When a Story Has Done its Job

Beyoncé once said in an interview that she created her alter ego, Sasha Fierce, because she needed someone fearless to step on stage when she felt shy or not ready to be that bold as herself.

At the height of her early solo career, Sasha Fierce became part of how she performed. An embodied version of herself that was capable of projecting confidence when confidence didn’t come naturally. The alter ego allowed distance between the private person and the public performer and created safety when there was pressure to perform.

For years, Sasha Fierce was the story that accompanied her.

Then something changed.

A few years later, she said she didn’t need Sasha so much anymore because she knew who she was and didn’t need to hide behind an alter ego.

Beyoncé didn’t reject the old narrative nor did she try to rewrite her story or pretend fear was never there.

She outgrew the structure that was once useful and felt safe. And then stepped out of the loop instead of circling it or trying to perfect it.

This is what I mean by becoming Unstoried®.

We are storied creatures. What we believe, what we do, how we live are all through stories. Every inch of our experience is storied. It’s how we navigate and make sense of our world. Stories help us move through uncertainty, visibility, pressure, and change.

Sometimes those stories protect us. They help us perform, adapt, and succeed when we don’t feel ready yet to do so as ourselves.

They are survival intelligence. They exist because something in us needed protection, distance, or strength at a particular moment in time.

We form stories around our needs, in response to conditions including pressure, exposure, and expectations. Stories genuinely work. They help you get through everyday life circumstances. They help you function, adapt, show up, succeed.

Beyoncé performed sold-out arenas as Sasha Fierce. The story was not a crutch. It was functional intelligence doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Then there comes a time when the story has fulfilled its purpose. You have outgrown its structure.

The not enoughness Beyoncé seemed to feel in the beginning was hidden intelligence asking for structure. It was survival intelligence doing its job. It helped her perform, adapt, cope, succeed.

And when she no longer needed that story, she stepped out of it.

Had she remained within the story, even after outgrowing it, the structure that once created safety would have become restrictive. She would have remained inside its loop.

Becoming Unstoried does not mean rewriting or destroying the story. It means stepping out of it.
The brilliance that created the story does not disappear. The intelligence remains. What dissolves is the loop that keeps you inside it.

This is becoming Unstoried.

Image by: Rocbeyonce, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons