RESTORYING YOUR OWN LIFE: BECOMING WHO YOU WANT TO BE

We wrote this piece on restorying your life as a book proposal. We give it to you as a gift. It is a powerful technique to heal and change your life. enjoy, heal, love

If you ask a person what is happening in his or her life, they answer by telling their own personal story. It emerges immediately. For example, when we ask,  “Tell me what is happening in your life.” The person may answer,  “I am in limbo, I am in transition waiting for something to happen. I am stuck.”  The story is how the person sees themselves and their world right now. In Restorying Your Own Life we help the reader get in touch with the story they hold now, so they can find a new story of who they want to be, more effective life story for transformation and change. The restory could be, “ I am moving towards an exciting change in my life where I will finally do what I want to do. I am finding new opportunities each day, new steps towards what I want to do ”. This new story reframes the person’s world to positivity and change, it becomes the seed for new actions for change.

We discovered the restorying method when we watched our patients heal. As they healed, we did the restorying  process with them naturally. They started with, “I have cancer and am going to die.” The new story that we helped them find was, “ I can handle this, I will beat this with the new treatment. I will be the one who is cured. ” When the story changed, their lives changed. Suddenly they had hope, positivity and could act for healing. As we developed the method further, we found the exciting academic research in narrative psychology and post modern theory.  This research proved that restroying helped people  change their lives and become who they wanted to be. We have taken this academic research and merged it with twenty five years of clinical experience with patients with life threatening illness to create an exiting new method for personal growth that is at the forefront of  the technology of change. We have found that Restorying Your Own Life is one of the most powerful and effective methods to create change that has ever existed.

The word restory is unusual.  It is currently used by researchers in psychology and postmodern theory. Narrative therapy is a type of psychotherapy that uses the patient’s story as the basis for change and uses restorying  as the tool for therapy. Narrative psychology is used with all age groups from children to the elderly. It is cutting edge psychotherapy, innovative and effective. It is taught all over the world and is at the forefront of modern psychology.  In postmodern theory, a story is deconstructed and then resituated or restoryed to remove dualisms. This enables the theorist to see the situation with a new world view.  Postmodern restorying uses the technique with individuals, organizations and communities. Like narrative psychology, postmodern restroying is at the leading edge of theory and practice of organizational change. 

We use the terms restory and restorying because they are evocative, exciting and new. To restory means to change a story to a new one, to write a new story. A person’s life story tells the way he or she looks at themselves and their world. It frames the person’s ability to function, succeed and heal. A new story gives a person a world view that is positive. It enables them to recreate their world for coping, success, and healing.  We believe the word restory can become a catch word, a new popular term for change.  The reader can say, “I am restorying my life. I am changing my life story to become who I want to be.” 

Restorying Your Own Life  is about changing your life. The premise of the restorying  is that the person’s story is framework in which they view their life and make decisions to act. When they change their story, they change their life. Restorying can can help you find the story of who you truly are, your wisdom story and then your life will change. You will become the hero of your new story, the hero of your life. 

Our life already is our story

Each of us already has a story that frames our lives, that tell us who we are and what we want.  For example, our story might be, I am successful, I am a healthy person, I am in love, I am getting what I want in life.  Or it might be: I am never able to satisfy anyone around me, I am sick, I never have enough of what I want, I fail because I am hurt, I can’t love anyone

Examples of dark stories that people have of who they are:

• “I fail because I was hurt as a child
• I cannot ever find someone I get along with
• There is always something wrong the person I am in relationship with
• I can never change, its  my personality

• I cannot fall in love
• My partner does not see me.”

Almost every word you say tells the whole story of your life.  When you tell a friend what you are doing, what you are worried about, you tell your story.  People say, I am in limbo, I can’t act until this happens, I am fighting with my husband, we have never got along.  In listening to your words, your story, you can hear the story and then you can heal the story.

Changing words, changing the way you see

There are three simple ways to restory your life.  The first is through language, the second by changing the way you look at things, the third by looking for visionary experiences.  The easiest way is by listening to the words you use to describe yourself and what is happening to you.  Then you choose new words that are positive and show faith.  For example, if you hear yourself saying, I paid to much, I always do, you can change the words when you tell the story again, to, I found exactly what I wanted. Restorying your life by retelling your story with new words is powerful and can be done each time you remember to do it.  The second way involves actually choosing the way you will look at something. For example if you look at your house and say to yourself, I wish I was living in a bigger house, I am a failure, you can realize what you are doing, and the next time, look at your house as perfect for you at this time in your life.  When you hear your inner words describing what you see, you put new ones in to look at the situation in a positive way. 

Restorying your life to include being loved

The third and most powerful way of restorying your life is based on inviting a visionary experience to come to you.  Having visionary experiences of  inner guides, helpers, or angels  is a technique used in innovative psychotherapies especially with sexual abuse survivors. We have developed this method in depth and the method we present in Restorying Your Own Life of  being loved is unique to us. We discovered this method with our patients in the Spirit Body Healing research study at University of Florida. This method uses guided imagery exercises, art, meditation, walks, prayer, vision quests, and travel to promote a imagination or visionary experience. After the experience,  the person rewrites their life story to include their experience. In this way they can honor it, receive it and make it part of their world view and who they are.  In their  peaceful moments, they hold the vision, in their  dark moments they reach for it to comfort them.  For example if a person hears an inner voice of their grandmother telling them they are beautiful, they then can see themselves as a person with an inner voice, an ancestor,  and as a person who is filled with beauty.

In the guided imagery exercises, the person is led to be deeply relaxed and then a helper or guide is seen. Patients have experiences of angels, spirit guides, animals, and nature forms. Each visionary experience can be used in restroying. The person then restorys themselves to be a person who can have visionary experiences, who has a spiritual life, and who has protectors or helpers in their life. We have found this to be profoundly healing for physical and life crises problems.

As the story of your life grows, you keep retelling it with new words and ways of seeing in light of new things that happen.  As your experience  grows we will show you how make a story of it and put yourself in as the hero or heroine.  If you are a person with breast cancer who is making a garden to heal, your story changes from you are a woman with breast cancer who is depressed to one in which you are  the woman with breast cancer who is creating a mandala garden to heal.  In the process, you restory your life in light of what you are now doing. As your story forms, tell it, claim it, take responsibility for it.  You change your language, the way you see, and invite a visionary spiritual reality to come to you.

Examples of stories in positivity and love:

• I can succeed in my work and relationships
• I can see beauty around me
• I am on the right path to become myself
• I am learning from this and growing with each moment
• I am being guided and taken care of
• I am in the right place, I can love the people around me
• I have always been loved
• There are guardian angels around me who love me
• They have always been with me taking care of me, loving me

Affirmations to help you restory your life:

• I have choices every moment
• There is Magnificence in action all around me
• This is so beautiful
• Love will heal me those around me

• This is meant to be
• Each problem is a way to evolve and grow
• My actions are guided by a greater force

Components to healing:

• Self love
• Forgiveness
• Being guided, you are not alone
• Choice in every moment
• Things come to you as gifts
• See out of eyes of artist
• Faith and trust
• Belief in God and angels, guardians and spirit

The Restorying Your Own Life Method

Our method to restory your life is simple and very powerful.  When you change your story or view  of who you are, you change your life.

Restorying Your Own Life is  process oriented.  It will have steps, and in each step will be exercises.  To restory your life, you don’t have to know where you are going in advance.   In fact, you don’t usually know what the new story of your life will be.  You start the process and then you experience the story and glimpse it as it happens.  You look for the story to appear as you follow your wishes and do what you love.  The method includes affirmations and guided imagery.  It is taken from our research  and is directly prescriptive.

Step one: Finding your present story. 

In step one the person goes into their pain and gets in touch with the story they are living now.  To find it all they need to do is look at their life. In this step, the person specifically looks at the words they use and the way the look at things.  In this step the person feels their darkness,  embodies it sees who they are now. 

In this step, we utilize techniques of narrative psychology and post modern theory. We teach the reader to analyze the story, find important points that are rich with possibility for change. We help the reader find the characters, plot, themes and situation. We search for dualities, conflict, other voices and the opposite the other side of the story.

For example to help find your own personal story you can look at the:

• Characters- Who are the characters in your own life story?
• Plot – How do they act? (several action tied together form a plot, a storyline) What is the plot of your life story, is it comic, romantic, tragic, satiric? 
• Theme-What is  the problem, conflict, dilemma in your present life story ? 
• Frames- What are the attitudes of the characters ? A system of attitudes represents an idea-system (ideology). Each character has their Frame (ideological attitudes).
• Spectacle – How do they look, dress, move? What is the stage craft? Is your life more like a Disney movie or like a McDonalds?
• Dialog – Believable stories are from the voice of experience — Find your voice and dialog with other characters in your own  story.

Step two: Inviting the new story to appear

This is the process, the spiral of action.  The person begins to use new words to describe who they are and what is happening.  They choose the words carefully to be positive and to show faith in themselves.  Next, they choose to look at things with positivity and faith; each time they realize how they looked at something, they choose a new way to see.  Finally, the person does a creative process, writes, makes art, travels, gardens, volunteers, takes workshops.  They invite visionary experiences which inform them of who they are.  They experience transformation, a basic restorying takes place that makes their whole life view new. They describe themselves in a new way, they see themselves in a new way and  they see themselves loved and cared for.

Step three: Rewriting the story of your life. 

The new story emerges in the process, the person sees it, honors it, becomes it, and now tells the new story of who they are.  They become the new story. They manifest what they want.  They go from being lost or a failure, to being a crucial part of the world and a person who helps change reality for everyone.

In this step we also use techniques from narrative psychology and post modern theory. We help the reader find unique new outcomes personal to their own life, find the roots of the new story in their past and find ways of strengthen belief in the new story in the present. Find support for the new story in actions and voices of others in the person’s life who are people of support and love.  For example an exercise to restory would be:

REWRITE YOUR HISTORY AND RESTORY YOUR LIFE

1. If we were to ask a person who loved you perfectly and knew you deeply, such as a  favorite grandparent, relative, lover or teacher, what are your most outstanding qualities or what they like best about you, what would they tell us?

2. Tell us about a long-term problem which you had or currently have. Your problem could be very simple like fear of driving to a strange place when you have only a map to guide you, or fear of speaking to strangers, or believing you can not do math.” The problem can be an illness, a life crises, a situation you are in. For example, the problem could be, “I don’t like my work, but can’t leave, I am stuck.”

3. Explain how the problem has benefited you. For example, by being stuck, I do not have to change or make decisions.

4. Explain the ways in which this problem has had negative effects on your life. example: I am unhappy each day and day dream of doing something else, 

5. Would you really like to be rid of this problem? Why?
 

6. Tell us about a “unique outcome” when this problem was not as strong, or when it was completely eliminated. example: one day I bought a movie camera and started making a film. I was so happy. My world changed.    

I saw my wisdom self as a film maker artist in that moment.

7. What evidence is there to support this “alternative” story? What would a close friend or family member tell us about you, if we told them about your new ability to overcome your problem, what would they say they saw in you in the past, which might allow them to predict your success in overcoming your problem? example: Friends might say that in the past, I was the artist. I was always the most creative person in school, the one with the best projects or new ideas. 

8. Who among your present friends and family, would say they could already see, or that they would support, this new behavior of yours which is overcoming your old problem? Example, My dad

9. How might you enlist the support of these friends/family members in your continuing success in overcoming your problem? example: showing my new films to friends and lovers, showing my joy and happiness in being a film maker instead of an engineer.
 

How to restory your whole life

Once the person glimpses their new story, we show them how to use the story to change their life and heal.  First we restory their past, rewrite their histories to change the way they see themselves.  We take each incident that was painful and change the person’s perception of it to be more positive.  Next we help the person restory the present by finding choices in each moment.  This technique allow them to experience each event as part of the new story.  We also show people how to  make their new future and get what they want based on the story they experience.  This is about goals and defining what you want out of life. Finally we show people how to change their view of an illness if they are ill.

Restory your past.

Part of the process of Restorying Your Own Life is restorying the past.  We take the reader through each painful event in their past and change the way he or she looks at it.  To do this, we use guided imagery to allow the reader to get in touch with events in their past and see that there was a spiritual presence around them taking care of them protecting them, and loving them. We show the reader how to rewrite the story of the painful event with the presence of the protector as part of it.

In Restorying Your Own Life, we are not talking about making up stories that are not real, we are not suggesting a person use denial or not see reality.  It is about making a choice to see and choose a different reality and leave depression and self reproach behind.  Restorying Your Own Life makes people look at their lives from a new perspective.  They look at each event in a new way.  Details in events that did not exist before, appear. They restory the events of the past, and they can restory their whole lives.  They change the past in the present.  It is a significant transformation of the past in the present.  When they restory their life,  they are never the same again. The experience of illness changes as they look at it in the past.  In the new story, illness becomes an opportunity for the spirit to be seen and for growth.  It is not just darkness anymore.

Restorying the present

If you are waiting for someone, you can be thinking, why do they not come, don’t they love me, am I worthless.  Or,  you can think, I will wait a million years for them, they are so wonderful, what is a moment, they love me perfectly.  Both these thoughts are a story that shows you who you are and what you think of yourself in the present moment.  In each moment there is a story of who you are. 

If you have a thought like, “they don’t love me, that is why they are late”, you can choose in that moment to substitute the thought, “they love me perfectly but are busy, I will wait and rest.”.  The first story will lead to you being sad or getting angry and in a fight, the second story is a meditation to learn to love the person more deeply.  I will make you glad when they come. 

We teach you to look at the language in his or her story and in each moment, rewrite the words in positivity.  We show you how to look for expectations in the story he or she  holds.  If they are expecting a friend  to come on time and then get angry they can rewrite the story without the expectation.  The new story  can be, whenever her or she comes is fine. And we show the reader how to use spiritual ways of looking at themselves to reframe what is happening in the moment. 

Restorying the future

The person’s new story tells the person a great deal about their future.  The story helps make the person’s goals clear.  To make any decision, a person needs to know his or her priorities.  Then he or she can make each choice based on getting what they want.  Restorying the future is a way of manifesting the reality you want to live in.  Just as you don’t know the story before you start the process, you don’t know the future.  It forms itself around your dreams.

Let’s say you want to buy a home.  Then,  s he can make her story the story of the woman who is looking for her dream house.  We show her how to  embellish her story and make it more real.  For example, she  might say the home will be a magical place full of healing energy for her to grow, a meditation place like a Japanese garden where she can rest , a safe place to take care of her children.  Then, she can look at adds, look for homes on the weekend, and tell everyone that she is looking for a special dream home.

Restorying your illness. 

Each person has a story of their illness.  As a physician, he or she would tell me the story when we first met.  The stories were not what you would think, they were not simple or ordinary, they almost always involved what the doctor had told them,  why the person thought they became ill and often involved guilt or mystical events.  All these parts of the story can be restoryed.

When we restory illness, we help a person deal with their  prognosis, what did the doctor say?  We show them how to change the story of the statistics to allow their own individuality, for magic and for miracles. We tell them to remember, if a physician tells them statistics about recurrence, they apply to populations not individuals.  When a person is cured, they are 100% cured. That is an example of a change in language and the way of looking at something  that changes a person’s whole way of seeing their world.

To restory your illness, you can make your story the most positive story you can get in touch with.  You can rethink the story of why you became ill.  You can look for mystical events that point to healing.  You can make a new vocabulary and recreate words to define your experience. For example, a woman with breast cancer told us that she called her medical team her boob squad and re-languaged her entire experience to be positive, humorous and hopeful. She called her radiation therapy the magical beam of healing light.  Her restorying made her problem a challenge.

The world needs you

The final part of restorying your life is making your life meaningful.  The basic story we learned from our patients is that life becomes rich when you contribute to the whole.  Our patients taught us that if you believe that without you, the world would not be as good, you feel valued and powerful.  Carl Jung tells this story of living within a myth of meaning.  Ochiwa Biano, the chief of the Taos Indians stood on the roof of the pueblo at sunrise and pointed to the sun.  He told Jung that without his people, without their prayers, the sun would not rise in the morning and the world would be dark.  Carl Jung said that modern humans have lost this connection with nature and lost a myth to give their life real meaning. He suggested that finding a new myth to live by would be deeply healing for people today.

In Restorying Your Own Life we teach that life is story. Our stories have been influenced by many factors. We create the themes and threads of our stories. Joseph Campbell referred to this as our “personal mythology.” We can get stuck in this mythology when we continue to use outdated belief systems. In other words, sometimes our stories stop serving us and begin to actually hinder our ability to live fully in the present. A three-fold process then must take place.

1) Remember what your story is.
2) Reconnect to it, honor how it has served you, and release it.
3) Restory your life in a way that is now in alignment with who you are and where you want to be.

In our research, we learned that as part of their healing and restorying of their lives,  people acted in a way they believed was helping the world. Much of their new story was based on generosity giving, they were proud and spiritually strong.  They received gifts of spirit in their visions and shared the gifts with others.  This part of Restorying Your Own Life is about going out in the world, from a place of personal power to make difference in world.  The people feel empowered with action, not belief, not words, but doing.  It is not about sitting in your room worrying, it is about entering into life’s fray, taking sides, and making change.  To save a river you have to write letters, go to meetings, protest, join organizations, raise money and act. If you believe that the river needs you to be saved, you have meaning in your new story.

prescriptive. 

Stories of restorying lives

Restorying Your Own Life will have stories of people who changed their lives and healed. The stories come from the author’s personal experience and from their interviews with patients, healers, and artists.  Our patients were our teachers and were the ones to first introduce us to the concept of restorying your life.  Here are several stories that emphasize visionary experiences and a new way of seeing:

I was with you when your wife died

Michael tells us his personal story:

My son Rudy and I drove across the English country side on a cold rainy winter morning.  We were driving to Glastonbury, a sacred site, to climb the tor.  Rudy was depressed.  He had left his job and broke up a relationship and was searching for what to do next. I could see that he was on a unspoken vision quest and I had come to England to help him find what he was looking for.

We started talking about why he was depressed. He told me he was damaged, hurt, and lost.  He told me that he knew he wouldn’t succeed because he was afraid to take risks.  He had told me his own personal story. He held it out like a hurt paw, a jewel, a gift of himself. I knew that this  was a magic moment of power, that we had been brought here and put in this little car together on this cold morning for a reason.  Glastonbury had been one of my wife and Rudy’s mothers’ favorite places.  England was her favorite place because of the gardens, she had come here weeks before she died of breast cancer.  Now I found myself with my son following her path, to one of her most sacred places to re-make a climb she had made on her last trip to England with our family.

I told Rudy that I could hear from his story, that he was depressed and confused.  I told him he could restory the story of  his life.  I gasped at what I had said.  I knew this could not be an accident.  All the rational reasons why we were here faded into the power of this moment.  Rudy asked me what restorying your life was and I told him this story.

‘Rudy, rather than explain it as a theory, I’ll tell you my story.  My most important story of restorying my life was the story of your mother’s death.’  I knew this was a tough topic, one we hardly ever spoke about, one that now appeared to us like Nancy’s spirit in the road ahead.  ‘When your mother was dying, we were all suffering immensely.  You dug the koi pond, your brother sat with her and played his guitar, I sat with her and watched her.  There were two realities I could see and feel, two stories that were emerging in my life as the observer.  One was her body dying and looking yellow and bloated and her becoming incontinent and needing diapers, the other was her immense beauty and the light that was around her. 

I have told you, that she started to say to each person who came to visit that she loved them, that they looked beautiful, and she looked into their eyes and rested in silence.  Rudy, to me she was so brave, her beauty so far surpassed her physical situation that the way her body looked was not what I saw. The love the flowed from her as a gift to everyone who came was what was visible and what I held on to.  Elizabeth her best friend took me downstairs and said to me, “Michael, you know Nancy has shed her personality and become pure spirit.  She is perfect love now, to be given to each of us.” I knew this was true, I could see it, and feel it.

This became the beginning of my restorying of Nancy’s death. I choose which way to look at her, which story to concentrate on and to hold, and I worked to make it real.  Then it became the source of my perceptions and in fact, created my reality to this day.  Events happened, I could see things that fit into the story of her death being transcendent.’

I looked at my son, who I love, through my tears, and tried to see if he was all right with this.  He looked like he was handling it so I went on.  I did not want to hurt him but somehow I felt that Nancy was here and she wanted me to tell him this story as a healing.  I said, ‘Rudy, I do not know what you saw happening, but my perception of her pure love and the light around her was what got me through her death.  It was so bright for me that the whole process seemed like it took place in grace and in light.  Each time I would go outside I would know the truth of the story more and more.  She had become pure love to be given to you and me and everyone and her death almost receded into the power and immensity of what I and others saw happening.

I told the story to people during her death and after her death.  When people asked me what was happening, this was my answer. I wrote it down in my journal.  Later, I wrote a journal of Nancy’s death with the story in it.  Rachel Remen wrote about seeing Nancy’s death as love in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom as giving Dashan.  With time, the story became real for me and for others. You make your story real by living it, telling it,  and holding its thoughts.  The story had come from my ways of looking at Nancy, from my visionary experience and from Elizabeth’s and Rachel’s experiences and the stories they told. 

Rudy, months later the story got deeper.  As I wrote my journal about Nancy’s death, each day I would speak to her in my  imagination and listen to what she would say to me. One day, she said, ‘In my death, I have given you a great gift.  I hold out my hands to you with this gift of perfect love from the other side.  I give you a love I could not express when I was alive, but can now. I hold this love out to you and put it in your hands.’  She put a dove in my hands.  ‘Give it to someone else now. Give it fully and freely without conditions or expectations.  When I stopped breathing, I took nothing physical from earth.  Now I can give you back something more valuable that anything I had in life, eternal love.’  The story deepened with another visionary experience which I had when I wrote. 

I asked Rudy if he could handle this, he said he was OK and told me to continue. “Rudy, the story builds and grows with time.  Months later a woman who I was deeply in love with said to me,  “Michael, when Nancy died, I was with you, hovering over you, caring for you and your boys, protecting you.”  I said to her, “my love, you were not there.  My children were there, my friends and sister was there, I did not even know you then.”  But I could not get her statement out of my mind. So I  too, looked closely at Nancy’s death.  That night, I went back to the memories and looked in between the moments, and I saw the woman I was in love with over my head, our heads, blessing us and sending love.  I saw her protecting me, loving me, more deeply than I had ever been loved before.

And the next morning I felt better.  I was restructured, my past was new.  It was a past where I was loved and protected, blessed.  The next day, I went to my dear friend  Phyllis Klaus who was a skilled psychotherapist.  I told her this story.  She told me then, how she takes her patients back to their own, their mother’s births, they see, then they rewrite the history.  They make themselves loved, they make their mother loved.  They forgive and they change, in front of their eyes.  She told me that even their body changes into the body of a loved one.  Rejection anger abandonment abuse shed, come off and are replaced by care and love.  And because the soul does not know time and space, all is forgiven, the love is new, their body is new, their would is new.

Restorying Your Own Life  became an important part of my life and my medical practice.  From that day on, I help my patients rewrite their own story of their life so that it becomes one of love and growth. I help them do a process where they can have a visionary experience and restory their life.’  I looked Rudy, I was embarrassed. I had not told him that much about me, I felt I had lectured him and not listened to him.  He said, “dad, why don’t you write a book about restorying your own life?” 

From engineering to film

He told this story:

I am  unhappy, its my job, I am an engineer. I sit all day in front of a computer monitor, I move a line in CAD CAM to make a part. It move a line one hundredth of an inch. All day.  I feel so empty. But I can’t change. I spent so much time studying for this, I was so successful at school  I make so much money. It goes on.

That is his story in the present.

We asked, “ what is your daydream? Any story you could live?  He told us, I want to be a film maker. I see myself making exciting new independent films. I see myself creative, working with people, an artist. I see myself sitting in a theatre watching my first film. I am so happy. My body feels at peace, secure, not tense. It is who I have always know I wanted to be.

That is the story of who he wants to be.

Once he clearly saw his new story, he moved forwards more easily. He stopped taking engineering jobs. He is now taking film courses, he bought a video camera and is making his first film. He is excited and each day looks forward to his work. He says, it was easy, why did I never do it before?

Restorying Your Own Life  is that simple.

Restorying prostate cancer

An engineer tells this story:  When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer I went on the internet and found I had only a 40% survival. My whole world collapsed in that moment. Up to then, I had been bulletproof, healthy, I had never been sick, now I was dying. A veil of darkness came down over me. I could not sleep, I was now an old, dying man. 

Then I worked with Dr. Samuels. He showed me how I had misinterpreted the internet data. He helped me see the dark story I had created of my life. As I told him my story of how I was going to die, he showed me how this story was born and what to do to change. We talked about how to create a new story. The steps for me were to get realistic statistics and find and begin the best treatment. I  found a urologist who was a positive person and who had the latest methods of treatment. We went together to the appointment. I was terrified. The urologist told me my eight year survival was 88%. With Dr. Samuels we created a new story of my now enhanced survival and what it meant. Dr. Samuels did more research and found in my case with my PSA and cell type it was probably closer to 96%. He explained the meaning of statistics to me and showed me how if I survived in the 96% I would be 100% alive. My whole world view changed. My story was now, I will not die of this, I will live my life fully. My whole life was different now. I started making furniture for my house, starting taking walks and playing my guitar. The restorying method changed my life completely in one week.

In every moment, you have a choice

A musician told us this story:

I was driving across Colorado in the middle of the night.  I had been driving for hours.  My wife was asleep, I was all alone.  I was worried and depressed.  I had just visited my best friend from college who had become a successful business man and I wondered whether my choice to leave my business and to become and musician was the right one.  I felt bad about myself, I felt like I was a failure, I had quit, I had not been up to it.  All the arguments about why I did it faded and I felt low and weak.  It was dark out, the darkness was real physical darkness. With my wife asleep I was more and more lonely.  What would I do with my life, I had no clue.  I knew I did not want to stay at my job but that was about as far as I got.  I had began to play guitar and I loved it  but I wondered if I could make a living at it.  What was I doing?

Then, I worked with Dr. Samuels to restory my life. I told him my story of being a businessman and then a musician. I told him of my doubts and sense of failure. That was my story. Next I tried to see my new story. As I wrote, I heard a voice come to me from my creative imagination.  It said.  You have a choice.   It said, “ Your first choice is to be depressed and to feel bad about yourself.  Your second choice is not to be depressed. Don’t hold those types of thoughts anymore; push them away.  Hold other thoughts, its simple.”  I tried it. I choose to not hold the thoughts about my work that made me depressed.  I held on to thoughts and looked for thoughts about my strengths, and suddenly all was different.  My new story was, “I was a man who could choose my thoughts and hold the ones that made me happy.” It was that simple.

Then a new deeper story started to emerge. I was a businessman who left to find his pure joy in becoming a musician. I was brave and creative, facing odds, my own boss. I was an artist. My life was rich with happiness since I was doing what I loved. From then on, my life changed.  I loved playing the guitar, and practiced every day and then began to get jobs in clubs and my new life as a musician had started.  I had restoryed my life and had become the person I wanted to be.

Live your life in unconditional Love

An architect told us this story:

After a fight with my wife I went outside and sat and cried. I sat in front of the house I had built with my wife with our own hands. The stars circled above, spun and twinkled.  I felt so alone, I was in my darkness of isolation and fear.  I wondered if there was any love left in our marriage, if she loved me or cared for me and if l loved her.  I sat and looked at the stars and watched them turn and move slowly across the sky. Since I had been working with Dr. Samuels, I realized that now I  had found my story, I  was a man who was unloved in a bad marriage.

So I tried to find a better story, one I could live with that would make me happy. Dr. Samuels had told me about daydreaming and looking in my imagination for inner voices,  for a visionary experience. I was attracted to that way of working. So, as I looked for my new story, I  daydreamed about who I was. Then , I heard a voice in my imagination.  “Go up the house and love her unconditionally in the moment.  That is your teaching here. No matter what she does, do not expect her to forgive you, do not expect anything. Even if she does not talk to you for days, this is where you are supposed to be, with your family.”

Afterwards,  I restoryed my life.  My  new story was, “I am a man who has an inner voice that told me of unconditional love and saved my marriage.”  Furthermore, I  then rewrote the story of my life to look at myself as a person who had an inner voice or guide and who was a person whose teaching was to love unconditionally.

When other events that were hard came my way, I  could seek out the inner voice and act from it again.  The inner voice is a spiritual visionary experience.  I  took the visionary experience and used it to restory my life. 

The blessed mother appears

A man told us this story of the blessed mother:

I was in love.  We rented a country house for the weekend to get away together.  We both left our busy jobs and were so excited to be alone.  The house was romantic and beautiful, it overlooked the mountains and the valley, it had little areas where you could lie and see pocket views. 

In the afternoon, we sat in the living room after our hike.  She sat on the couch and I lay with my head in her lap. I looked up at her and my vision changed.  It all expanded, she became large.  She hovered over me, indistinct and clear at once.  Then I was shocked I realized that I saw her as the virgin Mary.  I saw her  looking down at me with perfect love.  I had never felt such love in my life.  I was washed purified healed deeply. Her eyes were half closed. She  looked at me with forgiveness and perfect love. The love was palpable like a fluid. It washed over me and healed me forever.

I have never been the same since that moment.  I now see her as Her, I see myself as loved in every moment , I feel her love in the ground, the wind, and the water.

The events that restory your life come to you.  They comes to you within a situation. It is unexpected.  You do not know what will happen, you do not make the story up.  It comes to you like a creative idea.  You can invite it to come, you can make it up, but it appears moment to moment as you are living it.   Being in love is a good way to have visions of being loved.