with my self-worth in certain areas, specifically my resource of which we all have three: Our time, our money and our energy. I’ve been on a self-avoidance spending tare for years.

That Money Thang is my latest journey through this thing called life because as I’m sure you’ve heard me say before (and I didn’t come up with it), we’re here for two reasons: to LOVE and to LEARN and isn’t it fortunate that the very things we need to learn also deliver us the self-love required to make a radical shift in the icky sticky stuckness of our life.

This week’s That Money Thang sees me celebrating because after eight years of procrastinating over two overstuffed bags of contacts and long over due follow-up to and from business dealings I’ve had, I poured seven hours into cleaning them up. It’s kinda shocking that eight years of hiding and tolerating which btw is a total of 70,080 hours can be tidied up in only seven.  I realize that I may have been sleeping for 50% of those hours but let’s be honest about that too – that kind of procrastination does not generate deep slumber. My body did get cancer remember? Hmmm… right, an immune system shut down with invitation for disease to move in, how did lack of sleep not contribute to that?

Never again.

Procrastination = Worry = Sleepless nights = Recycled self-loathing = Empty self-worth = Panic = Procrastination = Worry = Sleepless nights = …disease.

Never again.

Here’s my jubilant walk with my pup as I celebrate rockin’ my own value, and yes that pun was totally intended.

 

Are you getting my drift here? This thing called self-worth and procrastination and stuffing it and and and… it’s all connected.

Do you want to feel more value in your life?

Maybe you want to join me and eleven others with a similar experience for Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat nestled in an ecological sanctuary just twenty minutes away from Horseshoe Bay, West Vancouver.

Three times per year I host LYBS a weekend retreat on Bowen Island for those who want to do just that:  LIVE their BEST Story. We spend 36 hours together listening to the story within you that wants to be known, loved and honoured.

Nothing can move from a rocky shore until a King (or Queen) Tide comes in, and that tide is you and your self-love.

lybs-nov-2016-dates

If this sounds intriguing or delicious to you, why not send me a message below or at tina@liveyourbeststory.com and we’ll set up a free inquiry call to find out more.

I believe in you.

I know you have love inside of you.

xxT

TinaO Your Living StoryTinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and  she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Shaman Time – BLOG

October 31, 2016

shaman-time

 

I was with a client last week and he said to me: We’re in Shaman time. I said What? He says that’s when we bend time, when it could be 3pm or 3am, when the construct of a ticking clock drops away and so does our relationship to it.

Oh, I said.

That’s what listening feels like to me. That’s how I know when I’m in it instead of doing it.

I’m a core story specialist, at least that’s what I put on my business card so people can ‘get’ it, but really, if I lived in a small village where we were named by what we do as the integration of who we are, people would call me: Story Tracker. That makes me chuckle. We’re just so weird aren’t we? I’ll own that. I’m weird. Damn weird. Perfect weird. I can see me as a character in a film: I’m a little bit witchy, probably old and wrinkled and the director has probably given me only one eye to accentuate my story scars. I’d have a long crooked stick that I poke at you as your story unfolds in front of us… Relax, I have two eyes and I don’t carry a stick, though I might be a bit witchy… One could make a case.

Life would be a lot easier if we didn’t feel the need to separate who we are from what we do because they really are one in the same. Well, that is, when we’re doing what we innately are, thus all the book stores bursting at the seams with volumes about how to achieve being, as if being has a goal post attached to it. 

It’s not about doing nothing in order to be, it’s about being so that our doing feels like nothing, or as my client calls it: Shaman Time. 

At some point in a Story Day with me we usually end up out at the wildest part of the island where I live because there the wind howls, the waves crash and the trees bend and grow sideways.  I take people there because it’s the closest I can come to being in Tofino without actually having to make the trek to get there myself. My brood of a family have camped on the wild wet west coast every summer for the last fifteen years, and it’s where I go to feel small, witnessed. My favourite time of the day is just as the sun is setting when there’s a loud heaviness of silence sitting above those of us standing on the beach. I can feel my own story being tracked, but this time not by me.

When I’m walking with my clients, I ask them about the word Mystery.  What makes a good one? I ask.

They say: It’s thrilling, it’s kinda scary, it’s unknown, it’s a story; until I ask: What makes it NOT a horror? Not a cliff hanger? And how come we feel compelled to watch or read them all the way to the end?

Because we want to know what happens, they say. Like duhhhhh… they implore, respectfully looking at me as if I missed something.

Why? I ask.

Because we know that it will end, it will resolve and when it does, it makes sense.

Right, I add. Right.

Then I make a joke about being a kid and watching Scooby Doo and how my favourite part was always when the unmasked villain says: “and I would’ve gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids.”

Don’t we all feel like that sometimes?

The quote that has run my adult life comes from Mark Helprin’s novel, Soldier of the Great War about Alessandro Giuliani, an aged World War 1 Vet who goes on a pilgrimage and befriends a young boy on the way. As the two of them walk for days together, he recounts his life asking again and again in multiples of ways: Why did they die and I live? Why did my life matter? In the randomness of pain and beauty, where is the purpose of my choices? of my life? and the quote from his book that I have had pinned to my wall for years which has become the message that is now my life’s work is:

“Let no mystery confound you into the conclusion, that mystery cannot be yours”.

Mystery.

Witness.

Story.

Time.

See, time turns into mist and then disappears when I’m listening to people because that’s how mystery, like home, shows up for me, and in that space of witnessing it’s as if God reaches in through our story and says Yes.

And we both can hear it.

 

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November 25th – 27th on Bowen Island, BC Canada (20 minutes outside of Vancouver) at Xenia Retreat Centre, TinaO is hosting Live Your Best Story, a weekend about Listening to your story so as to Lead your life.

If you’d like to talk to TinaO to find out if this weekend retreat is a good fit for you, send her a message below or at tina@liveyourbeststory.com to book a complimentary core story phone session.  Living Your Best Story is a weekend designed just for you. It’s gentle. It’s honouring. It’s introspective and it feels like coming home.

 

TinaO Living Story

xxT

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and  she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Living My Best Story

April 19, 2016

Living My Best Story

What do you do?  People ask me this all the time and the truth is, I don’t have a freakin’ clue how to give people the answer they actually, truly want, but aren’t asking for.

Well, that’s not true, I can do it, but it would likely piss you off.

People want me to answer What do you do? with something like this: 

  • I’m a writer.
  • I’m a salesperson.
  • I’m a seminar leader.
  • I’m a speaker.
  • I’m a professional network marketer.
  • I’m a consultant.
  • I’m a social media maven.
  • I’m a mom, a wife, a baker, a tri-athlete (in training), a cancer survivor, a friend, a mentor…

People (maybe even you) don’t really want to know what I do, you want to know who and what I am right?  But that’s far too complex of a question to ask, and it’s certainly too much to answer over a quick chat in a bank line-up isn’t it? (Wait a minute, does anyone even go to the bank anymore?).

If I told you what I do by prattling off a long list of my activities you’d be like: “lady, I’m just making small talk, I don’t need your whole story”.

TinaO LYBS

And that’s the issue for me. I am a story. You are a story. Every second of our day is another word, phrase, and paragraph of our living story.

So, when you ask me what I do, if I’m feeling empowered enough to hold your quizzical, yet kinda blank stare as you try to piece together the words that are falling out of my mouth into something that makes sense to you, this is what I would say:

You:  So… What do you do?

Me: Thank you for asking, well… I Live My Best Story, and I inspire others to do the same.

You:  Blank stare.

Four years ago I was not living my best story. At that time, I thought ‘story’ was something that happened ‘to me’ not through me. I thought that all of my broken promises, unrealized dreams, and misfortunes had happened to me, (me being the central character, yet object not subject of my story). I had been watching my life happen and since it had a bunch of successes in it like:

  • I’d completed writing multiple plays,
  • produced and directed a few quirky short films,
  • ran a successful small PR firm,
  • had been self-employed for most of my life… and paid the rent!
  • got married,
  • gave birth to three healthy boys,
  • had ample friends and was part of an active community,
  • ***plus I had made it to the top of a network marketing business and even earned the company car.

Yup. I had ditched my childhood years of ‘never enough’ for a brand new white Mercedes Benz, and I had moved in to abundance town. 

But it wasn’t my story, even though it was a good one.

I know. I know. We live in North America and it’s a LUXURY to build a life we love. 

I know. I know. Millions of people all over the world are simply surviving each day. They don’t have a choice.  

I know. I know. I should feel damn lucky and grateful for what I do have.

I know… I had been lamenting my first world problems. Poor little rich girl…

TinaO Poor Little

Still, it wasn’t my story, and if it wasn’t my story, it certainly couldn’t be my BEST STORY either.

I’ve always been blessed by having brilliant people around me, and my decades in the arts had taught me how to tell the truth, shake and quake while I did it, still, trust it somehow. So I asked my near and dear… What do I do now? Their answer came back loud and clear:

Launch your F**’k’n workshop Tina.

Gong… the bell in my own tower rung. Quiver quiver shake shake. 

And that was the beginning for me. My best story chose me and not the other way around. You’ve heard me say this before:  To whom much is given, much is expected, and if I’m going to live my best story, then bloody hell, you are too (if I have anything to do with it).

SO HERE ARE MY QUESTIONS FOR YOU:

  • Is your past in the way of your present?
  • Have you hit the wall of your own beliefs?
  • Are you saddled by uncertainty?
  • Are you always in the ‘almost’ position instead of ‘arrived’?
  • Are you living someone else’s story instead of your own?
  • Is your story brighter than you’re willing to step in to?

If so, you might be where I was four years ago and you might want to come and Live Your Best Story with me for a weekend.  

Our upcoming retreat (12 spots only) is May 27th – 29th.  Click here to register (at the friends of rate!), or send me an email and we can chat about what’s really going on with you and see if a weekend away might just be the answer to your restlessness.

LYBS sign
Live Your Best Story with facilitators: Tina Overbury, Nicolle Nattrass, Dr. Carolyn Nesbitt and Cindy Schreyer

 

What do I do?  I live my best story and I inspire and support others to do the same. 

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xxT

Send me an email at tina@liveyourbeststory.com

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice:  Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and with her Tall Poppy Living for Network Marketers Coaching Program, she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.