Try out my strategy for taking bigger risks, by creating the right safety nets. In this episode, I'm getting vulnerable and sharing how a recent discovery has given me a whole new lens for understanding all of my stories – and exactly what I did to get over my fear and release my audio memoir.
Try out my strategy for taking bigger risks, by creating the right safety nets. In this episode, I'm getting vulnerable and sharing how a recent discovery has given me a whole new lens for understanding all of my stories – and exactly what I did to get over my fear and release my audio memoir.
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(00:02):
Here is my teaser line to make you want to listen to this episode. George Clooney in the vents! I'm Micaela Blei, and welcome to The Story Letter, the podcast about telling better stories. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're going to talk about a tool I've been using for years now. It's a philosophy actually, that I call safe conditions for daring decisions. I used to joke that this would be the basis for my self-help empire. I have a couple of ideas for self-help empires to be totally honest, but this is one of my big ones. The idea of this is that we aren't in control of everything in our lives, but we can take the things we can control and we can make them as comfortable as possible for ourselves. And then that comfort is what allows us to do the riskier things.
(01:02):
For me, storytelling itself is actually a safe condition. So for some people it's very daring to get up and share something personal about yourself, and it is daring for me too, but I feel like storytelling gives me a beautiful, clear framework to share myself inside of. It's very safe. Someone's going to ring a bell when five minutes is up, or I can tell myself it's going to be seven minutes long. I can practice what I want to say before I communicate with someone. So from that, you can tell for safe conditions, for daring decisions, those are different for everyone, right? Storytelling is my safe condition. It's someone else's daring decision. What feels like a safety net for me might feel terrifying for you and vice versa. And this philosophy can be applied in lots of places in life. Maybe you want to quit your job having something waiting for you on the other side of quitting.
(01:52):
That's maybe it's just a plan for finding a new job, but hopefully there's something that's creating a safe condition for that daring decision. So you're not eliminating the risk that quitting your job creates. You're just making it possible to take the risk and you don't have to just do it for yourself. You can create safe conditions for other people to make daring decisions. We do this for our friends and loved ones all the time. Teachers do this all the time. Here's a big example. When I started the education program at The Moth back in 2012, I did this with my friend and colleague, Catherine McCarthy. We made it our mission when we started that program to figure out how to teach storytelling to high school students in a way that let them feel in control of the story that they were telling at every possible moment.
(02:40):
So one of our core principles as a result was making sure everyone knew exactly what would happen with their stories before they shared them. That was even in a workshop, not just in performance. Before we asked students to write something down on a piece of paper, we'd let them know if they were going to share that paper out loud with a partner afterwards. So if they were just writing for themselves or they were writing for other people. Because we wanted them to do something that was inherently quite risky and brave, which is share a personal story in your school, which if you're 16 or 17 years old, that is really intense. So what does all this mean for you as you're working on your stories? We've gone through a lot of steps of working on a personal story, and so this is sort of the point where if you are going to share it out loud on a stage in a boardroom in front of people, this is where you can ask yourself, what do I need to feel good about doing that?
(03:33):
And that could be a lot of different things. Maybe you need to write everything down first. Maybe you want to know that your story won't go anywhere past that room. Maybe you need to try it with one trusted friend before you share it with any kind of group. You can also draw some boundaries for yourself around what you tell stories about. Those are all safe conditions, and like I said before, it doesn't just apply to personal storytelling. If you're giving a high stakes presentation at work, what would make you feel more secure to do that? Is it wearing an outfit that makes you feel confident? Is it practicing with a colleague first? Is it having really beautiful slides as a backup? So that's safe conditions for daring decisions, and to me, it's the sort of final trick of finding the confidence to share vulnerable, authentic stories. And for my story for you this week, I'm going to get really vulnerable and talk about some safe conditions and daring decisions of my own that are actually happening right now, today, as we speak.
(04:39):
So today, recording day of this very episode, is actually release day of my Audible Original debut memoir. And I want to share something that I did to make this day feel less scary. And I want to share with you something that is not in the memoir. I know I've given you a couple of director's, cut, cut for time stories, but this is a little bigger than that. So first I'm going to share with you a giant plot twist that has happened in my life in the last couple of years. It turns out that my version of safe conditions for daring decisions is also called autistic accommodation. I found out I was autistic two and a half years ago at age 44, and it was kind of a light bulb moment for me. Suddenly so many things in my life made sense that never did. So remember in episode three when we talked about emotional timestamping and revisiting old stories, that's exactly what this is.
(05:40):
You look back and you understand everything differently. And I did this life review for a solid year after my diagnosis, every misunderstanding I'd had and friendships that had fallen apart and moments that had felt like there must be something so wrong with me. I was now looking back at those moments going, that's what was happening here. That felt hard because my brain was working in a different way because I was trying to follow rules I didn't understand or I was overwhelmed or lost or all these things. And actually a lot of the stories that you've heard me tell this season on this podcast, I can look at them through the lens of being autistic and they make a whole new kind of sense. All these moments: in tango, I couldn't read the social cues. In burlesque, I needed the structure. I can make sense of all these stories in a new way through the lens of being neurodivergent.
(06:34):
I have to tell you, doing this felt like the end of Oceans 11. Do you know when they're putting the stuff– this is spoilers if you haven't seen Oceans 11, but the last part of the movie, after they've done the heist, it flashes back to show you how they really did it. So they show you what was really happening the whole time. And there's one scene where we thought George Clooney was just locked in a room, and it turns out he escaped in the air vents. This is what it felt like. It felt like autism was in the air vents the whole time. All of this was amazing and very exciting for me. However, I had a big problem because while this was happening, this diagnosis came right when I was working on my memoir, the one that's out today, as I'm recording this.
(07:20):
It's on Audible already by the time you hear this episode, it's called You Will Not Recognize Your Life. While I was in the middle of writing it, I was actually quite late in that process. Suddenly I had this whole new lens to look at that story through, and I had a really hard decision to make. Do I try to rewrite the whole thing through this new understanding of myself and suddenly I'm writing a memoir about autism, or do I tell it as the person who originally wrote it who didn't yet know that she was autistic? And I really struggled with this, and ultimately I decided to tell it as the person who originally wrote it. Before I knew this about myself, I chose not to mention being autistic in that memoir. That was my safe condition for a daring decision. Why did I do that? Well, I was really new to the diagnosis and I wasn't ready to suddenly make a big pronouncement about my brain in this memoir.
(08:13):
I also wanted to honor the story that I'd been writing up until then, but I still wanted to be honest. So I did do something else. I coded myself as autistic, meaning I didn't mention the word, but I didn't hide all the things about myself in the story that I now see as neurodivergent. If you listen to the Audible Original, you'll hear it. I talk about wanting a script for dating, wishing I had an instruction manual for being a human, studying for dates like their midterm exams. If I was going to put this very vulnerable story out into the world, I was going to hold some parts of myself out of it that I wasn't ready to talk about explicitly yet. And making that choice, coding my traits instead of naming them, that was me creating safe conditions for myself. It let me tell my story the way that I was ready to tell it.
(09:08):
So today is the day that my memoir is being released, and I don't feel like I need to talk in code. I'm sitting in front of a microphone with my producer talking about my diagnosis, and this feels safe, this feels great. And you might be built like me, or you might be built differently. Your safe conditions might be really different from mine. You might need lots of open runway and space to experiment. Maybe that's what lets you take bigger risks. That's what lets you be yourself. So this isn't about identifying the safe conditions. This is about identifying yours. There's no universal right way to create those. What matters is figuring out what makes you feel secure enough to take creative leaps and being gentle with yourself while those needs change over time. So you probably know what your homework will be. Here's what I want you to think about.
(10:01):
What are your safe conditions for daring decisions? What do you need to feel secure enough to share a story, to be authentic, to take a risk? Okay, friends, I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is there's only one more episode left in the season. But the good news is we still have one more episode left in the season! So next week we're going to talk about what you do with all this new storytelling expertise that you now hold. How can you apply these beautiful personal storytelling skills to all kinds of communication and writing? It's going to be a can't miss episode. I hope you'll join us. And I have a big ask. Will you ask me your questions about storytelling? I'd love to know what your challenges are and maybe answer them in a future season of the story letter. I'll put a survey link for you to do that in the show notes, and I will give you a gold star for participation.
(11:00):
This episode was written and hosted by me, Micaela Blei. It was produced by Laura Boach. Theme music was the Duke of New York by Adrian D. Walther. I'm Micaela Blei, and this has been the Story Letter podcast. I'm so glad we're doing this.
OUTTAKES:
I don't want to mislead you. I feel like I should be honest. It's not water. It's tea. Yeah. I just don't want there to be any secrets between us. I am Micaela Blei. Hi. Hi. Hi. My mouth is so dry today. Okay, friends. It is very tea of me. Now that I hear it. That's good. I can lean into that. I don't mind. I know, I know. I'm kidding. I'm really building up the suspense. It turns out this podcast has been a scam the whole time. Look under your seat. You will find an envelope. In that envelope. You will find an address, okay? That's what I feel like right now.