StoryJacking: Change Your Inner Dialogue, Transform Your Life

With StoryJacking, life coach Lyssa Danehy deHart provides tools for changing your life stories, for digging out inculcated limiting beliefs and replacing them with empowering narratives. She has chosen to call her method of working with these life stories “storyjacking,” with all the implications inherent in the use of the verb “to jack.” The big one that comes to my mind is that of hijacking. Her lessons teach us to take our life stories back over.

Danehy deHart’s assertion that stories are psycho-diagnostic, that they tell us the condition of our psyches, was compelling food for thought. She wasn’t just talking about the stories we tell ourselves but about how we perceive the stories around us, how the details we focus on reflect issues in our lives. This echoes the Jungian and shamanic concept of the Shadow and how the things that irritate the hell out of us in others reflects our own hidden Shadow aspects back to us.

The information on neuroplasticity was fascinating to me. I already knew about the concept, of course, but still I find it interesting to read about. In fact, reading about it here prompted me to resume my language studies. No matter your age, tackling new things encourages new neural pathways to form or strengthens those that are fading. Not only can you use neuroplasticity to change your life stories but to learn new skills and keep your brain younger.

I found many of the lessons to echo don Miguel Ruiz’s Toltec wisdom books. I love to see different takes on ideas like these. The exercises Danehy deHart gives strike me less as exercises and more as food for thought, as nuggets to help get us thinking. Danehy deHart presents these ideas and tools but is never forceful with them. Several times she encourages readers to peruse her tools, use them if they find them useful and, if they don’t, to find tools that do resonate with them. I think this is a most wonderful attitude to have. If you find yourself wanting to change your inner narratives, to weave a new story for yourself, StoryJacking offers a brilliant manner of doing so. This is a very good resource for beginning or continuing on the journey to unmask your own limiting beliefs and rewrite your future.