The Four Stories We Live By with Shannon Presson

A voice in her head said, “You have to stay” and Shannon Presson did something wildly uncharacteristic: she canceled her flight, sat down to breakfast, and trusted the moment. That one choice led to a new home, a new life, and eventually a new way of helping people navigate change when the old map stops working.

We sit down with Shannon, author of The Unexpected Story, to explore the powerful idea that the stories we tell become the maps we navigate by. Shannon breaks her work into four inner narratives we all carry: the challenge story (what hurts now), the dream story (what we want instead), the “yeah but” story (the hidden resistance that keeps us safe), and a fourth story that feels bigger than us, the thread of synchronicity and meaning that walks alongside our choices. We also talk about how hard it can be to get specific about what we want, why midlife transition can feel like an identity collapse, and how to treat your protective patterns with respect without letting them run your life.

Shannon shares how her book transformed from a boring draft into a mythic fable through Lumina’s Journey, plus the practical Dragonfly Path guide for readers who want to do their own transformational work. We dig into decision-making, human design as a blueprint for energy and clarity, and a surprisingly doable practice for rewiring old narratives: ask how the story serves you, then gently move it out of the driver’s seat.

If this conversation hits home, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s at a crossroads, and leave a review so more people can find the tools to rewrite what’s next. What “yeah but” story are you ready to question today?

Intro for podcast

information about subscriptions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Well, hello, and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I've got a very special guest with us today. Her name is Shannon Preston.

Meeting Shannon Preston

SPEAKER_00 0:13

And Shannon is the author of The Unexpected Story. It's a mythic fable and transformational guide, and it's told in two parts. And we'll get into all that, but she's a longtime coach and a writer and a speaker. And she's got she's known for the ability to see the story beneath the story and name it in a way that helps people recognize themselves and choose differently. Shannon, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I'm doing great, Joe. Thanks for asking.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

It's it's it's a pleasure. I have a daughter named Shannon, so it's kind of don't meet a lot of Shannons out there in the world, but uh one of my best friends in life was named Shannon when he was alive, and my daughter's a Shannon, so I think that we'll get along just great. Where are you from?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Originally I was born on the East Coast. My parents came out to California when I was about seven. Okay. And so I spent most of my life on the West Coast. And

The Voice That Said Stay

SPEAKER_01 1:15

then when I was in my mid-40s, I realized that I had never actually chosen the place where I wanted to live. All right. So I uh I went on an exploration. At the time I was a corporate event planner, so I was traveling 120 days a year. Oh boy. So I just made this kind of decision that every place I went to I'd asked the question, is this where I belong? And I've trusted that I would I'd get a sign, right? You know, you get a something would happen. And it I had it narrowed down to three cities, uh, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, where my clients were, and Denver, because I always wanted to live in a ski town. But I came to Sun Valley to do a meeting. Wasn't nothing really clicked, you know. I was there 10 days, I was tired. I had a flight at 10 a.m. I checked out of my hotel. I was driving to the airport and I stopped at this little cafe called the Copper Skillet. And as I was walking in the door, I heard this voice in my head and it said, You have to stay. You have to stay, you have to stay. Oh, and it was very annoying. It was very annoying. I I preference to your audience. I don't hear voices on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Just a one-time deal.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah, it actually was. And so I went inside and I ordered breakfast, and I was so annoyed. I went back out to a payphone, obviously, pre-phone, pre-cell phone days, and I called Delta, I canceled my flight, I went inside, I ate my breakfast, I read the paper, I was all done. I walked out and I said, Okay, I'm here. Now what? However, apparently the voice was a one-time offer, and uh I thought, great. I'm just like, yeah, I have no hotel reservation. So I thought, well, I'll drive around. Maybe the voice will come back. And it didn't. But it was so it was like 8 a.m. in the morning on a Saturday, and I was driving down Main Street, and I saw this woman walk out of a real estate office. So I did a big U-turn. I pulled up to the street and I jumped out of my car and I said, Do you work here? And she backed up, as most normal people do, psycho jumps out at you. And she said, No, well, yes, I do. But so we went inside and we talked, and turned out she was from Riverside, I was from San Diego, and so we chatted for about 40 minutes. And so I confessed, I said, Look, I I'm not really trying to buy a house, but something said I should stay, and I haven't seen anything for rent. And she said, Well, you won't believe this, but the guy who owns this real estate firm is rehabbing a building on Main Street, and there will be apartments on the top floor. Do you want one?

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

And I filled out an application, gave her a check for $300, called Delta, got my flight back. That was 30 years ago, and uh, I've been here ever since.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Wow. Wow, all right. Well, it sounds very serendipitous. Um you went at one point as an event planner and and likely other things that you've done as a career into writing. What what was the trend? How did when did you begin writing?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Well, I've actually written since I was 12. I mean, I I have boxes and boxes of journals, but I think originally I wrote as a child because I didn't have anyone

Why Stories Shape Our Choices

SPEAKER_01 4:37

to talk to. I was kind of a lonely kid, I was a little weird. And you all know when you're weird and you're a kid. Hey, you're a weird kid as well, so I know all about it. Yeah. Then you know it doesn't usually work out so well. And there's been always a part of me that always knew that there was a writer somewhere in the thread, but I've always been very active. I was an event planner until I was 50. I've always traveled, I've always been athletic, I've always I've always done a lot of things. And about 15 years ago, I wrote the first 20,000 words of this book. I was I was coaching and I was beginning to kind of develop in my mind this idea that the stories we tell create the maps that we navigate by. And so, if that's true, then how do we delineate what those stories are? And what I determined was there was actually four stories that everyone has within them. Okay. So, regardless of who you are, regardless of what experience you have in life, you hold these four stories. The first one is the challenge story. So, what is

The Four Stories Framework

SPEAKER_01 5:45

the challenge you're facing right now? So for you, perhaps it might be the whole cancer journey. For someone else, it might be, you know, a midlife crisis. For someone, it might be, I hate the house I live in, or is my butt too big in these genes? Whatever it is, there's always a challenge. Everybody's got a challenge, yeah. Everybody's got a challenge story. So then the the second question, the second story is uh, well, what do you want instead? So that's the dream story. So if it looked and sounded and felt exactly like what you wanted it to be, what would that be? And the dream story really requires more effort than we think it does because we have to determine the specifics. Like the universe likes specifics, it doesn't like the generic, send me to a warm, sandy place. Because if you say that and you really mean Tahiti, but you're not articulate, you might wind up at Burning Man because hell, it's warm.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Right, right. No, absolutely. I I'm cracking with you 100%. A lot of times life people talk about their problems, and I always ask them, well, what is it that you want? And you'd think people just go, da da da da da. No, they're just like look at you with a blank stare away. Exactly. It seems like it's the hardest question to ask.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

It is. And, you know, once we begin to, and and certainly coaching is always a big part of that. People come in with a challenge, what's the dream? What is it you want? And when I originally started coaching people, you know, it it felt more like, okay, what's the goal? How do we, you know, how do we identify it? What are the steps we take? How do we have accountability? And none of that worked. I don't know why the universe always sent me people that did not fit the modality as it were. So I started asking more questions, and then the third story kind of appeared. And I call the third story the Yeah, but story. So here's here's the challenge, here's the dream. So this is where you are, this is where you want to go. What's in the middle? And the Yeah, butt story is kind of the old analogy about the iceberg, you know, the tit that shows over the water, but you don't see the depth underneath it. And and the challenge story is always that, well, you know, I would, but my I have a really dear friend of mine who is an incredible baker, and I've told the story before, but oh my god, her pies, her cakes, people just are constantly begging her, can you do my party? Can you do it? You know, and I for years I bugged her. It's like, why don't you start a pop-up, especially in the Bay Area where food is such an obsession anyway? No, people are just nice to me, they don't really mean it. So that's a yeah butt story. Yeah, nobody really means it. Or, oh yeah, I want to write a book, but you know, it's all been said before, whatever that is. But what I discovered was once we kind of clear the air of all the yeah buts, right? Okay, what's underneath that? So what's underneath that? And then we start digging deeper and we get into those sacred levels around value and worth and safety and and the gatekeepers who create these stories to keep us safe, even though we're no longer perhaps in a situation that requires their vigilance. But they're we wake up every morning and they look around and they say, Hey Shannon, are you still alive? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm still alive. Let's just keep doing the same old thing. And so those three stories kind of became the nucleus of what I was working with. But the more I worked with it, the more I realized mostly and first and foremost, in the journey of my own particular life, that there is a fourth story. And it's the story that we as humans carry within us, but we are not in charge of it. We have no control over that story because it is the connection to something greater than ourselves, and it it walks alongside us, it truly wants the best for us, it will never interfere with the path that we take, but it loves to tease us with synchronicities and magic moments and a voice that calls from a designer in Haley, Idaho, and says, You have to stay, you have to stay. And when I started really exploring it, I realized that that fourth story had been a constant thread my entire life, that there have been so many things. And I'm I'm a very grounded person. I I don't have a lot of I'm not an airy fairy, you know, I'm Virgo, I've got more earth signs than you can shake a thick head. But there is there is a real truth to that. And so I thought, oh, I have to write this down. This would be awesome. I'll write a book, I'll be a coach, you know, I'll get this down, this will be my platform, I'll be speaking, I'll have the book. And I wrote it, and it was so boring, even I didn't want to read it. Wow. It was it was as if, okay, you got it on paper, big deal. Who cares? I didn't even care. So I threw it in a box and I carried it around for 15 years. And about three years ago, I was cleaning out my studio after we had renovated our house, and there was this big box full of heavy notes and paper and

Letting The Book Write Itself

SPEAKER_01 11:22

post-its and scraps of vision boards. And I looked at it and I plunked it on my desk and I thought, oh man, you know, write it, don't write it. And I got caught up in this big story in my head that the universe would give me a sign, right? So I called my my my very dear friend Elizabeth, who actually wrote the foreword for my book. And I said to her, I said, I I need your help, you know, I need guidance. And and she's she's a very good channel, and she does some excellent healing work and energy work. And I said, Come on, you got to talk to the spirit and my direct this book, right? You know, give away my power, have someone tell me what I should do. And she said, Shannon, the universe doesn't care. Write it, write it. It doesn't matter. But here's the question, and I think this is one that every single person in your audience will really resonate with. She said, How will you feel if you don't do it? I get it. And I said, I will feel as if my heart is broken. And she said, Well, there's your answer. Go write your book. So I would love to say that that was like the inspiration that lit the candle. But the truth is we are all victims of our own personal behavior patterns. And you know, the old saying, you keep doing what you've always done, but you expect different results. You always get what you always got. Yeah. Yeah. So I sat down and I attempted to write the book, doing it exactly the same way. You got the same book, huh? Got the same book. I mean, and now but now I had a publisher, and now I had a contract, and I had a deadline, and I was the typical stereo stereotypical writer. I would sit down every day and I would turn on my computer and I would play video games and I would cry and I would wander and look out the window. I did everything but write that book. So I finally hired a book coach who I actually considered to be a book doula. I mean, I really believed that she helped me birth this book. And for six months we worked, and I said, Look, I don't want you to edit, I don't want you to fix my grammar. I just want you to read what I wrote and ask me questions, which she did. And so we got to the end of the manuscript, and there was a paragraph at the very, very last chapter, and I honestly don't even remember writing it, but it was about a woman who was trapped in a no story. And no matter what she did, she'd done her work, she'd healed her wounds, she'd faced her trauma, she'd cleared everything she could think of. And no matter which way she went, all she got was no. And I think I was projecting a little bit. Yeah, it sounds like it, yeah. But my my coach pointed to that paragraph and she said, Who's she? I want to know more about her. And of course, quintessentially, it was our last session, right? So one afternoon, my husband was watching a football game, and I sat down and I thought, all right, who is she? Let's let's start with her, let's write her backstory. Like, let's just go back to the beginning and how did she show up on the planet and what was her purpose? And like all writers, you know, there's an essence we write what we know. So originally she became something of an avatar of my own childhood. But what happened, and I think this is the point of my long-winded explanation, when I decided that I would no longer try and write the book I thought I was supposed to write, and I was willing to sit down and write the book that wanted to be written. The door opened up and in locked Lumina and out poured this fable. And from then on, it was just such a delight to sit down every day and say, where do we go from here? And so the book the book became a two-part book. The first part is called Lumina's Journey, and it's a story about a very young girl who sets out to find the place that she belongs. And then the second part named Lumina. That's uh yeah, it means light, right? You know, point of light. And uh the second part is called the dragonfly path, and it's a reader's guide for people who want to take that journey for themselves, and it gives a pretty specific step on how to work through the stories and what some of the sacred work is that we need to do in order to clear the path for something truly unexpected to happen.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Wow, I am very curious about this book. Before I jump into the book, it seems like you went, I feel like I'm missing a piece. So you were going on as a corporate event planner, and then you skipped over to now I'm a coach. So those two don't seem very similar. And yet your book reminds me of some of the guests that I've had who are psychologists and counselors, and they talk about the story. It's a fairly common way of expressing a person's experiences and ability to share those experiences. But tell me about what got you into or qualified you, or how how did the whole coach thing come about?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

So when I was 50 years old, I had been a vent planner for 20 years. I worked for a very uh Fortune 500, Fortune 50 company, really. And I

Burnout, Identity, And Becoming A Coach

SPEAKER_01 17:06

traveled 150 days a year. I, if you know anything about human design, I'm a projector, which basically means that I don't have a motor. So I spent 20 years burning energy that I didn't have in a job that I loved at a level that I was not capable of sustaining. And when I turned 50, you know, I kind of went through menopause in a day. And I woke up one night in the middle of the night and I realized that I was dying, that my body had literally said enough. And if you're not going to pay attention to me, I'm going somewhere else because you know you don't appreciate me. And I I woke my husband up, and and bless his heart, I woke him up out of a dead sleep and I said, Honey, I'm dying. And he did something really incredible. He rolled over and he took me in his arms and he said, Is that what you want? And I said, Well, no. And he said, Well, then what are you gonna do about it?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

And it was out of a dead sleep, huh? Got quite a husband there.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah, yeah, it was it was pretty at the time it was it was it was very scary and it was pretty traumatic. But what happened was I realized that that I had to start making some choices. And I think this is something that's important, you know, for people that are listening to this. You know, my my teachers always said the first 50 years of your life are about the doing, and the second 50 years, God willing, are about the understanding and meaning of the doing. And I realized that I had been doing all my life. I I grew up in a a pretty dysfunctional family. I had to be the practical one, I had to be the one that made things work and had a pretty heavy load for a small child. And so I learned over time that as long as I was of service to others, I had value. And so I picked a career that allowed me to be in service to others and be paid fairly well for it. But it it came at a cost. And so my husband and I had a long conversation, you know. I mean, how much money is is how much money do you need in life? You know, what what's it worth? Right. Um and so I quit, I retired, and then my entire life fell apart because I thought I had so identified with who I was as this, and now I was basically unidentifiable, right? I mean, and and I never really had an identity that I could trust if I wasn't being of service. And my body had informed me that being of service to anybody but myself was no longer an option, and so I just started exploring. You know, I'm a curious person, and I just kind of followed things that were interesting. And my husband was like, Yeah, take a class, you know, go on a retreat, yeah, have fun, you know. And so I started exploring, and I can't honestly tell you, Joe, how I wound up in the coaching world. And even now, I actually started off as a coach, and then I took quite a bit of training to learn to coach with horses, which was a fascinating experience because horses have this extraordinary capacity to be present to what's happening. They're prey animals, and they need very much to be aware of their surroundings. And so they turn out to be pretty extraordinary coaches in their own right. And I did that for quite a bit of time, and then eventually I found myself right back in the same rabbit wheel that I had previously created. So I started therapy and I realized that I wanted a do-over. Like I just looked at my life and said, Can I just do over here?

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Yeah, it's not really working.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

And I thought it was really about my career, but I realized that it was about my entire life. And I didn't realize it at the moment, but I was about ready to walk out of my marriage. And that's a pretty thing to say, knowing how deeply my husband loves me and adores me. But I had set up dynamics in the relationship that again were very unsustainable. And I think over time, and and I don't know if this is true for everyone. I'm 71 years old, so you know, I've been around for a little bit. Sure. Um, I think every one of us has seasons that there are things that we sign up for that don't unfold until the time is right. And I think about three years ago, life said to me, You need to be Begin a new journey. And I just got back from Africa. We were there for three weeks. And people said to me when they learned I was going, they said, What do you want to see? That's always a big question. You know, what are the big continent?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Yeah, there's a lot going on there.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Yeah. And I said, I want to see what Africa has to show me.

unknown 22:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

And I want to tell you, be careful what you ask for. So I'm I'm in the process writing, I think, my second book because what Africa shared with me was so incredibly huge. I I have a substack that I write called Navigating Without a Map. And I started writing essays about the journey. And it's been incredibly difficult to unpack it all because it's got so many layers to it.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

So yeah. That's wild. So this book or books, I should say, how does that play into your coaching? I mean, it seems like the two are kind of connected at some level.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It it completely changed my not sure what I'm I'm sort of searching for the correct word. The thing that I gift it with is the capacity to hear or sense what is below the experience. So it it's it's I'll give you an example. I've no fun in cocktail parties. All right. No fun at all.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Small talk with you, huh?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Uh it's really bad because when I listen to small talk, I don't hear what people are saying. I hear what they're saying underneath what they're saying. Yeah. And so I respond to it.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

I think there's a twilight zone about that one too.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

And so what happens is I wind up responding to what they're really saying versus what has actually come out of their mouth. And yeah, I can clear a room pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

You start getting these looks like, what are you doing? Get out of here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

I really didn't want to talk about that. Um, but for me, it it's it's not as much about clarity anymore. Most of the clients that I work with now, a lot of them are women who have come to this midpoint in their life and they're going, is this it? I mean, is this all there is? Or or is this everything that's been leading to this moment and this is all we get? And so for me, it's it's more about holding the space for someone and helping them find the clarity within themselves because we we all carry within us our own answers. I mean, I I I honestly can't tell anybody anything that they don't know at some level. Right, right. So the the greatest gift that I can give my clients is to help them get to their own wisdom as quickly as possible, but never without their permission. Because sometimes we're not ready to know what we know, if if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

I think so. So, man, there's so much, so much I could get into, and obviously we have limited time. I'm very much interested in in your books, and and just the way that you talk about these four stories. You know, I've never really heard it broken down that way, but I like the way that you've captured these elements that each of our lives have and and characterize them that way. Tell me about the unexpected story and and the the mythic lens and uh how it can help people to see things that they might otherwise miss.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

So, one of the things that that uh when when Lumita decides that she she needs to set off on her own, and she has a mentor, someone who

Mythic Tools For Finding Your Way

SPEAKER_01 26:10

helps her during her difficult time and is there for her on the on the day she decides to be embark this journey. And he brings her three gifts. He he offers her these three gifts, and the first one is a compass. And the compass, he tells her, will always point to true north when she follows her heart. So as she's leaning on this journey and she's navigating her way to the the path that she she wants to find, she can rely on the compass as long as she's following her heart. And I think that's the most important thing for all of us when we're when we're hitting a wall or we're finding ourselves lost in the woods. Are we following our heart? What's in our heart? What really wants to be expressed is truthfully and maybe even as painfully as possible, because sometimes expressing what you deeply desire can be so scary that it's it almost painful, right? The second gift that he gives her is a lantern, and he tells her that the lantern will dim whenever she forgets who she is and will brighten gloriously when she remembers. So that mythic moment of remembering who are we and who are we at our core? And we're not taught that, we're not taught to find our own truth, and so a big part of the journey for all of us is you know, what are my values? Who am I? Who am I at my core? And the third one that she's given is a puzzle box. Oh, yeah. It's a beautiful box, and inside are many puzzle pieces, but there's no picture. And so he tells her supposed to look like a he tells her that that in order for her to assemble the puzzles, she needs to explore, she needs to experiment, and maybe even err in order for her to know how the pieces fit together. And by doing so, she will understand how the picture comes together as well as her own life. And I I think of all the gifts that sort of came to me, I love the idea that our lives are a puzzle and that we have all of these pieces, but we don't know how they go together because we don't know what the picture looks like. But as we're willing to sit, and and of course, the puzzle is magical puzzle, so it does give her clues, you know, it's not just where, but it's it's that metaphor recognizing that we have everything we need, we come complete, we're not missing people, we're not broken, we matter, we're you know, we are cosmic once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and the very fact that we even exist is magic, you know. Statistics are I don't think there's so many zeros after that. So if everyone could understand that, and and not from a selfish, egotistical, I'm great, you know, I'm the best, but it's just magical. I matter, I'm I'm here for a reason, and I will dedicate my life to discovering what that reason is. As a caveat, I will tell you, I am I have been for quite some time writing the screenplay for a one-woman play called It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the time. Because I have this vision of me and God standing down, looking at Earth and saying, Oh, yeah, back indoors, East Worth, New Jersey. That that looks like a fun adventure. And coming into my human incarnation and going, Oh, that seemed like a good idea at the time.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Oh, wow. So it seems like you're dealing with people going through change with your coaching, and obviously, this these books are about change. We live dynamic lives. Change is such an incredible thing because even when we're stuck in a habit, there's change that happens. It's generally not the change we want, and it it doesn't notice, we don't necessarily notice it as it's happening, but we live on a rotating planet. So when you stop moving, you're just going backwards. And I've always said to people through my journeys and my changes, that your whole life, everything you've done in your life, every choice you've made, every good and bad decision, every action and inaction have led you right here to this moment where you and I are talking. And I've always found that to be amazing. Like if you can grasp each moment and say, wow, everything I've done brought me right here. There's probably something important to be done or seen or known or learned or observed or whatever. And as you're going through your life, and you know, obviously when people come to you, they have reached a place in their life where they want to get better, they want to change, they want to make, they want to be something that they're not, or not be something that they are, or you know, some kind of positive change. And what I've learned is that generally when you're afraid of something, you don't want to do it. It's the thing you're you're reticent, you're scared, you're just whatever it is that is daunting to you. That's usually the thing you're supposed to do, right? I mean, it seems that way in life, it was probably not. And that's where my point comes to. It's like your books and your conversations deal with emotions and experiences and feelings and also truth. And it seems like truth comes to you in these little fleeting messages. You get these moments of truth that have helped you shape your life. And I've had plenty of those as well, but not everybody does. How do you see the how do you notice? You know, when does that when does that that lantern get brighter? How how is it that you can you can spot the difference between just I'm afraid of it and I don't want to do it? And yeah, yeah, but that's the thing you need to do.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Well, you know, I'm really fortunate that I have lots of tools in my toolbox for doing the work that I do. But one of the things that I that I work a lot with is human design

Human Design And The Cupcake Trick

SPEAKER_01 32:38

because I think it gives people an incredible blueprint for how they move through the world, how they make good decisions, and how they use their energy. I am someone for whom decisions come with a hard no. I'm not one of those people that gets the yes or you know, the fireworks. I get the hard no, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

You're not a Gemini at all.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

No, not at all. I was in Johannesburg and we were getting ready for the plane, and and I was thinking uh about the book launch that's gonna come out, and I had all these things in my head, and I heard this voice oh, second time in my life now, just stop. Okay. Um, so for me, that's how it comes. Now, for my husband, it comes, it cut his decision making is is completely different. And there are actually ways that you can understand how you, as a specific individual, know how to make good decisions. And one of the things that I like about human design is it teaches us that these are reliable, that that it's not just something we're making up. But to your point, we often have stories that we repeat in our heads because we've done them and we know they don't work, but we keep doing them and it drives us crazy. I know this doesn't work. I keep saying this, I keep telling the story over and over again. And the first question that I always ask people, and I think it's it's a great one to offer to your audience, is ask yourself, how does the story serve you? And not from a place of judgment or criticality, but from curiosity and wonder. Wow, Shannon, you know, you've been telling this particular story for a really long time, and you know it doesn't really help you, but you keep telling it. So how does it serve you? Right. And then I can actually, you know, whittle that down backwards to the point where I recognize patterns or stories from my childhood that I didn't want to be seen as, or I was perhaps scolded for something that I had no control over. And so I didn't want to be hurt, or I didn't want to be embarrassed, or I didn't want to feel unsafe. And so that story that I've been telling is still trying to keep me safe, even though I really no longer need its assistance. And sometimes you just have to give that story a cupcake, right? It's got your favorite sprinkles on it, and here's what I need you to do. I'm not kicking you to the curb, and I'm not telling you to go away and leave me alone. All I'm asking is that you take this cupcake and you go sit over on the side of me, right? So you're gonna walk with me and you're gonna eat the cupcake, but I'm gonna make the choices and you'll feel like you're still involved. You're not gonna fight me, but you got this nice little cupcakes. So you stay over there, let me be the adult in the room now, and then you can come along with me and eat your cupcake and feel like you're still part of the family, but you're not in charge. And I think that's a super important thing because it wants to be in charge because it saved you a lot growing up, and it doesn't believe that it should be kicked to the curb for keeping you alive.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Agreed, agreed. I like that approach. Well, as always, I run out of time before I run out of questions, but I'd love to have you back, especially maybe when you get your second book published, and I'd like to hear about that as well. But I'm gonna likely go and get your books. It sounds awfully interesting. You've got a lot of life experience, you've got a lot of wisdom through your experiences. Was there a single thought that you would like to leave our audience with?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Be kind, be kind to yourself, be kind to other people. You know, it's a hard world. There's a lot going on. We are going through massive changes,

Kindness, Free Guide, And Where To Start

SPEAKER_01 37:01

both in our communities, in our culture, in our democracies, on our planet. And sometimes we think it has to be something big. But when we're kind to ourselves, when we're kind to our neighbors, when we're kind to strangers because we don't know what they're going through and we don't know why they're in bad mood, it costs us nothing. And it can literally move mountains. So I offer that up to your audience.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

I I would I would uh concur with that. And now to the fun stuff. How do we get a hold of you? How do we find your books?

SPEAKER_01 37:41

So the book will be published on July 14th, which will be available on Amazon. If you are interested in finding more about the book, you can go to the unexpectedstory.com. There's quite a bit of information. And I'd like to offer your readers a little free gift. If they would like to get a personalized dragonfly path guide of their own to begin their own journey, if you go to the unexpectedstory.com forward slash dragonfly, it will bring up a page and you enter your name and birth information just like you would an astrology report, and it will create a personalized eight-page guide for you that will talk about how you show up in the world, what your gifts and talents are, what are some of the spells that you might fall under when you're, you know, trying to do your best, and also has some information on how you can work with me if you're interested.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

I love it. Well, most definitely jump in there and and sign up on that. Well, Shannon, well, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been amazing. And like I said, I'd love to have you back. I didn't realize the book hadn't been published yet. I I somehow I missed that. So maybe in a few months after it's been published, we can revisit and see how it's doing and and uh see if your thoughts are the same about it.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Well, that would be lovely. And uh be sure. And if you uh pull your report, you'll get on the mailing list. And uh we are gonna have a little lunch party, maybe a little pixie party online. So, you know, you'll get an invitation for it. So, yeah, absolutely. It's been so much fun, and I really appreciate you inviting me, Joe. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Absolutely. Well, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I want to thank all of our guests for making the show possible, and we will see you next time.