Hey everybody. Welcome to Stories from an Ordinary Week. This is Gary, and I am a trauma recovery coach, author, and creator of the Rebel’s Playground in central Pennsylvania.
So here’s what this is. Once a week, on Sunday, I’m going to tell you one story from my week. Not a lesson — a story. About a hike, or a soccer game with the boys I coach, or a trip to the dentist, or a random conversation with a fellow human being. And at the end of each one, I’ll tell you the one thing it taught me: the distinction I’m carrying into the next week. That’s it. Ten minutes, maybe twelve.
Why stories? Because knowing something and living it are two different things. I can tell you what I know in a sentence. What I’m living takes a story.
And why distinctions? A distinction is just this: two things that look the same until you see the difference. And once you see it, you can’t go back.
The one distinction everything else in my work comes from is adaptation to aliveness. An adaptation is what we all did to fit in. It’s where we went quiet when it hurt, the roles we learned to keep the peace, or how we shrunk ourselves to fit in. These adaptations were intelligent, and they worked magnificently — until they just became “this is who I am.” And that’s the problem. And that’s what nobody tells you.
Aliveness is the other thing: actually being in your own life while it’s happening, instead of watching it from one step back.
And rebellion, the way I mean it, is just the crossing from adaptation into aliveness. It’s not against anybody. It’s just noticing the adapting and choosing to come alive instead. That’s my new book, Reimagining Rebellion, in a nutshell. And it’s what every story here is going to be about: one small place I caught myself adapting, what it took to cross, and what was on the other side.
So why do I use the term “ordinary week”? Because that’s where it all happens. Nobody comes alive at the retreat, or the leadership seminar, or even listening to this podcast or reading the book. People come alive when they take what they saw there back into their own life and live it. That’s what the podcast and the book are built for: to help you see where, in your own life, the adapting is costing you, and to choose to come alive instead. And that can only happen in real life — on a Tuesday, in a parking lot, or in a conversation, when something ordinary catches you off guard.
So that’s the deal. You can listen here, or on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and the written version comes to your inbox every Sunday.
The first one will be next Sunday, and it will be about what a trip to the dentist taught me about safety. The distinction is from hiding to vulnerability. Next week, I’ll tell you what I mean by that.
I hope to see you there.
Gary
