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Story Camp 2026 Jan 3rd
Day 2 — Narrative Shifting Applied
Why narrative shifting
There is no reason to do narrative shifting
Unless you want more health, more wealth, and better relationships
Health =
Physical fitness
Emotional fitness
Intellectual fitness
Spiritual fitness
Most people are surviving, not thriving
Often because they learned that wanting more is greedy
Children are born with enoughness
Scarcity is learned
Narrative shifting is applied first to:
Health
Money
Relationships
Desire vs avoidance
The human brain does not work well with negation
“I don’t want illness” → vague
“I want health” → actionable
“I don’t want to be broke” → stuck
“I want wealth” → movement
“I don’t want this marriage to fall apart” → fear
“What qualities do I want in this marriage?” → direction
Narrative shifting works faster when oriented toward:
What you want to build
Not what you want to avoid
Journaling (how to do it)
Your journal is for your eyes only
Privacy changes honesty
Honesty changes outcomes
Your journal needs a hiding place
Not because people are bad — because curiosity is human
Always date entries
Future you will care
Do not write polished prose
Bullet points are enough
The goal:
Get it out of your head and onto the page
Day 1 review prompt
What stood out yesterday
What was hardest
What helped most
What did you resist (normal)
Revisit:
“What am I hoping to gain from StoryCAMP?”
Three brains (review)
Human brain = thinking, planning, meaning
Puppy / limbic brain = emotion, attachment
Robot brain = survival, habit, automatic action
Narrative = integration of thinking + feeling
Change fails when the robot brain feels threatened
Resistance is protective, not weakness
Narrative shifting gets all three brains to cooperate
Flourishing vs languishing
Flourishing ≠no negative emotion
Negative emotion is necessary for safety
Elimination would be dangerous
Difference is ratio
More positive
Regulated negative
The change sequence
Most people enter too late
They start with:
Plans
Tracking
Behavior
Narrative shifting starts earlier:
Decision to re-author
Old story exposure
Experiential leverage
Permanent change requires sequence
Personality vs narrative
People are not blank slates
Temperament is real
Around age 7: people act for reasons
Adolescence: thoughts can be changed
Adulthood: narratives can be authored
Narratives create the world you live in
Many people give up this power
The More Map
Humans are born with a desire for more
You do not have to teach children to want more
It is innate
Greed is not innate
Scarcity is learned
Scarcity collapses imagination
Keeps people below the line
Being & doing
Humans have a dual nature
Being = meaning, relatedness, care
Doing = competence, agency, contribution
Imbalance creates dissatisfaction
Money without love → emptiness
Love without agency → stagnation
The goal is balance
Scarcity (core narrative)
Scarcity is the root money narrative problem
Money is not a thing
Money is a conduit of connection
Turning money into a “thing” creates fear
Fear leads to hoarding
“There isn’t enough” is false
Examples:
Food is wasted at massive scale
Water exists in abundance
Energy is plentiful
Work is widely available
Scarcity narratives are profitable to sell
Fear makes people easier to control
The only true scarcity:
You get one life
Money narrative shifts
From “there isn’t enough” → sufficiency
From fear → strategy
From obstacles → opportunity
From wishing → wealth building
Wealth is built through:
Commitment
Skill
Self-enrollment
Fear disappears after action
Trauma
Trauma does not make people weak
The strongest people have often had the most trauma
Strength comes from processing, not avoidance
Trauma becomes leverage when narrative changes
World beliefs (primal narratives)
Most predictive narratives are about the world, not the self
Core question:
What kind of world is this?
Good vs bad
Safe vs dangerous
Enticing vs boring
Alive vs mechanical
Shifting “bad world” → “good world”
Improves:
Marriage
Parenting
Money
Motivation
Relationship desires (what people actually want)
People don’t want easier relationships
They want safe enough to tell the truth
They don’t want harmony
They want repair
They don’t want independence
They want closeness without losing self
People want relationships that make them:
Braver
Softer
More alive
Marriage narratives
Most destructive belief:
“I married the wrong person”
Marriage problems are usually skill problems, not selection problems
You fight because you’re married
Not because something is wrong
Core shifts:
You vs me → us vs the problem
Entitlement → gratitude
Accusation → exploration
Big celebrations → daily celebration
Skills remodel relationships
Personalities cannot be replaced
Parenting narratives
Children need:
High warmth
High structure
Warmth = personhood
Structure = behavior
Kids don’t need perfect parents
They need skilled parents
From “I’m a good parent” → “I’m a skilled parent”
From “I got lucky” → “My kids are lucky”
Parenting never ends
It evolves into consultation
Warmth + structure works for kids
And for adults
Time (the final narrative)
You have a finite number of days
Most time is already allocated:
Sleep
Work
Chores
Screens
What remains is where life happens
The question is not:
“What should I do someday?”
It is:
What am I going to do today?
Core takeaway
Scarcity is the enemy narrative
Sufficiency is the corrective
Narrative shifting restores:
Imagination
Agency
Connection
You are already living a story
Day 2 asks you to choose it — on purpose
