When I began my career as a holistic health counselor, over 8 years ago, it was all about answers. It was about knowing everything I possibly could about individualized nutrition, behavioral science and general wellness.

The same thing applied in my world of being a yoga teacher – I became a voracious student of alignment, philosophy, physiology and sequencing. I even learned Sanskrit. I wanted to have access to any and all information that would help my students and clients achieve what they wanted.

Devouring facts also stoked my ego, kept me busy in preparation mode and suppressed my insecurities about being qualified.

The pursuit of more knowledge, and the delivery of all that good ‘knowing’, worked for a while. Until it didn’t.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that people don’t really want answers or stock solutions to their problems. What they want is to be heard, acknowledged, related-to. Even when I had the perfect solution, it was rarely heeded. I should have known, from my own experience, that being told what to do creates all sorts of resistance.

I don’t really like getting advice, even when I ask for it. Maybe you’re like that, too. I want the person I’m asking to first listen, then perhaps to gently and lovingly turn me in the right direction to discover the truth for myself.

Excavating your own answer, in your right time, can create miracles. It allows the realization and implementation of something that originates from inner wisdom, as opposed to external expertise. (How can we ever be experts about any other being, anyway?)

So I stopped acting as if I had all the answers. And I stopped sharing my writing. For quite a long time. I felt like I didn’t want to give solutions anymore – they were futile for me and the recipient. I just wanted to tell stories. Sometimes powerful, sometimes pointless, always authentic.

It was confusing. I wanted to share, but did not feel confident that what I could share was useful.

All the parables and myths I love came to me. I remembered how, without shoving a lesson down my throat, they teach me more than any information ever could. I looked at the barrage of ‘7 Steps to This’ and ‘The Top 10 Ways to That’ and knew I could not make myself go there.

The stories began to find their way through me. Again.

Because they were all born through the process of my own growth, the stories were almost always difficult to read (and write). A reader, who has known me a LONG time, recently commented that her heart melts at my revelations. My initial reaction was concern and sadness.

Was I depressing people? Was it too raw and gritty, without any payload of ‘Here’s what you should do to guarantee utter bliss’? Was I focusing too much on the hard stuff, without describing all the great and beautiful and joyous? Was I making people feel sorry for me?

The truth is that I have an astoundingly beautiful life and sharing with you what happens under the robe (so to speak) is my calling. I can wholeheartedly say that what I create, even when it is gut-wrenching and harrowing, brings me peace. And joy.

Shattering the delusions about what a beautiful life looks like, and requires, lights me up.

What feels heavy and hard is solving your problems for you. Writing recipes and to-do lists for you to follow blindly depresses me.

I want to tell stories that tickle or scratch a hunger for a new awareness of your own life. I want the lesson, if any, to sit on a tray like a selection of passed hors d’oeuvres, available if you are hungry.

Maybe you’ll taste what I’ve cooked up, and then go to work in your own kitchen, cooking up a delicious meal of a life. Maybe you’ll feel like donuts when I’m serving up quiche. Maybe you’ll be craving a pick-me-up when I’m offering a look at grief and despair.

I can’t feed everyone. But for a few, maybe the story that is making its way through me, is just what they need.

What do you think? What is the power of a story? Without preaching or teaching, can one person’s truthful description of their life experience catalyze awareness and growth in another? What can your story offer to the hungry world?

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.