One of the questions I always ask in conversations:
What is the story you are telling the world about yourself, about who you are and who you are becoming?

As a mentor to women who want more success in more areas in their life, inevitably this question arises in one of our first conversations.

Who are you? What do you want? What story are you telling yourself about yourself? What are your core beliefs about yourself and the world around you?

The intense experience that these questions usually evoke sends the person in to a loop. That’s where the transformation begins.

Last Saturday I heard the reknown speaker Les Brown for the first time. He opened his talk with a phrase: If you are to die tomorrow, what legacy are you leaving behind? Why would people remember who you were?

We all live inside the story, and each person’s story is different. The story that we live inside unfolds as we live it, according to our beliefs and values, and by a certain age, about 15-16, our life becomes pretty predictable.

Tell me what beliefs and values were imprinted on your by your family, your teachers, and you peers, and I will tell you what to expect of yourself.

That expectation puts you on a track to a predictable and most of the time ordinary life.
As a result, at the age of 35-45 you begin to think that you are missing out on life, and that longing for something more, deeper and more fulfilling, begins to bug your experience.

But you live inside of your own story, told from the inside. And it is impossible to see the whole story because we are so much inside of it. And this story that we live inside of creates and shapes our character, and largely the events in our life, and we identify with the image of that story and begin to live into it, fit into it.

All the while reinforcing the line of the story, the mythology of this personal story by fitting into the image we describe for ourselves.

Joseph Campbell, a recognized authority on world mythology, said, \”It is a privilege of a lifetime in discovering and being who you are.\” He called this discovery of personal mythology. And he was the one who also said: “The greatest sin is the sin of not being aware.”

Becoming aware is the first step on the path of awareness and transformation.
Dr. Campbell looked into a story, a myth, a narrative, which is told in various cultures much the same way and discovered main structural threads to it.

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves shape our beliefs and ultimately become our identity.

There comes a time in every life, when they begin to feel the longing. This longing is what he called existential longing. In those times in their life people begin asking these questions: am I doing all I can? Am I on the right path? How can I know if I am doing the right thing?

Then the feeling of longing persists, despite the success, despite the outwardly well-put together life. Inside there is this question: After all, why am I here?

Joseph Campbell describes this moment as a “Call” in his famous concept and book “The Hero’s Journey”. The protagonist, the hero receives a call. Then the hero answers the call. The journey starts from there.

Not unlike in the metaphor story of the movie The Matrix, when Neo is offered the Blue and the Red pills by the guide character Morpheus. What will he chose?
It is always a choice.

Why and when does this call happen? When you begin to encounter the feeling that you are at the top of the seemingly long successful journey, only to find that the Matrix had consumed you.

I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Moscow in the early 60s. My family is a cluster of very different characters. Since early childhood I imagined myself living inside of a story, as if watched by someone from the outside, I imagined acting my life and looked into the mirror, hoping to see the world behind it, like Alice. I lived in a loving and protected environment, mother watching over me with constant care.

At the age of 4, I was presented with the opportunity to perform in a show for a children\’s clothing line. There was not much of a fashion in the Soviet Russia; nonetheless, the quality and durability of clothes left many advanced countries behind. With almost no funding, they were able to create persuasive natural trends that let the skin breathe simultaneously keeping the body warm in the brutal winter periods. For this new project only children who could behave and who were dressed nicely were chosen.

Since there was little funding, the base underlying clothing was what you had on, and they only put a top layer on, a dress or a jacket, for the demo. I was chosen because of my accurately pulled back and braded flaming red hair and spotless white pantyhose. I was also known for my passion to dance, and for creative theater dramatization.

The moment came. I was dressed, groomed, and ready. I was put in front of the lights, and I started walking down the brightly lit catwalk. For a moment I felt scared and felt the fearful tears coming up.

I stopped and listened. In my aloneness I felt a quiet desperate fearful indecision. In front of me was a line of lights and there was no one to support me.

I so wanted to run back to the familiar, to those people, who previously dressed me and fixed my shoelaces, I so wanted my mother, and her big soft warm arms and gentle words of encouragement. I so wanted that, but I did nothing, I just stood there in those lights and felt my initial smile to have frozen my cheeks apart.

This was my call to adventure, and I had to answer it now. If not now, then when?

Then I suddenly heard a voice, whispering, \”It\’s ok, go on, turn.\” I was so grateful for this voice, the voice coming from nowhere, yet guiding me, telling me it\’s ok, I\’m ok. Of course, I am ok.

I made a step forward and turned 360 degrees as gracefully as I could. I thought, as long as I am in these lights, as long as I can hear this voice, nothing can happen. I took a breath and turned again. And then I heard … applause.

What a triumpth! Suddenly, I began to see faces behind the lights, and felt encouraged to move forward.

My mother had gotten a small payment for this session of my \”work\” and I was presented a doll as a reward. The doll could blink and made a \”ma-ma\” sound. I always loved this doll very much.

In a way I have to say this event began shaping me to be who I am today. Plowing through obstacles, doubts and fears, to what is ahead. When I came to the US over two decades ago, this ability to keep on going, and keeping the faith gave me a lot of courage to making decisions I needed to make. I remembered, the voice, and knew that guidance from the outside of my story is important. So I turned to others who had the skills, to teach me how to get to where I am going from the inside of my story. And so I can tweak parts of my story to get me the result that I want.

And ultimately, the result is all about satisfaction, about balance, equilibrium, mental and emotional stability, and a pleasurable esthetics in living your life, and the story will unfold further through a mythological form of who you are. As life takes on a shape, it is still a fluid malleable emptiness, where every moment the universe disappears with a blink of an eye, and then reappears with another blink, giving you an opportunity to recreate yourself the way you want to be.

How do you want to be? What story are you telling the world?

Author Bio: Morrin Bass

Category: Advice
Keywords: morrin bass, balance, satisfaction, mentoring, bliss, joseph campbell, personal journey