Fuel Your Story With VPGs

Fuel Your Story With VPGs

20 Ways to Change Your Story

17. Fuel Your Story with VPGs

To thine own self be true.

Shakespeare had it right when he wrote those words. Being true to yourself is not being selfish! Your best contributions to the world will come from being in integrity with your authentic self.

To live your very best story, you need to be authentically YOU. Your authentic self knows what will make you happy, knows what you came here to do, knows how to keep you healthy, and carries your creative spark.

The fuel efficiency of a vehicle is measured in miles per gallon (MPG). You can measure your story’s efficiency by how in tune it is with your VPGs — Values, Passions and Gifts. VPGs are the core of your authenticity.

Only struggle, discomfort and unhappiness can come from trying to live a story that is in conflict with your VPGs. It’s like putting water into your gas tank instead of fuel. Your engine will stall and your story will take you nowhere. You’ll feel frustrated and stuck pushing a story that no longer serves you uphill.

Filling your tank with VPGs is like using high octane Personal Power fuel!

It will feel fun and exciting to climb behind the wheel as your engine roars and carries you swiftly and powerfully into your biggest and best authentic story.

Know what you value (what’s important to you), what your passions are (what inspires you), and what your gifts are (what flows easily through you) and let the synergy of those things fuel your life. This will bring you personal fulfillment AND raise the quality of life for those around you and for the world!

Let’s take a look at VALUES.

What do you most Value having?

  • Is it more important to you to have freedom than money? Or is the reverse true?
  • Is it more important to you to have fun? Or to have inner peace?
  • Is it more important to you to have a sense of belonging? Or to have self-respect?

Besides having Values, there are also being Values. What do you most value being?

  • Is it more important to you to be honest? Or to be polite?
  • Is it more important to you to be decisive? Or to be flexible?
  • Is it more important to you to be creative? Or to be organized?

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ answers. And, of course, there are many more things you might value having than the few examples above. It’s important to identify and prioritize your top values because, as the above examples indicate, values can be conflicting. If you know your top three to five having and being values, you can recognize when your current story may not be honoring or supporting those values. And, you can make choices and claim new stories that favor them.

Let’s take a look at PASSIONS.

What do you most love doing?

  • Do you love to travel, dance or create art?
  • Does time disappear when you’re tinkering with mechanical things or solving complex puzzles?
  • Are you happiest when you’re in the kitchen baking?
  • Does taking care of children lift your heart?
  • Are you fascinated by the study of bugs, or photography, or Egyptian history?

Are there causes that speak to your heart and rally you to action?

  • Are you fired up for ecology and conservation?
  • Do you want all homeless pets to find forever homes?
  • Are you called to march on Washington for the protection of gay rights?
  • Will you simply not sleep until there’s an end to world hunger?

These are your passions, and passions carry massive energy to move us forward into new chapters and stories in our lives. When we bring our passions into action, we bring joy into our lives and often into the lives of others as well. Take some time to identify a handful of things you are most passionate about and make sure your new story is full of them.

Now, let’s take a look at GIFTS.

Your gifts are the things you’re really good at, things that come easily and naturally to you.

  • Does music flow through you easily?
  • Are you incredibly intuitive?
  • Do you have a knack for building things?
  • Are you a natural athlete?
  • Does writing come easily to you?
  • Do you mesmerize crowds with your oratory power?
  • Does everything you cook taste amazing?

These may be your natural gifts, the abilities and aptitudes you were born with. Which is not to say it won’t take training and practice to hone those skills. Just that these things seem to come easier to you than to most. Emphasizing these natural gifts will assure that your story unfolds with more ease and grace.

Put all of these Values, Passions and Gifts together and you’ll have some seriously high octane fuel in your tank. So take the time to discover and act on your own VPGs and watch your new story go from 0 to 90 in no time at all.

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This is the 18th post in a 21-post series sparked by Chapter 9 of Fallen, The Adventures of a Deep Water Leaf, in which Lizard suggests that Alora change her story.

#20WaysIn20Days, #ChangeYourStory, #Fallen

Be Prepared for Resistance

Be Prepared for Resistance

20 Ways to Change Your Story

16. Be Prepared for Resistance

It’s funny what can happen when you start to change a story. When you set an intention and start moving in a new direction, right away you will run into resistance from inside and out.

The boundaries of your old stories and habits can act kind of like an elastic band. At first, the stretch is easy. The farther you stretch, the stronger the resistance grows.

That resistance may come from your inner critic (you suck at this), inner perfectionist (if you’re going to do this, it must be brilliantly flawless), or inner child (I’m scared to do this). Often it’s a super-size-me value-pack combination of all of these inner parts, plus a side of lazy bones and a big serving of why-did-I-want-to-do-this-anyway for dessert.

You need only imagine that elastic band of resistance is around your waistline to start to feel the pinch after a meal like that.

There is also an inner map master and keeper of the status quo, aka the ego, who gets more than a bit freaked out when you start to enter uncharted territory. Remember the ancient mariner’s maps? Beyond the known waters and land masses, the mapmakers would write “thar be dragons” as a warning to fools who might try to sail past known boundaries. And beyond the dragons? Well, that’s where you fall right off the edge of the earth.

This is exactly how your ego feels about your new intentions. Change is the end of the world as ego knows it. You take a few steps and the dragon alarm gets tripped. Ego goes into red-alert mode and those boundaries you just stretched come snapping back at you.

Besides this formidable inner push back, it may seem like the outer world has it in for your new intentions as well. Suddenly, that time you set aside to work on your new goal gets filled with unexpected demands. The boss needs you to work overtime, a family member gets sick and needs your help, your car breaks down, or an unexpected opportunity that feels more important than your goal presents itself. It’s like a volley of rubber bands being shot in your direction. Your new intention dies the death of a thousand stinging snaps.

What’s a story-changer to do?

Might as well just give up on that sexy little black dress of a new story and schlep back into your nice comfy pair of current story yoga pants, right?

No. Don’t. Please don’t.

Here’s a powerful process that can take the sting out of your resistance: Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) also known as tapping.

It is a process of tapping on various acupressure points while focusing on a limiting belief, fear or block and slowly introducing reframing and replacement statements. It can be done under the direction of a trained facilitator or you can learn to do it yourself.

By tapping on the meridian points, old stories can be released from our energy system and replaced with new and more empowering beliefs.

The official website for EFT promises that “limiting beliefs can vanish, personal performance can soar, relationships can thrive, and vibrant physical health can be yours.”

If that sounds like a bunch of new age mumbo jumbo and just too good to be true, please consider that the Veterans Administration recently approved EFT as an effective treatment for PTSD.

If you want to learn how to use EFT, the official EFT site is filled with information, examples and resources. Or you can search for the term EFT on the web and find a practitioner near you. For now, take a look at these videos demonstrating the use of EFT to counter resistance. You’ve got nothing to lose but your old stories.

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This is the 17th post in a 21-post series sparked by Chapter 9 of Fallen, The Adventures of a Deep Water Leaf, in which Lizard suggests that Alora change her story.

#20WaysIn20Days, #ChangeYourStory, #Fallen