Rethink, Reframe, Re-Story Your Life Gretchen Rubin in her #1 New York Times Bestseller The Happiness Project, posts a weekly video on her website about some "Pigeon of Discontent" that a reader has raised. "Because," as she says, "as much as we try to find the Bluebird of Happiness, we're also plagued by the Pigeons of Discontent."

Might you have a few pigeons of discontent in your life, flying too close overhead? Where are all those bluebirds of happiness anyway?

In this one-day workshop, Jeanne Guy will use her Re-Story Circle method to help us find out why a bluebird in the hand is worth way more than those two pigeons in the bush.

Here's what to expect—you will have opportunities to:

• Enjoy a Little Music
• Enjoy a Little Meditation
• Write About Your Life Using Journal Prompts (it IS called a Writing From Life Workshop after all...)
• Share (as you choose)
• Practice Intentional Listening
• Discover What a Wonderful Person You Are
• Reframe Your Life
• Learn AT LEAST 15 Things You Can Practice to Love Who You Are and Love Your Life
• Practice Pushing the Happiness-Now Button
• Laugh
• Have a Nice Lunch
• Create a Never-Seen-Before Bluebird of Happiness Collage
• Share Some More
• Laugh Some More
• Take Your Wonderful Self Home Smiling

A Re-Story Circle is a safe structure for such deep conversation, and for generating ideas through writing prompts to "re-story" your life. A Re-Story Circle is a place where you can feel nurtured, supported and empowered—in community.

Re-storying means looking at your life, your story, as it is currently constituted and reframing it. Journal writing is the tool we use to open up a dialogue with your Wise Voice, who could care less about your writing and more about you knowing who you already are.

Take a "happiness" day for yourself to write, relax, laugh and reframe your life with other women who are writing—and re-writing—their stories and their lives.

Don't want to live your life by default? Re-story it! Jeanne can't re-story your life, but she knows you can.

Join her as she leads us on an exploration of self-discovery to help us all rethink, reframe and re-story our lives.

• 9-9:30am: Coffee & registration
• 9:30am-noon: Session I
• noon-1pm: Lunch: provided on-site with the workshop fee. Those with special dietary needs should contact the conference coordinator ahead of time to make special arrangements.
• 1-4pm Session II

• Date: Saturday, October 6, 9am-4pm

• Location: Family Life Center, First United Methodist Church, 1300 Lavaca St, Austin TX 78701

  To see a list of hotels in the area, click here.

• Cost: $140 for non-members (which includes a one-year SCN membership); $95 for dues-paying Story Circle Network members. The registration fee covers the cost of instruction, lunch, coffee/tea, & handout materials.

  Enrollment is limited so that we can allow all participants time to share. Please register early via our online enrollment form.

  Registration/Payment Deadline: Friday, September 28. We must receive your registration and payment by this date!

  SCHOLARSHIP for FOOD! We are offering a full scholarship to this event for someone good at organizing, who will be asked to bring snacks, set up the coffee and snack table, call in lunch orders, and pick the lunches up. The cost of food and beverages will be covered by Story Circle Network. This person will miss part of the session just before lunch and will need to arrive half an hour early to set up and stay after for half an hour to oversee the cleanup. Interested? Please email us at wfl at storycircle dot org.

• Refund/Cancellation Policy: We will refund your registration fee, less a $20 cancellation charge, if you request it up to 15 days before the workshop. After that date, we will refund your fee only if we are able to fill your space from our waiting list. We reserve the right to cancel the workshop; if so, we will refund your full registration fee. You can contact us at
  Story Circle Network, PO Box 500127, Austin TX 78750-0127
  512-454-9833
  wfl at storycircle dot org

• Bring journal or a notebook & a writing implement. Leave your laptop at home. (Some people are bothered by the clicking of keys in a quiet writing period.)

• Bring a sweater or shawl to ward off drafts.

• We provide coffee & tea. We also provide lunch. If you want morning &/or afternoon snack or other drinks (such as colas), please bring them.

• Leave your prepared writing at home. We read & share only what we write in the workshop.

• Leave your perfume at home; some people are allergic to perfumes.

photo by James Bland

After a successful 25-year career in administrative office management and business development, Jeanne Guy (Austin, TX) of Jeanne Guy Workshops re-storied her life. As an educator and writer for over 15 years, she now helps people explore and change their lives. In her former life, she managed architects. Now she's married to one and says she needs all the help she can get. And she's found it—through re-storying her life daily.

Witty, insightful and knowledgeable, Jeanne uses her irreverent sense of humor, coupled with her encouraging and experiential facilitation style, to create a safe space for participants to reshape their lives through the power and practice of journal writing.

Jeanne is a graduate of Indiana University and Leadership Austin, and is a Story Circle Network board member. She is currently writing Gone: A Memoir, the story of how her children were stolen from her and how she stole them back.

As the Great Self-Proclaimed Re-Story Expert, it's her goal in life to hear people say, "That woman is weird but she does seem to be enjoying herself."

Visit her website.