Last week on No More Mondays, I interviewed Chad Peterson.
Chad, who has branded himself The Story Catcher, looks at the way we live, believe, and set intention in a very unique way.
There’s a moment in this conversation where Chad says something meaningful that I think many of us forget.
Joy isn’t a reward. It’s nourishment.
We’ve been treating joy like something we earn — or even worse, a destination we’re working towards but never seem to reach. We see joy as the thing that shows up after we’ve performed well enough, checked enough boxes, done enough of what everyone else has expected.
Chad flips that storyline entirely.
Joy isn’t the prize to be won. It’s a necessity that helps us along our journey to meaningful impact and purpose.
Newsflash: Most of us have been running on empty in the joy department for far too long. We outsource our stories, our goals, and yes — our joy — to anyone and everyone else and go to bed at night wondering why nothing feels quite right.
What Story Catching Actually Is (And What It Isn’t)
Chad is a story catcher — and before you assume you know what that means, it’s not about crafting a better narrative or learning to communicate more effectively. It’s about going back and evaluating the stories you’re handed, and more importantly, recovering the stories that were always yours to own. The ones that got buried under everyone else’s expectations, everyone else’s version of who you were supposed to be.
His framework is rooted in Andean culture and four animal spirits — the serpent, the jaguar, the hummingbird, and the condor — and he built it the hard way.
The Moment You Choose Your Own Story
At 50, after a painful divorce and a lifetime of performing the version of himself he thought he was supposed to be, Chad got on a plane for the first time in his life, landed in Ecuador to teach at a retreat, and when everyone else got in the van to go home, he grabbed his suitcase…and stayed.
People told him he was throwing his life away. Some unfollowed him. And for the first time, he was okay with that — because he finally understood whose story he was telling…and living.
That landed for me. Not because it’s dramatic (though it is), but because most of us have a version of that moment — a crossroads where we either recognize what’s happening and make a choice, or we get back in the van because that’s what we’re supposed to do.
The drama isn’t the point. The question is whether we have enough of a relationship with our own stories to choose differently when a crossroads shows up.
What Chad is really talking about — and what I talk about in Scary Good as design versus default — is that everything is a choice. Even not making one.
The people who are living someone else’s story didn’t get there through catastrophic failure. They got there one small rock at a time, each one placed in the bag by someone else’s expectation, until one day the bag is just…really heavy. And you’re not even sure when or how that happened.
Story catching helps you dump out that bag. Ditch the rocks. Shed some weight.
Why the First Pancake Isn’t Failure
And it starts with making a pancake.
Yes, pancakes.
We give pancakes more grace than we give ourselves — we eat the first one even when it’s terrible. And then we keep making them. We don’t throw out the whole batch because the first one didn’t come out right, yet when we try something new and it doesn’t work, we cancel breakfast entirely and decide it was a sign.
That’s not failure. That’s just the first pancake.
I’ve been doing this work long enough to know that inner work is not the prettiest process. You’re not going to love everything you find or find everything you’ve lost. But the alternative — staying disconnected from your own stories and letting everyone else write them — is a lot more expensive in the long run.
Joy Isn’t the Destination. It’s the Fuel.
Right now, in this moment, I’m enough. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because I exist.
Chad says that to every client at the end of every call. I think most of us could stand to hear it a little more often.
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🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Chad Peterson on No More Mondays
Want to find out which of Chad’s four animal spirits you’re most aligned with right now? Take his free quiz at thestorycatcher.com/quiz — he’ll send you a journal to go with it.
