Hello Courageous Pals,

My coaching teacher Colin used to say “words create worlds.” We are always telling us little stories about ourselves, other people, and the world around us: Some of them are helpful (“I’m good at that,” or “I bet I can learn how to do it”) and some of them less helpful (“I’ll never be able to do it,” “That person always gets in the way.”) Many psychologists believe these little stories are an autopilot, developed when you’re very young. Alfred Adler calls this the “life plan,” it’s your way of predicting the future and knowing how to get by in all the situations you encounter. Eric Berne calls this the “life script” because these little narratives tell us how to behave on the stage of our lives.

Often these scripts have served us well through life, which is why we keep using them! But not always. We might want to change. The good news is, we’re not stuck: we can rewrite these little scripts whenever we want to. It takes practice, because you’ve had a long, long time to practice your existing scripts and you can run those on autopilot. Developing a new script takes some noticing and some doing. 

In last night’s Courage Pie, we practiced noticing our life script - a story we tell ourselves all the time, or one from our childhood when our life script was being formed - and trying to shift it form the same-old-same-old script to a new one by asking:

• What meaning does this have for you now?

• What is important about this today?

• How do you see yourself, now, in this story?

• What would you like to change about this story? (This can include something you’d like to keep or reinforce!)

We practiced shifting the script by using tiny little shifts: “I’m not a famous novelist yet” or “I used to think that…but maybe that’s not true now.” or “She is/I am/they are… sometimes.”

Science behind the slice

My coaching teacher Colin Brett has just written the book What if I Could? which is all about ways of noticing these life scripts and updating them to suit who you are now, not who you were then. It’s chock-full of all the tools you need for self-coaching. There’s a good introduction to Adler’s life plan here, and Berne’s life script here. And for a few more thought-provoking questions and exercises, I’ve got a couple of posts from the secret Caitlin Blog Archive Vault for you: Words Create Worlds, and Memories as Mirrors.

Coming up…

Next month’s Courage Pie 💪🥧 will be about gremlins: those niggly, nasty little parts of ourselves which come out and get in our way, often when we least expect them (or sometimes when we MOST expect them!) Never fear, we can learn to get along with our gremlins. Sign up here for some gremlin-taming! Tuesday 28 October, 7 PM as usual.

On 8 November I’m doing an online workshop for the Yorkshire Festival of Story all about developing your courage and inner resilience! What if courage was already beating inside you that is quietly, steadily, waiting to be heard? Please do join me. Know any other groups or organisations who could benefit from a workshop like this? Get in touch by replying to this email.

In January, Solas Yoga and I will be collaborating on a grounding, refreshing in-person yoga and group reflection 90-minute workshop here in Edinburgh! Set yourself up right for the new year when it arrives. Stay tuned for more details and the sign-up link!

Last call, last call!

Courageous Pals, I love running Courage Pie with you, but two big goals for me are to create ways to have more in-person connections and to cut down on screen time. I’ll finish out the year online, then from January I will start running Courage Pie as a series of free walking lunchtime meetups in the Meadows (with a very-needed-in-Edinburgh rain plan at the Edinburgh Futures Institute building which is freely open to the public.) We’ll follow basically the same format of personal development topics with some gentle thought-exercises, and we’ll be getting some fresh air while we do it. Win-win-win! More info soon.

I know many of you are further afield and can’t join me in person here in Edinburgh: if you’re interested in keeping an online Courage Pie going for a small nominal fee each month, reply to this email saying “Online pie please!” and if I get five or more courageous pals interested I’ll be in touch to discuss options.

That’s all the news for now; I hope the story of your autumn is shaping into the script you want it to!

Caitlin