On Story stopping and “Useless talk”

The topic of “useless talk” has come up in a lot of my coaching conversations lately. Useless talk is said to be one of the 6 obstacles to yoga. The useless talk we engage in with others and with ourselves. I would argue that everything we do has a use or a purpose, but the question is: is it productive or destructive? Is it feeding my aliveness or taking away from it? 

One of the questions I get the most about coaching is “What is the difference between coaching and therapy?” There are many differences and similarities depending on the coach or therapist and I can’t unpack them all in one post but one of the main differences is around story telling. In some ways, coaching is about story stopping, in fact, as coaches we are trained to interject when our client begins to spiral into an epic story of he said, she said, they said. We are also trained to stop our own stories about our client so that we can engage with the human being right in front of us and stop ourselves from getting caught up in story. This way we can stay in touch with what’s bubbling under the surface. This of course is all done when the trust and relationship has been clearly established. 

Please know, this is not done because the story is unimportant but because we all have a tendency to get caught up in the drama, the why and the reason, the blame and this, that and the other. When we get caught up we are likely to forget that the truth resides underneath all that. I DO think stories are useful and I know that sometimes the story can pull us further away from what is really happening within us. 

Story stopping urges us to look beyond the he said, she said, they said, and get underneath the story. It’s asks us to cut the bull, trim the fat and stop getting caught up in shit that doesn’t matter. It’s asks us zoom out and look at the bigger picture or the bottom line. 

This is not to say that stories and story telling are not important parts of healing - many times they are. Sometimes we need the story to face what happened. To play and replay it and to learn how that story lives in us. Sometimes the story truly helps and sometimes the story is actually the very thing that keeps us stuck and hence becomes “useless” in our growth. 

When looking at our stories and useless talk in relationship to ourselves and others, we are invited to ask ourselves, what keeps us continually repeating a story that we already know? What are we attempting to solidify in the replay? What is the story giving us? And what would we gain if that story didn’t exist? 

While we may not be having as many social interactions lately, we forget that the majority of the useless chatter we engage with is with ourselves. The stories we tell ourselves under our breath when we walk by a mirror, the story we strengthen when someone looks at us the wrong way, “I am _____”, and “I have always been _____.”

So what stories, conversations and chatter ARE useful? When do we know we have to stop a story from spiraling? Well that’s up to you to decide. Am I talking just to talk? Am I repeating a story I already know very well? Am I attaching to a story I know is not useful to me any more?

The beauty is that we get to decide what’s constructive and destructive. What’s useful and what’s not. What’s feeding our aliveness or draining our power. 

Useless talk is an impediment to yoga because it drains our life force. It diminishes our light. Our prana gets all caught up in that shit too. That false sense of refuge gives us temporary relief, but costs us more energy in the long run.

Staying close to the big picture and the bottom line requires awareness, practice, and the willingness to surrender. When we release our grip, what becomes available?