Angie 00:09 Good Monday morning, everybody. We are an international show today — and the background you see from my guest, for those of you watching on video, is not fake. I’m going to hold you in suspense for a second and tell you more about that in a moment. Welcome to No More Mondays, the podcast where we believe humans still matter, mediocrity is expensive, and ownership changes outcomes. As always, I am your host, Angie Callen, and today we are digging into a topic every single one of you should care about: stories. I am joined by Chad Peterson, coming to us all the way from Ecuador — where he actually lives. That is not a fake background, y’all. Aren’t we all jealous? Chad is known in our circle and beyond as the Story Catcher, and his work centers around helping us uncover, preserve, and understand the stories that shape our lives. We’re not just talking about the big, obvious ones — but many times, the stories and experiences that define who we are and how we move through this world, sometimes without us even knowing why. Stories are our identity, and often the thing we tell ourselves is the most powerful thing of all. What does yours reveal? What does it reinforce? And is it time to rewrite one? Get ready for the ride. Chad, welcome to No More Mondays.

Chad 01:42 I’m glad to be here. And yes, it is a real background — you can see my laundry machine right behind me. I was trying to hide it, and I realized you can see the reflection of my shirt hanging up drying in the glass. So I’m just going to move over and own it.

Angie 01:52 That is authenticity in its finest — and also a breadcrumb to prove real background.

Chad 01:59 Or the weirdest fake one ever. You never know. So for those of you who track where I meet all the amazing people in my life, Chad is a long overdue member of the Thing community — a bunch of amazing people doing amazing things and helping others do the same. I want to dig into the Story Catcher concept first and set a foundation, because we know what storytelling is. We think about it in the context of performance, marketing, communication, maybe even interviewing. But what we’re going to talk about today is something different. Chad, lay the foundation — what is story catching, and how is it different from storytelling?

Chad 02:46 All of us have things in our lives that define who we really are, but they’re stories we’ve let get away from us. Because what we’ve done instead is take on the stories that everyone else told us we were supposed to live and who we were supposed to be. So I help you catch the stories that got away. I help you get back to who you were before you let everyone else edit the story.

Angie 03:15 Story catching isn’t about becoming somebody new. It’s becoming who you already were — who you were meant to be before you let everyone else define who you are now.

Chad 03:25 And that’s the really important thing — the applied story versus the true story inside. We all go through life conditioned by society and the expectations of others, and it’s easy to allow that true story to get away from us. But why does it matter so much to get back in tune and catch the stories that are really meant to be ours? I think one of the biggest things is the potential you’re missing out on — because you’re not living up to who you were created to become. The other is the peace, the joy, that comes from letting go of all that extra weight you never even asked to carry. It was just put on you, one little rock at a time, until one day you wake up and go, why is this bag so heavy? People have just been placing these stories on us, one little rock at a time. Story catching helps you dump that out so you can fill the bag up with what was supposed to be in there in the first place.

Angie 04:45 It’s almost like story throwing, so you can catch and keep the right ones. I didn’t plan that, but here we are. And I’ll do a shameless plug — many of you know I just released my first book, Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries. And we’re going to hold Chad’s feet to the fire because he has committed to releasing his first book this year. The journey of writing really became cathartic for me — my own exploration of a journey I knew had twists, turns, and beliefs I had changed. But it didn’t become obvious how much until I really sat down and got back in touch with it. So I’m wondering — beyond the potential we might lose, what else do we miss out on when we’re disconnected from our own stories?

Chad 05:37 Joy.

Angie 05:41 Joy. Three letters. Not even three words. That’s it. That’s the biggest one.

Chad 05:53 When you take back your own story, one of the biggest things you recognize is that you’re allowed to have joy in your life — because it’s necessary. It’s part of nourishing who you are. Typically what happens with people who are living everyone else’s story is they may reward themselves with some joy after they accomplish the things they felt they were supposed to accomplish. But in story catching, joy isn’t a reward. It’s nourishment. And it’s necessary.

Angie 06:27 You and I have both chosen to live in places we’re deeply connected to — and I think that’s part of our stories, the way we want to tell them to ourselves. We’ve also both made life decisions to let go of stories that didn’t serve us in order to get back in touch with the ones that do. And it’s sad that I feel like society has lost that. We’ve let joy go and put it in the hands of everyone else instead of ourselves.

Chad 07:18 We’re always in this go phase — constantly going, going, going. In story catching, we use a framework called ORIGIN, and the G is Go. But the problem is most people tend to start in Go. That’s the hummingbird. A hummingbird is so small but burns so many calories, and if it doesn’t nourish itself every three to three and a half hours, it can starve to death.

Angie 07:50 That’s why they drink sugar water incessantly — they drink joy.

Chad 08:00 They do it because it nourishes them. It gives them the strength to go where they need to go and be where they need to be. They can fly in any direction or hover when they need to be still. The problem is that we’re always going like a hummingbird — but we’re not nourishing ourselves.

Angie 08:22 We’re always going like a hummingbird, but we never stop and allow ourselves the sugar — literally and figuratively. So let’s go back to ORIGIN. If G is where a lot of us start, we’re missing the O. Fill us in.

Chad 08:46 O is Orient — associated with the serpent. There are four animal spirits in Andean culture that are deeply revered, and the serpent represents being grounded, because what’s more grounded than a snake? Its entire body is in contact with the earth. And so the biggest part of Orient is that you have to know where you are before you can go where you want to be. You can put a destination in a GPS, but if it can’t figure out where you are, it can’t give you directions. So we orient. We learn how to ground ourselves and recognize that right now, in this moment, I am enough — not because of anything I’ve done, but because I exist. And once I learn how to be, then I can become. I get to become because I get to choose it, not because it was placed on me. So after we orient, we move to R — Reveal — and we enter the Jaguar. The Jaguar sees in the dark. The Jaguar hunts. In South America, the Jaguar has no natural predators — it’s at the top of the food chain. And so we go and identify the stories that aren’t ours. We figure out why they’re still here, why they think they’re serving us, and how we can let them go.

Angie 10:24 So first we figure out where we are, then we reveal the stories that aren’t ours. Then we imagine the possibilities — and that’s the hummingbird?

Chad 10:40 Yes — Imagine is the hummingbird hovering, seeing what’s possible. What happens if I choose a different story? What if I tell it differently? We start to look at different perspectives — if this other person were to tell this story, what would they say? What would my coffee cup tell me today? We learn to think differently. And then, as we imagine what the possibilities are, we Go. But we have to imagine first. The problem with adults is we’re terrible at imagining. We confuse planning with imagining, or strategy with imagining. So first we learn how to imagine, we learn how to play — and then we go. And when we go, we start with what you and I have talked about: first pancake mentality. Guess what the first pancake always is?

Angie 11:38 Never perfect.

Chad 11:40 Never perfect. But just because the first pancake isn’t great doesn’t mean you don’t make the next one. You don’t cancel breakfast. But when we do something and we screw up, we say — well, I was never supposed to do this with my life. We give pancakes more grace than we give ourselves.

Angie 11:56 How ridiculous is that? And also completely true. You throw out the first one, or you eat it even though it’s not great. And there is actually a scientific reason for why the first pancake doesn’t come out perfectly — that is a rabbit hole for another show. But you don’t throw out the whole batch of batter because the first one didn’t come out right. You keep making them.

Chad 12:18 Exactly. And usually we don’t even throw the first pancake away — we still eat it. So the hummingbird is first pancake mentality. Go do something. Be completely messy with it. Go in knowing you’re going to suck, and be okay with that, because you’re sucking on the nectar of joy and going in because it’s your story. And if you’re going to suck, then right now you’re going to suck. But then the second, the third, the fourth pancakes start coming out, and you start thinking — wait, there’s something to this. And so the last two things we do are Integrate and Normalize — which takes us to the Condor.

Angie 13:14 The last two letters. Tell us about the Condor.

Chad 13:19 The Condor is the largest flying bird in the world. It doesn’t really flap its wings — it soars, because it knows how to use the energy that already exists. It can travel 200 miles. They’re amazing birds — near extinct here in the US, but you can still see them. If you want a spiritual moment, go see a condor at Zion National Park. But the thing is, they soar. They don’t flap. I live on a balcony here in Ecuador and I can see turkey vultures — cousins to the Condor — flying below me sometimes. I watched one spiral upward and fly over the house without flapping its wings once. And I remember journaling that day — I want to be that. I want to soar and use the energy that already exists, because I’m filled with joy, not because I’m in this constant hustle trying to do all the things everybody says I’m supposed to do. That’s what story catching helps you do. It gets you to a place where you can soar above, see things from a higher perspective, be filled with joy, know who you are, and know that right now, in this moment, you are enough. And that’s why we call it ORIGIN — because we get you back to who you were before you let everyone edit the story.

Angie 15:00 And it’s a spiral, right? You’re going to screw up, and that’s okay — you orient again. That’s not failure. It’s the process. And when you orient again after you’ve been story catching, you orient from a higher place than where you were before. I want to come back to the fear piece, because I think one of the reasons we don’t explore our own stories is fear of what we’re going to find. Fear of not doing it well. The perfectionist, performative mindset we live in — social media hasn’t helped. How do we get over that in order to get back to the origin?

Chad 16:36 So we would orient first. We’d get in touch with the serpent, recognize where we are, and then let the Jaguar reveal the stories that are creating the fear — because the fear comes from a story. And here’s the key: I’m not afraid. Fear is something that shows up to hold me back. Fear is separate from me. So when we identify these stories, we name them. We separate them from ourselves and put them outside of us. And then I have a conversation with fear. Why are you still here? What are you afraid is going to happen to me if I let you go? What are you trying to protect me from? And now when I’m afraid, I think — fear is showing up. Let me go talk to fear. Because I’m not afraid. Fear, for some reason, is afraid. But I’m not.

Angie 17:17 That’s not where I was trying to get you, but it’s exactly where I needed to get to. Fear and failure aren’t an identity. They are emotions and circumstances that oftentimes signal something important. Fear shows up — what is that trying to tell me about my story? And failing, like the first pancake, is not a catastrophe. It doesn’t mean the whole thing is over. We shouldn’t fear that, but somehow we do. So let’s say we’ve gotten ourselves from the serpent to the Jaguar, and we don’t like what we’ve found. A story we very much don’t want anymore. What do we do?

Chad 18:00 Two things — we’re always going to orient, always going to ground again, because when those scary stories show up, that’s why we teach people to orient first. Your nervous system starts to tense up. We call it the snake coil. Are you chilled out like a snake sunning on a rock? Or are you coiled tight? We identify where we are so I can say — okay, how can I get my nervous system to calm down? How can I slow my heart rate? Once I do that, I’m in a place to take the story I don’t want and start to imagine life without it. And in story catching, we spend very little time in the past. This is not trauma work. We’re looking for the moments where you beat the story you’ve been telling yourself. We imagine what’s possible and move forward. I’m not a trauma counselor or a therapist — and that’s an important distinction. This is a different relationship with your stories than unpacking them from a clinical standpoint. It’s about understanding the patterns they’ve created and choosing, consciously, what comes next.

Angie 20:18 And there’s a power that comes with knowing you are choosing. But first you have to get to the point where you can actually recognize and admit —

Chad 20:30 I haven’t been choosing.

Angie 20:32 That’s the breakthrough moment. When people realize — holy smokes, I thought I’d been choosing this whole time. But I haven’t. And now I have permission to choose. For everyone out there — what Chad is describing is very aligned with what I talk about in Scary Good as design versus default. Everything in life is a choice, even not making a choice. We can either accept that and exercise the agency we have, or we can not make choices and accept the default — and accept the lack of joy that comes with it. Inner work is not the prettiest thing on the planet. But we become more whole, more purposeful, more impactful humans because we’re reaching our potential and finding a way to exist joyfully in our own skin.

Chad 21:47 Exactly. And remember — it’s your own skin. You get to do what you want with it. You can even shed it, like a snake. We have a morning practice called shedding the skin where you set a timer for ten minutes and you just write. You don’t write about anything specific — you just unload. You don’t even go back and reread it. You’re shedding the skin for the day so you can ground yourself. We also do something called serpent breath. And then I go about my day, imagine what it’s going to be, integrate and normalize all these new things, and soar. I spent so much of my life performing on stage, and story catching allows you to stop performing and take back the pen — to be the script writer instead of the performer. I tried to be the good husband, the religious guy, all these different things, and I couldn’t keep it up because it just wasn’t who I was. I went through a painful divorce. I got asked to come teach a retreat here in Ecuador. My first time ever leaving the United States — at age 50 — not knowing the language, not knowing anyone. On the last day of the retreat, everybody got in the van to go back home, and I took my suitcase off and said — I’m going to stay.

Angie 23:37 And people thought you were nuts.

Chad 23:39 They did. The old version of me would have taken all of that into account and said — everybody’s going to think I’m crazy, who do I think I am, I can’t do this. But instead, I went down this path of studying Andean culture, combining it with narrative coaching and journal therapy, and created Story Catching. I started salsa dancing, got tattoos, got a big tattoo of the Chicana on my chest. People messaged me to say they’d unfollowed me because they thought I was throwing my life away — that I was going to become some alcoholic, tattooed hippie living in the mountains. And a year later, the first draft of my book is done. I just hosted my first retreat with seven people who came here to experience the magic of this place. I have a group coaching program, one-on-one clients, and my story is helping other people uncover and find their own. Because I stopped performing, stopped worrying about what everyone else thought, and got to go be me.

Angie 24:59 That’s a good summary. And what I’ll say is — if you’ve listened to this show even a handful of times, you know I fully believe all of us have a purpose on this earth, and that purpose is to impact others in some way. It could be one person, it could be a million. It doesn’t matter — if it is the purpose you were given to carry out, and you find it and create that impact, that’s a life well lived. You just synthesized perfectly what it looks like when you find that kind of alignment. Not only are you joyful, but look at all the other people who are finding joy because of you as a catalyst. None of that would have happened had you not said — I don’t care what you people think.

Chad 25:55 And ultimately, if you don’t allow yourself to understand your own stories, you’ll never be able to be a support system for someone else trying to do the same. In some way, shape, or form, all of us are here to carry out a purpose like that.

Angie 26:20 And Chad is a near and dear example of that — moving to a physical place that unlocked purpose and human potential. For those of you listening — Chad and I agree that we all have a reason we were created, that we’re all connected. But what that impact is, what your purpose is, why you were created — that’s up to you. Don’t go do it because Angie said you have to have an impact, or because Chad said go be a hummingbird. Figure it out for yourself. It starts with what Chad tells every client at the end of every call.

Chad 27:39 Right now, in this moment, I am enough — not because of anything I’ve done, but because I exist.

Angie 27:49 Say that again for everybody as we wrap up.

Chad 27:52 Right now, in this moment, I am enough — not because of anything I’ve done, but because I exist.

Angie 28:06 What relationship do you have with your stories? Are you a snake — or have you risen above to glide like the condor? Chad Peterson, this has been a pretty incredible conversation, my friend. Before we close out, tell everybody where they can find you.

Chad 28:31 Chad Peterson on LinkedIn or Facebook. The Real Story Catcher on Instagram. And if you go to thestorycatcher.com/quiz — or /test, depending on when this airs — there’s a free quiz that will show you which of the four animal spirits you’re most aligned with right now, and I’ll send you a free journal to help you dig into that particular spirit. A few days after that I’ll send you a longer journal — I think it’s 21 to 25 pages — that will take you through all four animal spirits in the ORIGIN framework so you can start uncovering and taking back your own story. Whatever the link is, it’ll be in the show notes — click it and go get this, because the number one way you all can stay human, no matter what this world throws at us, is to know your stories, understand your relationship to them, and choose which ones are really serving you.

Angie 29:46 And take a trip to Ecuador too — Chad hosts retreats there, which is a pretty great excuse to go. Could we have had a better conversation about identity and perspective? Shifting the lens with which we look at life is such a huge part of all of this work — so that we can choose the identity we want and accept the stories that help us shape how we live and lead. Chad, thank you so much for joining me today. If this conversation has you thinking — and I don’t know how it didn’t — share it with somebody who may need to hear it. Re-listen to it. Give us a shout out. Reach out to Chad or me if we can help you understand the stories that are shaping how you show up in the world. Until next time, here’s to fewer Sunday scaries and No More Mondays.