Latest / Typology / Exploring the Power of Storytelling: Insights from Allison Fallon and Donald Miller

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Exploring the Power of Storytelling: Insights from Allison Fallon and Donald Miller · Typology

0:02
Hey, folks, and welcome to Typology, the
0:06
show on which we explore the mystery of the human personality and
0:11
the human adventure all through the lens of the Enneagram. We've
0:15
got another fantastic guest, author, speaker,
0:19
and founder of Find Your Voice, a
0:22
community that supports anyone who wants to write anything. In
0:26
addition to her books, The Power of Writing It Down, Packing
0:30
Light, and Indestructible, she's also ghostwritten 11 books
0:34
and collaborated with countless others. Today, she's bringing her brand
0:38
new book, Write Your Story, a simple formula
0:41
to understand yourself, your story, and your purpose in
0:45
the world. Alison Fallon, we're so glad she's back. She
0:48
is Enneagram 4, with a hardcore three-wing,
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I think. We talked through her story today, really
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captivating. I know you're going to love this interview with Allison, and
0:59
I know you're going to want to go out and get her book, too. She tells
1:03
a really compelling story as to why we all should be writing, which
1:07
I personally love. So glad you're here, folks. That's
1:10
it for me, Anthony Skinner. And now, let's get to our host,
1:21
Hey, Typology friends, Ian Cron here. Welcome back
1:25
to the podcast on which we explore the mystery of the human personality
1:29
and the human adventure through the lens of the Enneagram. I'm
1:33
joined today, I am fortunate, twice, I
1:36
have now had my friend Don Miller, Enneagram 3. He
1:39
is back on the show today with our mutual friend, Allie Fallon, Enneagram
1:48
So I'm stoked about your new book right your story a
1:51
simple framework to understand yourself your story and your purpose
1:55
in the world because. I wrote a book called The Story of
1:58
You, and I am fascinated with the power of narrative and
2:02
how the agency that
2:06
human beings have to rewrite their narrative. But let's
2:09
talk for a moment about the narrative of the Enneagram Four, because I
2:12
do think that each type does have a story that it tells itself
2:16
and others about who they are and how they think the world works. So
2:21
talk to me about the narrative of the Enneagram Four that kind of
2:27
Yeah. Okay, so I'm an Enneagram 4. If I had to
2:30
put the 4 into a narrative, at least through
2:33
my own lens, I would say it's something like, in order to
2:37
really succeed in my life, I have to do something special or significant, or
2:41
I have to be someone special or significant. And I would say that
2:44
narrative definitely drives me as a 4. I
2:48
also have a really strong three-wing, and I think the two play together and
2:51
then also argue with each other. Yes. So
2:55
my three-wing, you know, when I walk into a room, my three-wing scans
2:59
the situation and makes an assessment about what's expected
3:03
of me. How should I act? Who should I be? How do I need to
3:06
behave in order to fit in here? in order to be like the best of the best in
3:09
the room. My four says to me, in order
3:13
to stand out, you need to do something unique and different. And so in a way that those two
3:17
things fight with each other, but they also play into each other.
3:21
I feel like I walk into a room kind of in my
3:24
head sometimes, always trying to figure out like, who do I need to be or how do
3:27
I need to act in order to stand out or be impressive? And
3:31
so, I mean, I feel like I'm just starting kind of what would be
3:34
considered the second half of my life. But the more mature that I get as I come
3:38
into the back half of my life, the more I'm really trying
3:41
to surrender that narrative and just
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show up and be authentic and not need to impress
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other people. But I think that has been the sort
3:52
of be significant, do something important has been the driving narrative of
3:59
Well, I think this whole idea of understanding the
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importance, the narratival dimension
4:07
of life is a very four thing. It
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is the world in which fours love
4:15
to swim and rich and just dense with
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metaphor, right? So tell us
4:22
about the book because I want to know, I know
4:25
that for you, the journey of helping people write
4:32
Yeah, well, I mean, to talk on to what you just said, too, I think part of why I've been drawn
4:36
to this work, and I will talk about the book in just a second because it
4:39
relates to this, but part of why I've been drawn to this work is because of
4:42
the four in me, which is really drawn to
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what makes a person unique, different, special,
4:50
interesting, to other people? What is it
4:53
that sets people apart? Everybody's story to me is fascinating. I
4:57
come into the experience of helping someone map out
5:00
a story, and my work has been primarily in publishing. I've been helping people write
5:03
memoirs. So I come into that experience already
5:07
with the assumption that someone has a fascinating story to
5:10
tell and I just have to figure out what the angle is. What is it
5:14
that makes this person so interesting? And then I also think as a four, I have
5:17
a unique ability to go really deep into someone's story and to hear the details
5:20
of their story that other people might resist or shy away from because
5:25
they can be uncomfortable to handle or whatever. But I get excited
5:29
when the juicy details of the story come out. or when someone is really
5:32
vulnerable and raw with me, I feel like I have a unique ability to
5:36
go there with someone and to draw out the most interesting parts
5:40
of that story to put it on the page in a way that can be really interesting to
5:43
a reader. So that's really how I got into this work is that for the
5:46
last 15 years I've been helping people publish mostly
5:50
memoirs, not exclusively memoirs, but working in
5:53
non-fiction, helping people write books. Over
5:58
the years, as I did this with people, I would sit down with someone for a
6:01
day or a week or whatever and help them map out their book, and a
6:04
lot of times, be involved in the writing and editing process of that book too. I
6:08
just started to go, every single person I meet is fascinating. I've
6:12
never met a person. People come into those meetings going, Oh,
6:15
I'm not sure if my book is going to be that interesting. I don't know if I really
6:19
have something that interesting to say. And it's
6:22
never once happened where I've left a meeting and gone, oh, yeah, you're
6:25
right. You don't have anything interesting to say. It's just a matter of
6:29
sort of getting the right angle on it. And so I started to go after
6:32
about 10 or 12 years of doing this. This can't be true for
6:35
just people who have a dream of publishing a book. It has to
6:38
be true for everybody, that everybody has something interesting to say. Everybody
6:42
has an interesting angle on their life. And that's where Write Your Story was
6:45
born, was just under this assumption that everyone
6:49
has an interesting story to tell. And that when you begin to see yourself as
6:53
the hero of your own story and you start to see your narrative, your life narrative,
6:57
as inherently interesting, that you become more engaged in
7:00
it. And you discover the agency that you always had inside of
7:03
the story to shape it into what you want it to be or into more of what you want it to be.
7:08
I go back and forth between some days I feel like you have total
7:11
agency, some days I feel like you have less agency, but at the
7:15
least it is collaborative, it's co-creative. And
7:19
we have a lot more control over our destiny, so to speak,
7:24
So there's a, I think it was James Hillman, really
7:28
the great, he's a great Jungian thinker, and he
7:31
said, you know, what happens to you in childhood is not nearly as important as
7:34
what you tell yourself about what happened to you in childhood. Your
7:38
interpretation of it is what drives
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I think that's the first time I've heard that quote, but it's a foundational premise
7:47
of this book, too, which is that not just in childhood, but in your
7:51
adult life, that the things that happen to you happen to you, but they're
7:54
not nearly as important as the story that you choose to tell about it. So,
7:57
you know, another place that this book was born from is I went through a really dark time
8:01
in my life. I went through a divorce. It was a major left
8:04
turn for me. I didn't see it coming. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath of
8:07
me. It shook a lot of different areas of my life
8:11
because I was also in business with this person. He was also a pastor,
8:14
so I felt like it really touched my faith and every
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aspect of my life. And the way that I
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found my way through that really dark time was by writing about it.
8:25
At first, I thought that was just because, well, I'm a writer, that's my
8:29
profession. Of course, I would write about it. But the more I thought about it, the more
8:32
I realized writing for me was not just, I
8:36
wasn't just doing it because this was my profession, I wasn't getting paid for it. At
8:40
the time I was doing it, I didn't think I would ever publish the story. I was
8:43
doing it as a way to see the situation more clearly and
8:47
to decide for myself how I wanted to tell the story to myself. I
8:50
thought I could either tell the story, like
8:55
bad people do bad things to you and it's just a bummer and
8:59
you got caught kind of a wind of bad luck or whatever. Or I
9:03
could tell the story that we have much more agency than that and
9:06
all kinds of things happen to you and you get to decide what you want to make them mean. And
9:10
as I chose the second meaning, I realized I felt
9:14
better. I felt more confident. I felt less angry toward him.
9:17
I was able to forgive and release what had happened between
9:21
us. I also was able to more clearly
9:24
see my side in all of it, that I was a willing participant in every
9:27
single part of this. And that actually made
9:31
me feel safer moving forward in the world, rather than
9:35
like bad people are just out there and they could come and get you. It's like, I
9:39
saw how I opened the door to this experience and
9:43
what role I played in opening that door. And that made me feel like, oh, I actually have
9:46
agency and control over even that. Of course, there are people out there who are
9:50
looking to manipulate you or control you or take something from you. But when
9:53
you see that you play a role in inviting those people in,
9:56
then you have something that you can do about that.
10:00
And so it was really, really empowering for me. It totally, I mean, I could draw
10:03
a line in the sand. It changed my life. I'm a different person
10:07
now than I was before that experience happened. And I really think it's because
10:16
You know, Anthony, we all deal with stressors in
10:19
different ways. Whether they're big or small, when we keep them
10:22
bottled up, it can negatively affect our mental health and
10:27
Absolutely. For instance, I just graduated, two children,
10:31
I'm about to become an empty nester, and that carries a bit
10:35
It does, brother. I have been there. And when I start
10:38
feeling weighed down, it's important for me to pause and take a moment to
10:42
bring things back into balance. Now, for me, that could be
10:45
reading a good book, taking the dogs for a walk, or calling a friend to
10:48
get whatever is bothering me off my chest. But the first step is
10:52
always to identify my stressors, brother. For some, however,
10:56
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11:43
Don, I'm hearing echoes of a story that I actually tell in
11:47
the story of you about you on your bike ride and losing
11:51
weight on the journey and you having
11:55
this epiphany. I don't know if it was a
11:58
sudden one or a gradual one where you have this realization, I'm
12:03
not living the story that I want to be living. This is not
12:07
Yeah, or like if you were, okay, so
12:11
I can testify, I've known Ali, I know her, I knew her before she,
12:15
you know, went through this divorce and after and she's
12:18
a hundred percent different human being. I do think there's that,
12:22
okay, so in story, in story structure, The
12:26
villain and the hero usually have very similar backstories
12:30
in the sense that they both experienced pain,
12:35
trauma, loss, those sorts of things. But the villain seeks
12:39
vengeance on a world that hurt them, and the hero seeks
12:44
both justice and prevention of that hurt
12:47
ever happening to anybody else. But it was
12:51
the same spark that started two different kinds
12:54
of fire. I think Ali is probably, other
12:58
than celebrity figures like Nelson Mandela, we
13:03
could list a ton of people, John McCain
13:06
would be one of these people, who experienced trauma and
13:11
were victims and turned it into a
13:15
heroic story in which they served the world. I
13:19
would say of the people that I know, Allie is the
13:23
biggest display of
13:27
that. In other words, if you were betting on
13:30
Allie to be a bitter, resentful human being 15 years
13:34
ago, it would have been a safe bet. She'd beat
13:38
the odds. I
13:41
would say part of that has to be because she sat and analyzed her own story
13:48
Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think it forced
13:52
me to really look at myself very clearly in a way that I
13:55
couldn't have done without that practice. So very kind words. Thank
13:59
you for saying that, Don. I do think that the writing practice I talk
14:02
about in the book, that writing
14:05
is like looking at yourself in the mirror, that you can have someone
14:09
describe you to yourself, but it's not as accurate as
14:12
looking at yourself in the mirror. And I think it's one of the
14:15
things that makes writing so challenging. We talk about writer's
14:19
block. I don't think writer's block is writer's block. I think it's
14:23
a block of not wanting to see yourself very clearly. And
14:27
that when you can open up a willingness to see things more
14:30
clearly, then you actually open up the ability to get
14:36
So Allie, when Don was speaking
14:39
about you just for a moment ago, what happened inside of you when
14:44
I mean, it's so fascinating to
14:48
hear it reflected back. I'm not sure how to describe the feeling. I
14:51
feel a lot of gratitude, and I feel Yeah,
14:57
I think it's gratitude. I mean, maybe some sense of just pride
15:01
in myself, but it's more gratitude than
15:05
that. It's like, I'm just so grateful that I made it
15:08
to the other side of that experience without the
15:11
potential opposite of the experience, which, like he said, would have been
15:15
bitterness and despair and a life of suffering
15:19
unforgiveness. And when I think about how different my life would have been, I
15:24
can't feel anything other than gratitude. If I had camped on
15:28
the narrative of, well, I talked about this on
15:31
the Business Made Simple podcast, but the first narrative was like, men
15:35
are jerks. If I had
15:38
camped on that narrative, I wouldn't be married to
15:41
my husband now, I wouldn't have my two beautiful children, I wouldn't
15:45
be happy, I wouldn't be thriving in my life.
15:50
I'd be carrying around the burden of that heavy,
15:54
heavy narrative. And so to have this other narrative that's
15:58
been born from this, like everything that, you know, one of the big
16:01
narratives that was born for me was everything that happens to me is an opportunity to
16:04
learn. And just an acceptance that like
16:08
there will be things that happen to you in this life, some of them are going to be pleasant, some
16:11
of them are going to be less than pleasant, and every single thing that takes place in your life
16:14
is an opportunity to learn. And that really shifted
16:18
the, it turned the ship for me and created a
16:21
completely different reality that I'm living now that's like
16:24
the fulfillment of lifelong dreams, you know? I have
16:29
a really lovely, sturdy, happy partnership with
16:33
my husband who's a kind man and very
16:37
collaborative. We just have a really happy, lovely
16:41
relationship. I've got two happy, healthy kids. When
16:45
I think about that, the most important things in my life would
16:49
not be there if I hadn't taken the time to
16:53
write about what was happening to me and shifted the narrative. I just feel
17:05
I don't know if I would describe myself as content. That
17:08
three-wing I was talking about, I'm very driven. I'm always
17:12
like looking to the next thing. I have a lot of contentment
17:17
with, you know, my marriage now and my children are
17:21
the fruit of dreams that I've had for
17:24
a very long time. I feel a lot of contentment and
17:28
gratitude for that. And I have a lot of things that I want to do left
17:33
Yeah, I asked because it's a it's a theme for me in
17:36
my own life right now. And I'm always curious when I ask people, are
17:40
you happy? Are you content? Yeah. And I
17:43
do listen when I'm with people to their
17:47
gratitude quotient. Yeah, like, I think that is
17:52
I think gratitude is like, it sounds
17:56
so Pollyannish or so hackneyed, you know, grateful
18:00
people. It's like, no, actually it's powerful crap. It
18:03
is powerful crap. And you do not mess
18:06
around with gratitude, like to cultivate a grateful heart
18:11
is in many ways part of the secret sauce of
18:15
a great life. To live
18:18
in a place of profound gratitude as often
18:22
and as much as possible, huge. All right, take me on
18:25
the journey of the book. Let's say you're running me through the paces.
18:32
So I take readers from a place of having a story from their life that
18:35
they know they want to share, or that's kind of tugging on
18:38
them, to putting that on the page. I
18:42
teach them how to turn that into a piece of writing that's about three
18:45
to five pages long. So in the first go, you're not
18:49
writing your memoir because that's a big, big task to take on. So
18:52
I wanted to make this a no-brainer for people who don't call themselves writers, who
18:56
have never done something like this before. I wanted this to be
18:59
like a really simple, low-hanging fruit that anybody could do. So
19:03
I teach the readers a framework that they can use to take an
19:06
experience from their life and turn it into a piece of writing that they could share with someone else.
19:11
And I talk about in the book, sharing can look like sharing with your therapist. It
19:14
can look like sharing with one trusted other. It could be
19:17
like your spouse or a best friend or something. Or sharing could look
19:20
like sharing on Instagram or sharing on a blog or sharing on
19:24
Substack or however you want to do it. You could share from a TED stage if
19:27
you wanted to. So whatever sharing looks like for you, that
19:31
sharing piece is part of the process because one
19:34
of the things I talk about is that writing your story is very connective, that
19:37
it connects us to other people. And so the act of
19:41
sharing your story with someone else is part of the writing process. And
19:44
sometimes that sharing is just sharing it with yourself for the first time.
19:48
Mm-hmm. So yeah, I teach people a framework, and I
19:51
teach them to take one experience from their life and to turn that into
19:55
a piece of writing. And then if they want to put that process on repeat, they
19:58
can. And you could write 20 or 30 or 50 stories from your
20:01
life, and you could turn that into a memoir if you wanted to. But I just wanted
20:05
the task to be small enough that the average person who
20:08
doesn't consider themselves a writer or hasn't been in a writing class anytime recently
20:13
could easily pick up the book and get the job done.
20:16
Wonderful. So years ago, I wrote a memoir, and I
20:20
remember I finished it and I gave it to my editor, and
20:24
his name was Dave Lambert, and he was a great, great, great, great guy. And
20:27
he said, okay, Ian, well, what we have now is
20:31
a collection of really good stories. But
20:35
he said, when readers pick up a memoir, the
20:39
question they're asking themselves is, What
20:44
was the scarlet thread that
20:47
ran through the whole of this tapestry
20:52
that helped you survive and thrive, to flourish, to change, whatever
20:56
it was? And I remember I was in a hotel in westerly
21:00
Rhode Island. having this conversation with him. It was raining outside.
21:03
I remember exactly where I was. And as I
21:06
was standing there, I realized that
21:10
in five or six different places in the book, I wrote about the Eucharist. I
21:14
wrote about being a Catholic kid. I wrote about the experience. And
21:18
I realized that that was the scarlet thread that
21:22
ran through the whole of my life in that book. That that was the
21:25
unifying experience that made sense of my world.
21:30
And it was as if a light went on, you know, as I
21:34
told that story. And I say that because, one, I
21:37
want to know what the scarlet thread is that runs through your story,
21:41
if in fact it comes to you right away. that
21:45
ties and makes the whole thing cohere and gives it
21:48
meaning, as if it elevates it almost, you know? Like, ah,
21:53
that's it. But also as a way to give testimony to
21:57
what you're doing, which is to say that when you write
22:00
your story or pieces thereof, that
22:04
you begin to see things about your life that you
22:07
could not have gotten at any other way, which is why I think your book is so
22:11
Yeah, you have my brain spinning to think about. In publishing, I've
22:15
heard it called the one golden thread or the scarlet thread,
22:19
as you said. That's another way to say it. In the book, we talk about the controlling idea
22:23
of the story, and every story needs to have that. It is the
22:26
connective tissue that holds the story together. And
22:30
I liked what you shared about writing the stories first and
22:33
then seeing the connective tissue later. Yes. Because you
22:37
can do it either way. Sometimes you- Yes. You know the controlling idea ahead
22:40
of time before you sit down to write, and sometimes you have to see it on
22:43
the page, and then it's almost like it's reflected back
22:47
to you, like it's shown to you. And the way I say it in the book
22:50
is that your life starts to speak to you when you
22:53
put the events on paper. As far
22:56
as the one golden thread for my life story, I'm
23:01
genuinely not just saying this, but I feel like the first, I'm
23:05
about to be 41 in a couple of days, the first 40 years of
23:08
my life, this book, almost like the climactic
23:12
scene of the first 40 years of my life. My first company
23:15
that I founded was called Find Your Voice, and I was working on publishing ghostwriting
23:20
books, helping people outline their memoirs. I've
23:23
written a couple of memoirs of my own. I published my first memoir back in 2013, and
23:28
I wrote the story of my divorce. I was able to publish that story later. I
23:32
feel like the connective tissue of my life has been all about storytelling,
23:36
about finding my own voice and sharing it and about helping other people find their
23:39
voice and to share it and to stand in confidence that
23:43
who I am matters and deserves to show up here
23:46
in the world and teaching other people to do the same. And this
23:51
book feels like kind of the climactic scene of all of that. It's like everything that
23:54
I've learned and wanted to say for a couple of decades all
23:57
put into a book. And so I don't know
24:01
if that thread will continue through the second half of my life or if there
24:04
will be a pivot and it will be something a little different or I'm
24:08
not totally sure, but it really does feel like the theme of
24:12
my life has been about telling stories, telling
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a free $60 gift. That's thrive, T-H-R-I-V-E,
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market.com slash typology, thrivemarket.com slash
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typology. I
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love that. Hey, Don, what about for you? What's the golden thread? What's the scarlet
25:40
thread that runs through the whole of your life that makes the thing cohere as
25:46
Well, I was thinking about Ali's story and how Ali's
25:50
got that story that a
25:53
lot of us, Ian, you're one of these guys and I'm one of these guys, we
25:57
kind of went off like a firework. When we released
26:00
a book and it did something, I think Ali's going to
26:04
have a 30-year journey being a bigger contributor than
26:09
either of us combined. And
26:12
it's going to be the story of one humble contribution stacked
26:16
on top of another to create a big monument. I'm
26:20
a big fan. I'm obviously a big fan. So, you know, I
26:24
would want to say that, you know, as I thought about Ali's story,
26:28
you know, I couldn't think of anything positive with mine. Like,
26:31
what's the thread? Don Miller's story. It's like, uh,
26:35
Hey, I fucking matter too. You know, that would be kind of the only thing that, you
26:48
know, so I'm not sure I'll, I'll try to come up with something better than that answer here.
26:52
I do. I will say, Allie, the experience in that hotel room
26:55
was electric for me. Yes. Because
26:59
first of all, I didn't know that rule in memoir writing. I was new at writing
27:03
memoir. I'd written a novel before that, but I didn't know. I
27:07
wrote a novel intuitively. I never studied writing novels. I
27:10
had read a crap ton of them, but I'd never. And
27:14
then here I am writing out my story, and it's blah, blah, blah.
27:18
And when he said, so what is the one thing? And I went, oh
27:21
my gosh. And it's so interesting, right? I was an Episcopal priest.
27:25
And I always told people I became a priest not because I like to preach. Actually,
27:29
I don't like preaching. I don't like sermons. I love
27:32
celebrating at the table. That, to me, is like everything.
27:36
And it goes down into the bone and the blood of
27:39
my childhood growing up in Catholic mass and as an altar
27:43
boy. And there was just something in the numinous
27:46
experience of that that was so at
27:50
the core of my person. And there it was. It was in the book, but the book
27:53
told me in that moment what... Yes.
27:57
That's the crazy thing about writing down. You've had that. Yes. When
28:00
your characters tell you things and you're like,
28:03
oh my gosh, I better not disobey them. Yeah. I
28:08
Yeah. It's crazy. Another question that I'd ask both
28:12
you guys and Anthony too, is in
28:15
every story, there's a story question that drives
28:19
the plot. Will Jason Bourne figure out who he
28:22
is? Will Bridget Jones find love? There's
28:26
a story question, and there's almost always, if
28:30
it's a good story, there's one dominant story question.
28:33
It creates the obligatory scene where the screenwriter is obliged
28:37
or obligated to answer the question. I'd
28:41
be curious as to what's another way to phrase it would be, what's
28:44
the story question that drives your life? For me, it
28:48
really is, what's the simple truth here? If you're
28:51
looking at religion, what's the simple truth here? What's
28:55
behind all the smoke and mirrors and what's really happening? In
29:00
business, as I wrote business book, what's really
29:04
happening to grow a small business? What's really happening in
29:08
the way we engage messaging? And so
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I'm curious as to what you guys would say, what's the story question that
29:18
Yes. Well, I can tell you what it was for part of my life, but
29:22
I do think these questions change. Yes. They need to
29:26
change as we mature. Yeah, if they don't, I think
29:29
it's actually a sign of some kind of blockage. I
29:34
think for a long time, the question, I wrote this down the moment you said it, will
29:40
Wow. I would say yes, that may
29:44
change or have different, but it's probably going to be a lifelong suit.
29:49
Yeah. Maybe that's the driving plot of
29:52
all of the chapters of Ian Cran's and the
29:58
Maybe we answer the question in different ways
30:04
He did it as a novelist, he did it as a therapist, he did it as
30:08
a memoirist, and now he's doing it as probably more of a therapy, the
30:13
Enneagram route. But that says a lot about what drives Ian
30:18
Yeah, but not like it did. There
30:25
Because you answered the question, yes. Well, I
30:29
in your actions, in your, in your, yeah, I
30:32
think, uh, like, so we
30:36
recorded another podcast, just you and I and Anthony right before this. And
30:40
I was thinking about, uh, I asked you
30:43
question about this new phase of your life and, and what
30:47
you'd learned from a recent experience. And. One
30:50
of the reasons I asked is I find myself in
30:53
this period of my life weirdly surprised and
30:58
delighted by a sense of wholeness and
31:02
peace and contentment. That's why I asked about contentment. I
31:07
have been surprised in the last, and I
31:10
think Anthony can, I hope, testify to the truth of that, that in
31:13
the last year, two years, that
31:17
I have... I
31:21
have found a wholeness that I didn't think I would ever find, and
31:25
a feeling of peace and contentment that is not enervating. I
31:29
still feel like I have things to do, I want to do, I want to get done, I
31:32
want to share. But everything has really shifted inside me,
31:36
and I'm almost hesitant to say it out loud for fear that God might take
31:39
it away. But it's true. I
31:43
can't even explain it. It's so beautiful. Yeah,
31:46
I don't it's like such a gift. I don't I didn't I didn't like, you
31:53
I mean, from an outside perspective, what if what if the reason for that is
31:56
that the story question that is permeated your
32:03
I mean, when you get the end of a story, and the couple get
32:07
married, or the hero disarms the
32:10
bomb, the story question was answered. Well, and that
32:15
Yeah. So there's a, Don, and
32:19
Ali, see if this resonates with you. So, and
32:22
Anthony, I think I read this on our porch one night when we had a bunch of
32:25
guys over smoking cigars and you all were drinking and I was watching. And
32:32
I was talking about Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize speech.
32:35
Have you guys ever read it? No. It is extraordinary. And
32:39
there's a moment in it that as a four, I cannot help but cry every time
32:43
I read it. He talks about he is
32:47
with his 12-year-old self in Auschwitz,
32:51
and he says in the speech, he says, now as I accept this
32:55
prize, I see that 12-year-old in Auschwitz, my
32:58
12-year-old self, and that boy looks at
33:02
me and he says, tell me, what have
33:05
you done with our future? And
33:08
Vizel's answer to the 12 year old is, I
33:14
Oh, I mean, it's such a four moment, but it's like, it
33:17
is this, you know, hard, hard earned bit
33:22
of wisdom. Uh, what have you done with our future?
33:26
And, um, I get choked up even just talking about it right now, because,
33:31
because that does resonate with me growing up in a
33:34
crazy house and, Sometimes if I
33:38
were to talk to that kid and he said to me, what have you done with our future? I
33:42
would have to say, I think my answer wouldn't be I tried. I
33:46
would be like, I think I would just say, I don't
33:49
know how to answer that question except to say, I think I found that we
33:55
You know, it reminds me of a story that I
33:59
experienced at onsite workshops, you know, they do sort of experience therapy and
34:02
the therapist was trying to I don't know what she was trying to fix in
34:06
me, but she said, you know, I want you to look at yourself as
34:09
a child, as a 12 year old child, same story and
34:12
say, tell me how you have taken care of me.
34:17
Tell me what you did to, to protect me
34:20
and to get me out of this. And it was, she was trying to say, she
34:24
was trying to get me to acknowledge the fact that I'd done okay.
34:27
You know, done well. Yeah. But, uh, that you
34:31
just reminded me of that. But I also think this is
34:35
what writing memoirs is about. The
34:39
healing in it and the transformation you
34:42
get from writing it all down is really
34:47
I just had this experience while I was sitting here because I was thinking about
34:51
how good these questions are about what's the one golden thread of your life? What's the story
34:54
question that's driving your life? When you asked that question, Don, I
34:57
wrote a question down. on my paper that's sitting right here. It's
35:00
the only thing I've written on my paper since we've been sitting here. And immediately
35:04
after I wrote it, I was like, ooh, I shouldn't say that.
35:07
That doesn't make me look that good if that's the story question of my life. And
35:11
I was like, wow, that's like a meta version of what writing does
35:15
for us is Something about picking up the pen and putting
35:18
it to paper helps you access a more truthful part of
35:21
yourself than you would if you were just having a conversation in
35:25
daily dialogue. You put it on the page, and then you have the choice
35:28
whether you want to look at that honestly or not. And when you do look at
35:31
it honestly, it makes everything about your life make sense. It makes
35:34
everything about you make sense. It may not be always comfortable
35:38
to look at, or it may not be something that you feel really proud to go share with the world immediately.
35:42
But it it will make the puzzle pieces click together for you. And
35:46
the more you look at it, the more and the more you can accept this
35:49
is the truth of who I am. This is what happened to me. This is how I felt about it.
35:52
This is what you know, this is the story that I made up about myself. This is
35:56
what went on. The more you can acknowledge that and accept it
35:59
and even see it from a place of compassion, the more that
36:02
it heals and the loop closes and the question gets answered. And
36:05
then I do think you get to move on to another question. So
36:09
like the question I wrote down on my paper was, how do I know that I matter? And
36:13
I think that question has driven the whole
36:16
first half of my life. And to give
36:20
myself some credit, I think I have tried to answer that question for
36:23
myself and then hopefully tried to help other people
36:26
answer the question as well through writing about their stories. But
36:30
I guess, in some ways, I hope that that question is
36:34
kind of closed for me, like the loop has been closed
36:37
and the question has been answered and I can move on to something. While also
36:41
accepting that's a perfectly human question to ask, I
36:44
hope that in the next 40 years of my life, I can move
36:48
on to a different question. A very for question, too, by the way. I hope that question is
36:52
Very fore, very fore question. But don't you think that, I
36:56
think, and you're at that 41 marker, Dawn, you're
37:00
53, I'm 63, so there's like, it's interesting, we have people
37:03
all at the beginning of new decades, right? Yeah. And I
37:07
do think that the older we get, there's this sort
37:11
of moment, and Allie, I think this is probably where you
37:14
are, and this book is emblematic of it, right? It's like, how do
37:21
I'm not as cool or as, I
37:25
live in East Nashville now, I'm daily reminded of how uncool I am. I'm
37:29
the guy still walking around in hokas. But
37:34
the question now becomes not how can I rack
37:38
up accomplishments that prove value, but now how
37:41
can I just give away what it is I've learned in
37:45
a way that makes a difference to other people and gives
37:48
my life meaning? And I, wow, this conversation can
37:52
go on forever, kids, but it can't. We are talking with Allie Fallon
37:55
and Donald Miller, and we're talking about this great new book, Write Your
37:59
Story, A Simple Framework to Understand Yourself, Your Story and
38:02
Your Purpose in the World by our friend, Allie.
38:06
Allie, I mean, I'm stoked about this book. I do
38:09
believe in the power of story. I know the difference that
38:13
telling story and reading story has made in my life and
38:17
how it has made sense of my world. I
38:20
know that this book will help others to help people enter into a
38:26
Yeah, that's a beautiful way to say it. I hope that that's the
38:30
Yeah. Wow. Fantastic. All right, everybody, I want you to right now,
38:34
get on Amazon and get this new book, write your
38:38
story, a simple framework to understand yourself, your story and your purpose
38:41
in the world by Alison Fallon, F-A-L-L-O-N. Allie,
38:48
The best place to find me is on Instagram. That's where I'm the most active. And it's just
38:55
Beautiful. Don Miller, as always, what a joy, man.
39:02
Yeah, indeed. And Anthony, as always, brother, I
39:08
And you, and Typology friends, please remember, as
39:12
always, may you have love, may you have joy, may you have peace, may
39:15
you have healing, and may you have rest. Until next time.