Almost everyone loves a good story, whether a formal tale or that anecdote about the guy in the supermarket. It’s one reason gossip is fuel for so many and, I’m guessing, is also the basis for serious insights revealed in therapy.
One version of story — I might argue the most pervasive version — is what our minds “say” about feelings and events. It may indeed be raining. Someone hit you. Joe actually said those words. I might like rain, see the blow as a playful punch, and know Joe was teasing. However, you might experience rain as depressing, be scared of such violent action, and feel violated by Joe’s words. When one starts identifying our interpretations as story, it can be very freeing even when the interpretation is negative. And when we start looking at being powerful in the world, truly wanting to contribute to positive change, just beginning to see this is important.
However, there are other sides of story. There are the ones we hear and read. But today the sides I’m fascinated with are the ones that explain how we’ve evolved and are evolving into our best selves. This is the part of you that, perhaps, loves animals, understands music, and smiles at strangers. The part of you that yearns to change the world, that wants to make a powerful difference, has also been formed by story.
Because often our default in stories about ourselves is negative, and we usually tell those stories to share our vulnerability, I dare you to look deeper. Other stories are there.
I got to this point by realizing I’m sometimes impatient when people see situations as hard (yes, I know I don’t know all of the details). And I realized why. One day I was simply walking down the street by the main branch of the Cincinnati public library (officially the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library), headed to meet my son for dinner. Suddenly I fell down. I didn’t trip. I didn’t pass out. My shoes were tied. There wasn’t a bump. I just fell. Flat on my face. Well, at least I turned my head. After I convinced the 20-year-olds passing by that they didn’t need to call 911 and was given some Kleenex by one of them, I proceeded on, got some ice for my head from the restaurant’s bartender, and had dinner. Two days later I finally went to my doctor who diagnosed a mild concussion. And the remedy for a mild concussion is low light and no activity.
So, I thought, in the best new age manner, “What is my body trying to tell me?” Clearly, since my body simply fell, it was trying to get my attention about something. As I lay there in the low light, I realized it seemed to be calling me to be simply present. It was saying that planning and forced acting wasn’t me. And for a year, I easily lived in that space.
But at the end of the year I was diagnosed with an odd kind of leukemia. Clearly, in this story of listening to my body, my body was actually shouting. This time the attention getting involved three weeks in the hospital, first with chemo, second through a process of resetting my white blood count, and finally the diagnosis and treatment for a nasty MERSA infection. Apparently, being present was still too active. I was called just to be.
Personally, I love this story. Mainly because it works. People talk about internal mind chatter (yes, I do still have some), how hard it is to live in “now,” and being overwhelmed with day-to-day demands. Apparently, almost dying (as my doctor once impatiently reminded me) can make just being almost always easy. Note that through just being, multiple things happened, or got done if you prefer, such as publishing two books* and moving across the country.
This, too, is a story. Somewhere there is a story that works for you. Perhaps it’s about learning how to love. Or what happened when your kids finally realized they didn’t know everything. Maybe it has something to do with seeing, really seeing, that you’re good at skiing or gardening or playing the Legend of Zelda. Or whatever you like to do.
You may learn that you can relax enough to begin a story where you, too, find the advantages of presence, being, and ease.
Play with it. It’s time to give your positive stories space and love. I dare you to share!
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All photos by Spirit Moxie – from the top:
Main branch of the Cincinnati Library – 2019
B’s shadow on sidewalk
Rock – “Believe in Yourself” (Don’t really know the source of this photo, do you?)
*Books: Moxie Moves: 10 easy ways to make a powerful difference
Talking to Trees through poetry and pictures
Perhaps the most basic step or action to making a difference and changing the world and oneself is gratitude. Appropriately gratitude was one of the first “little things” we wrote about in Spirit Moxie’s Conversation posts. 
Surviving as a human is pretty much impossible without other humans. So we can see “thank you” as an acknowledgement of the web
Gratitude, on the other hand, is personal, although sometimes it is expressed publicly and certainly can be seen to touch thanks. Being grateful is not so much an acknowledgement of an action or experience as a perception of how that action or experience has affected you. Gratitude changes the way the world appears to us and makes us more productive and effective, a result scientifically studied by such writers as 
When I began writing this, I got a bit puckish and remembered the “Wild West” definition, with prospectors and land barons. In my imagination I saw dry creeks and hills. There, “claim” was a noun.
Intellectually how could your getting enough sleep* or
We read that we’re enough, are fabulous, are good the way we are. But our mind may say, “Who, you? Don’t be silly. You’re not big or strong or important enough to matter.” Thank your mind for sharing. You are all you have to offer. And it is enough. If you claim that and I claim that, we have enough people for that race. And others will join in.
This year I struggled with a post about the new year, which is why this post is early in the year, but not at the very beginning. I reread all the former end of/beginning of year Spirit Moxie Conversations. (I suggest the core 1916 post 
The second piece to help you remember: I kind of dare you to try. It is an exercise I love that apparently pushes people’s buttons. Ask someone — using these exact words — “Tell me how I’m fabulous.” You can ask me that question when you see me in person. Or, send me a 
But what did I mean by extravagances when I first listed this in 2013? There aren’t any notes, but I’m pretty sure the why and how of this has expanded, if not changed.
The diet example is maybe the easiest to understand. I usually ask for no cheese on sandwiches and omelettes as for me cheese only adds calories rather than flavor. But I enjoy good cheese with bread or crackers before dinner or even for dessert. Sometime in my late teens I decided cream and sugar in my coffee weren’t worth the calories, especially because I usually drank coffee with desserts. But now I have friends who will tell you that enjoying good coffee, usually black, is something they identify with me.
Note the phrase above of “enjoying and participating.” Enjoying the world is certainly central to having it be the world you know it could be. (“Changing the world” as the Spirit Moxie tagline reads.) When you are only angry with your partner or children, they never have a chance to blossom and be great around you. But when you enjoy being with them, enjoy their idiosyncrasies, and sometimes participate in what they love, something more beautiful than all of you becomes possible. Yes, I know that example is a bit simplistic. But think of our world the same way. What do you want to indulge in that is beautiful, extravagant, and that also, in some way, serves who you are? Getting up early to watch a sunrise? Ordering the real butter and the bread basket? Buying the shoes or spending the extra $40 for an upgraded airplane seat (yup – just did that)? And so, we participate. Not with something just because it’s there, but because it provides satisfaction and maybe a bit of joy.
Your list will be different from mine. I’m pretty sure you can’t imagine that sandwich without cheese and that you find delight in the cheapest ticket you can find when traveling. But watch and choose. My friend bought the most expensive champagne she could find when she sold her house. She drinks a low cost 
Spirit Moxie is now 10 years old, and many of the ideas we introduced in 2013 have become commonplace. Our central concept focuses on the power of positive change, but when we look around, it feels as if, rather than becoming more positive, the world has become darker: politics uglier, the environment more fragile, people less connected, and information and news increasingly unreliable. We have the tools to correct this. There are actions and mindsets to help prevent these problems! So why do they still exist?
At the beginning of each new year, I claim a word for the year. For 2023, my word is “curious.”
“Spirit,” for me, is multi-faceted and ranges from the energy at a football game to serious conversations on theology. But perhaps the most basic place for the word and idea comes from the way people describe being human as “body, mind, and spirit.” Do you say this? If so, what does it mean to you? When one simply looks up the definition of “spirit,” or, to be precise, looks it up in the dictionary on my phone, the very first definition is “the principle of conscious life; the vital principle in humans, animating the body or mediating between body and soul.” Hmmm. So, in some way, our spirit is what makes us conscious of our humanity and of our existence.
What I want to suggest here is a perspective I’m pretty sure I didn’t come up with on my own, but I can’t trace it to a source. Simply put, how humans talk about God and the energy that image embodies changes about every 2,000 years. We have the time of the Old Testament or BCE (Before the Common Era) which describes god in a fairly hierarchical way (the Father). Then comes the more personal connection personified in the figure of Jesus that has affected a good portion of the world, whatever your religious beliefs are, during the past 2,000 years or so. It is reflected in Western calendar dating and has been the root cause of
We can see truth in this idea of our being in a time of the Spirit as we listen to some of the current spiritually based (there’s that darn word “spirit’ again) coaches and writers. One example is 
When I
So how does this relate to changing the world? I’m guessing those who are cruel to animals aren’t reading this. But I think talking about being kind to animals is important because, as with most things, I’m guessing even the best of us sometimes gets it wrong. In fact, I doubt if we could even agree on what wrong is. Yes, it seems obvious when domesticated animals aren’t treated properly. We hear of animals rescued from conditions of squalor. We read about them having terrible health conditions. 
All these matter because even if, or perhaps particularly if, you live in a city, our relationship to animals reminds us of an integral part of our own humanity. We, too, are animals. And claiming that is true can inspire us to do other accountable things that help the world. Little things like not using plastic straws, or maybe any straws, and being concerned about the rings used to connect packs of cans because both are known to kill sea life. An action such as that leads to other little things that change the world such as 
OK, but how does this really work in practice? Begin with, “What am I grateful for that occurred in 2022?.” What brought 
Here are a couple of exercises that can help. For me they involve writing, but a conversation with a really good friend or an activity that involves some other means of expression (drawing? making up a song? going on a thoughtful walk?) works, too. Name 5 to 10 of your gifts. I would guess that a couple of them even got stronger last year. I, for example, have bonded more with animals. None of these gifts have to be huge (although I would bet some are). “Calm during COVID” is still one of mine. If you really can’t think of anything, it might be useful to start keeping a list of compliments. I’m not sure from whom I got that exercise, but I have a place to write down “chill” when that was applied to me. Just the word. Some of you may have more physical things to name as gifts, although I would hope most of those (“my business took off”) were in your gratitude list.
I’m not sure what images work for you as you enter this new year, but I know that you can only embrace them as yourself. And yourself is fabulous. Right now. I see that. Plus, remember that the groundwork from last year supports the vision for this one.