Christopher Wesley – Fine Artist – Fiction Author – Transformational Coach

What if the stories you’ve been living aren’t the ones you’re meant to keep? In this powerful conversation, Christopher J. Wesley—fine artist, fiction author, and transformational advisor—shares how transformational storytelling can help people reframe trauma, rewrite identity, and reconnect with their true nature. Drawing from his own lived experiences, he introduces a framework of story, narrative, and mythology to help individuals understand the patterns shaping their lives. Through creative expression, emotional awareness, and intentional identity-building, this episode explores how to move beyond survival mode and create a future rooted in truth, resilience, and self-authorship.

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Christopher Wesley – Fine Artist – Fiction Author – Transformational Coach

Christopher J. Wesley is a fine artist, fiction author, and transformational coach who helps people look at the stories they’ve been living inside. Especially the ones shaped by survival, success, and self-protection. His work blends art, imagination, and emotional truth to help people reconnect with who they are beneath the roles they’ve had to play.

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Welcome, Christopher. Thank you for joining us. It’s a delight to see you again.

Thank you. Same with you.

I’m hoping you can get us started by telling us a little bit about how you got into the work you’re doing and what drives your passion for it.

The Guitar: Choosing A Narrative Of Hope

It started with being abandoned at the age of five by my mother to a physically and emotionally abusive father. The traumatic years that ensued until the courts took me out of his house at the age of ten instilled within me this sense that that behavior is not okay with me. I drifted until about the age of fourteen. At fourteen, I discovered the guitar. My immediate impulse was, “I want to be a professional musician.”

It’s not so much to be famous, but to be an example that no matter what happened in your past, you can craft your own future. That was the very beginning of it. The things that I endured that I survived were not going to define me. I was going to drive the narrative about what that meant in my life, and to do so in a way that gave hope to others who might be in the same circumstance.

That is truly remarkable. What have you learned that’s helped you turn these tragedies into triumphs?

Oddly enough, and this is going to date me, there was a part of me throughout my entire childhood that didn’t defer to adults. I have to partially attribute that to watching the original shows of the Little Rascals. An adult would tell them to do something. Their response would be, “Who says?” It helped me by not automatically going by what authoritative figures said. It’s using critical thinking as much as you can as a child to say, “Is this right? Does this make sense to me? If it doesn’t make sense, then I need an explanation.” That was critical. It’s the ability to differentiate between behavior that was okay and behavior that was unacceptable.

At some level, what I’m hearing you say is you had this natural ability to question authority. Maybe that was enhanced by you watching it on the screen with the original the Little Rascals. That’s wonderful. I’m assuming that you used that with other things to help you live into a resilience that sounds remarkable at this stage.

Having your first five years living with an abusive parent, and then your next four. You didn’t say where you were living, but floating around. Lead us a little bit into what you have found that works for you. Aside from you can get through anything, what are the other inspiring messages you want to give the audience?

I didn’t realize this when I was a teenager. The part where I was drifting, I was living with my mother at that point. It wasn’t physically abusive, but there was an emotional distance. Even though I was asking for therapy, she wasn’t going to send me to therapy. She felt like she didn’t want to pay for someone to tell her it was her fault. I didn’t understand. As a teenager, I’m trying to figure this stuff out yet. I’m a fiction author. I spent eight years working with a professional storyteller.

I was learning storytelling beyond how to write a book. What are the mechanics of how we relate to stories? The more that I worked with him, the more I started to understand that this is a way for us to make sense of the world. I started creating frameworks. One framework is that the story is what happened. The narrative is how I talk about what happened or how I frame all of it. The deepest level is mythology. Those are the underlying patterns that are reappearing in the story and my relation to it through the narrative I’ve used to survive.

Transformational Storytelling: The story is what happened. The narrative is how I talk about what happened or how I frame all of it. The deepest level is mythology.

Redefining Mythology: Patterns Of Survival

It’s brought it to life. Slowly again, step us through these. You have a story. The story is what happened. What are your words for describing the framework?

It is how you talk about what happened.

It’s the narrative. It is not the framework. The narrative is how you talk about what’s happened. The other one is?

It’s mythology. The mythology is the underlying pattern of behavior that you used to survive.

That’s a different use of the word mythology that I’ve had. Let me settle into that for a minute because I was anticipating that you would say, “Here’s the story. It’s the description of what happened. Here’s the narrative, how you talk about what happened. Here’s the meaning you’re attributing to that.” Instead, you went to the mythology. Which is the underlying patterns of behavior that you used to survive through these events that were less than ideal.

I’m tweaking the concept of mythology. My understanding of mythology through the storytelling lens is that we use myth in a lot of parts of our lives. It’s almost invisible. How often have you seen an instance where someone is trying to achieve something? Someone mentioned something about, “You don’t want to fly too close to the sun.” There are a lot of instances where mythology is in our lives. There’s the concept of do not be too ambitious because if you are, you’re going to get burned. You’re going to go crashing to the ground. That becomes a pattern of behavior.

Are you familiar with Joseph Campbell?

Very much so.

I love some of the things that I’ve heard from him over the years, including how, in the modern world, and we’re talking about from the mid-’70s on, when I was looking at issues like this. Our mindset, the one I was trained into, says that myth means falsehood. Myth is the same as a lie or a falsehood. It’s a story that’s not real. Joseph Campbell would say, “There’s a lot more going on here than just that.” It wouldn’t span the centuries and all the different cultures that have these different myths.

He says, “One way to think about a myth is that it’s a way to encapsulate a depth and richness in a message that you just can’t communicate with a simple sentence or phrase.” At one point, I remember reading that he said, “A good definition of religion is a misidentified myth. A misinterpreted myth.” Somebody had some truth, and it got off the path of truth. A good definition of myth is somebody else’s religion because nobody who’s a firm believer in a particular religion thinks that somebody else’s religion is true, too.

I see that. That’s the operating software of our brain. I like what you’re saying, though. It’s as far as being a falsehood. In most cases, the patterns that we created to survive situations are based on the lie that we told ourselves about the world, based on the trauma. We endure a trauma. The pervasive message that most of us tell ourselves is that the world is not safe. It wasn’t until years later that I started to understand that my behavior was very atypical.

Transformational Storytelling: In most cases, the patterns that we created to survive situations are based on the lie that we told ourselves about the world, based on the trauma.

Even though I grew up in an environment where I could trust nobody, I was still able to live a life where I’ve always been emotionally open to new relationships, new experiences, and things like that. That was largely because instead of saying to myself that the world is unsafe and I have to armor myself and protect myself. I told myself, “Look at all these horrible things that I survived. The world doesn’t have anything that can take me down in a single instance. I can be hurt, but I have proven to myself that I can get past this.”

The Architecture Of Self-Correction

I am amazed to hear that from you. I’m curious about how early in your chronological life you were able to have that crystallized perspective.

I do not know.

Did you have it at the end of your high school years? It didn’t happen until you were in your 20s, or did you have it younger?

I want to say around twelve.

It’s still with your mom.

Yes, but it didn’t come from her. I wasn’t given access to professional mental health care. When I moved into her house, at the same time, I was being told I couldn’t see a therapist because of the physical abuse. I would sharpen pencils and hide them in parts of the house. I would place scissors in different places. I had weapons hidden all around the house. I was careful that I didn’t put things in places where someone would pick them up, saying, “That doesn’t belong there.”

I was doing that stuff to make myself feel safe. Somewhere in there, around about twelve, it occurred to me that one of the things my father taught me was how to break people down and how to probe them through questions and use those questions to absolutely tear down their self-confidence, their self-esteem, and even their self-concept. The thought came to me, “I know how to do that. Can I reverse engineer what I was taught to build myself up? It’s because I have no one else to.”

What a gift. It certainly has worked for you. What is it that you teach or share with others or try to model for others that you most want people to get from interacting with you?

As difficult as it is, try to find the blessings in the pitfalls. For instance, my wife and I lost our home to one of the California wildfires. We’re now living in a space. It’s almost 2,000 square feet smaller than what we had. We’re fighting with everybody there is to fight, with the city, the county, the state, and the federal government, to try and rebuild our home. On a larger scale, rebuild our actual community.

As traumatic as all of that is, there’s a part of me that also focuses on the fact that I have met neighbors who lived up the street from me that I never would have met without this disaster. As an example, one of those people I met because of the fire is a musician, as am I. We’ve been jamming. We were working on songs together. I would not have met him and had the joy of being able to work with him without that horrible thing that I never would have wished to happen.

An offering that I hope is right in line with your line of thinking to go a little bit more into yourself and into your thought process and your words, instead of calling it a disaster, call it these events. I’m not pouring that negative energy into that label. If it’s a disaster, if it’s a bad thing that happened and somebody’s responsible. Who am I going to get mad at for that? Who has to go change it? Is it God? How do I change the weather?

I talk to people on a regular basis about how these great teachings let us know that all events are neutral. There’s no such thing as a natural disaster unless there’s a human being around to label it as bad and wrong and devastating. It is an event. It requires a lot to adjust to it and to rebuild from it. Notice for yourself, which is the invitation in this work, how it feels inside you if you say, “I experienced this series of events, and this is how I responded.”

Versus saying, “This devastating disaster, this horrible tragedy, came upon this community or I was a victim of this horrible wildfire.” Notice the felt sense inside you as you use those words. If it helps, start talking about what you’ve experienced. Blend it right in with what you’re offering because you’ve learned how to take these experiences and build a solid, loving, connected life with your family and friends.

I love that perspective. I’m on board with that.

Language As An Internal Compass

Share with us some of the blessings you’ve discovered as you look at things like the loss of your home and community to the wildfire.

This past minute of this conversation is one of those things because I talk to other people about being careful of what language you use. It’s because it is powerful. This is an example of no matter how much you think you have stuff together. There’s always something new to learn and new to experience. It’s the importance of curating your social life as much as possible with people who can give you points of view that will serve you in life. It’s also accepting that there’s always more to learn.

That’s excellent. That’s one of the prime things that we invite people to understand. I say that if I go into a situation knowing that I know what I know and how I learned it. I’m going to leave that situation knowing what I knew. There’s nothing new coming in there. It’s the old stuff. I know what I’ve learned. There it is. If I want to be able to learn something in the work I do with people, I invite them to keep two observations active all the time when they’re out and around in their lives.

The first one is that it’s easy enough to observe that I don’t know everything. There’s stuff about quantum field theory, wine cooking, and different parts of musical compositions that I don’t know anything about. There are all kinds of stuff about my own profession that I’ve been in for 52 years, and I still don’t know about. That’s one observation I can easily make. The second observation grows from that, which is that whatever it is in this moment that I think I know is at best only partially true and perhaps even completely false.

If I keep those two observations going, my field is open for incoming information and experience. Learning is possible. It is why I ask people like you questions like, “What can you share with us that you think you might have learned that helped you through these traumatic life experiences in your youth and helped you craft a life that’s now building your life in a positive way and helping others?” What are some of the best tips or tricks you share with people?

Solving For The “Immediate” Problem

One, most of the answers that you need are inside of you. There are wisdom and genius in all of us, but it helps to have someone around you who can help you identify it. It’s because you can’t see what’s on the label when you’re in the bottle. Going back to frameworks, I teach a framework to center myself. I used this framework after the fire to help me process what was going on so I could take action. That framework is built on storytelling. The fire was the inciting incident. That was the negative event.

The next thing was for me to find a positive event or a revelation in my life that I resonate with that can nullify what I’m learning when I’m trying to tell myself from the negative event of the fire. In that instance, what I reminded myself of was that at one point in life, I found myself in a situation where my best option was to go to school full-time while working full-time. Prior to that, I’d maybe taken six units while working 40-plus hours a week. The concept of going in and taking eighteen units was daunting, but I didn’t have another choice that I could see.

Transformational Storytelling: Most of the answers that you need are inside of you. There is wisdom and genius in all of us, but it helps to have someone around you who can help you identify it.

I did it. In three years, I graduated valedictorian of my class. That told me that I can do hard things and I can navigate what appears on the surface to be an impossible situation. To recap, there’s the inciting event, the fire, the revelation that I can do hard things through working full-time and going to school full-time, and using what I understood about the revelation to reframe the problem with the fire.

In school, I did a lot of “I’m just dealing with the problem that’s in front of me. I’m not taking in problems that are two or three months out. This is immediate. This is my goal.” I would operate off of that. “This is a decision I make that keeps me on track for this ultimate goal, but I’m only solving for this now.” That fits in with the dark night of the soul, which in storytelling is when the hero comes to a different understanding of what the problem is.

It is at that point that the hero has what they need to address the problem and go on and win the battle, whatever that battle happens to be. Doing that gave me the wherewithal to deal with the immediate problem. Before the fire, there was a housing shortage in our area, with 9,000 structures destroyed, 6,000 houses. My immediate thought was we need to find a new place to live that is close and very fast because my mother-in-law is in this area. She was in hospice.

My wife driving two hours each way to try to visit her daily was too much. We evacuated on Tuesday. We found out the house burned down on Wednesday. I was able to take action. By the next Monday, we signed a lease on the place we’re staying now. This is some place that we feel comfortable. We can live here for the next couple of years while we rebuild.

In the work that you’re doing and presenting, what’s the way that you interact most with people? Do you do it online? Do you do it in person? Do you have course material that you set them through?

I have course material. I also work with people depending on the location. Some people do it online through virtual meetings. For others who are local, I will work with them in person, depending on schedules.

Malleable Identity: Withstanding The Outside World

How do you describe the work you’re doing with them?

It’s an advisory role more so than coaching. This is definitely not therapy. At best, what this does is it provides a different dimension that can work with therapy, but this is helping a person from an identity level to create their future with intention. As I think about identity, it’s not a stable force. We can feel confident and positive while we’re in our living room, and then drive to work in one situation, and suddenly, we’re deer in the headlights again. My work with them is to help them build this narrative that is strong enough that it’s not just positive for them when they’re in their living room. They can go out in the world, and their identity can withstand the forces of the outside world.

Transformational Storytelling: Identity is not a stable force.

I’m a little surprised. You’re describing it that way. It makes very good sense. I appreciate the answer. Let me tell you what my surprise is. As I look at your website and read about you, I get this image of this artist and this creative person. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if you said it’s an art therapy approach. It’s using art and creativity to bring out. That’s what I would have thought based on what I’ve gotten from your website.

The expression is part of it. We’re expressing ourselves in a lot of different ways. As appropriate, these types of things depend on the person. There have been instances where we do use either art, music, or something to allow them to express the things they have no words for. They can use paints. Pick up a little tin pack of paints from your local craft store and some paper.

As you’re painting, you’re not thinking in terms of talent. You’re not thinking in terms of, “Am I an artist?” All you’re doing is thinking in terms of expression and so long as that expression is honest, it’s valid and worthy. That does play a part in helping a person craft these narratives. It depends on the person and their interest in using creative expression in that way.

Sustainability And The Conflict Of Success

What’s the most common problem pattern that people bring to you and ask for help with?

It’s when a person has built a certain level of success. It looks like success on the outside, but inside, they’re feeling like life is choking them off. We can do things like get the job our parents wanted us to get and get the promotion that our significant other wants us to get. In getting into that role, they are realizing, “I can’t keep living like this. This is not sustainable.” I will help them work through what about that role is unsustainable. Sometimes, it may mean changing roles. Other times, it may be simply changing their relationship to that role and setting different boundaries.

How do most people find out about your work? What’s your greatest referral source?

It’s from one person to another.

Word of mouth is one of the ways that people might come to you.

Yes, that’s the predominant way.

If you were to advise somebody, what keyword search would you suggest people use that you might come up near the top of that search?

That I’m still figuring out.

You basically excluded the word coaching in your description. In trying to honor that, it’s in terms of the distinction I make between mentoring and coaching. The distinction there for me is that a coach is someone who’s not necessarily achieved greatness in whatever they’re coaching. They’ve studied what they’re coaching and the mechanics of it. It’s when they use that knowledge, advise somebody else, and give it from their perspective.

People like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Woods, and the best golfers weren’t coached by all the other greats. Most of the great athletes and performers aren’t that good at teaching or coaching. The role of the coach is to study. Not necessarily to have achieved the pinnacle of success in that particular field, but to study what people have done as they reach that pinnacle and have the gift of teaching. There’s your coach.

On the other hand, we have somebody who’s a mentor and can serve as a mentor. That person doesn’t have to understand all the ins and outs of all of the technical aspects of what they did and how they got there, but they did it. They can advise you on all of these ancillary or related issues in life that you’re probably going to have to deal with as you reach the goals that you set for yourself.

That’s why I don’t consider myself a coach. The things that I teach and advise on are things that I’ve lived through.

It is why I would put you in the category of a mentor. I’d say maybe a mentor for healing and moving past trauma, or healing and turning your traumas into your treasures.

I don’t know that I would come up top with a search. It’s essentially transformation and building an identity that is solid enough that you can go out into the world and keep that frame in the face of stress and unpredictable circumstances, but have it still be malleable enough that when something significant and unexpected happens, you can adapt.

With the creative and wide-open, emotionally sensitive approach that you bring, I would imagine that a larger percentage of people quickly get comfortable with your style. It’s that openness and that genuineness that allows people to feel as though they’re safe. They’re letting their guard down.

I would say my most common motto is, “Feel what you need to feel for as long as you need to feel it.”

How do you prefer people get a hold of you?

LinkedIn is the fastest, quickest way. Also, I would be available through email.

What email address would you want people to use?

It’s Connect@ChristopherJWesley.com.

If you would just get centered, take a breath, and think about what we’ve talked about so far, if there’s some part of that you want to go back and highlight, or if there’s something about your work or what you’d like to talk about that we haven’t even touched on yet.

Broadcasting Your “Zone Of Genius”

The expression piece is worth a little more exploration because we think of creative expression as generally being the domain of artists. I believe that it is an expression of problem-solving. I meet people who I consider artistic in ways that are not necessarily mainstream art. I have one friend. He is a wizard. He is a master at community building. There is an art to the way he does it. It’s difficult. Society has not trained us to understand that each one of us contains some zone of genius.

There’s something in every single person in the world that their lived experience and their point of view make them an absolute genius in something. It does not take the world to accept it and to make it true. By looking inside and expressing ourselves, and it may be through the way you dress or through the tattoos you put on your body. Finding ways to express yourself also broadcasts to the world so that it’s easier for like-minded people to find you, to build a community around you based on who you are.

It’s an expression of whatever is arising within you. It’s an expression of your true nature.

I would say true nature. There is an art to that because there’s a skill in being vulnerable. I would say yes to the expression of self, how you’re feeling, and what you’re dealing with. Keep in mind who is safe around you to express that. Express oneself in small ways at first and then build that trust over time before expressing deeper parts of oneself.

That safety issue is one of the biggest reasons that most of us choose to suppress our expression if we don’t feel we’re going to be safe doing it. The idea that when you’re asking people and coaching them to express themselves and do it in various creative ways, the implication is from your side in the invitation that it’s safe to do so.

The problem is that many people, by the time they go to a mentor like you, have already formed a set of beliefs about how it’s not safe to share their true nature or express their emotions. That’s what we were referring to earlier about your genuine openness. That soft nature in your energy is part of what I imagine helps people feel safe to do the deeper work with you.

My experiences doing that and my understanding of the consequences that I’ve experienced myself and seen in the world with other people help me ask the right questions to get a sense of where a person is at individually, to help guide them through that process. It’s one of the ancillary things that you talked about. If you just read the books about this stuff, that’s not necessarily going to inform a person how to go out in the world and express yourself in a way that you’re not going to get yourself hurt again and reinforce wanting to armor oneself.

The “Nuclear Generator” Of Core Beliefs

One of the things I liked about one of the first things you said at the beginning of the interview was that there’s a level of awareness about how I’m the one who’s created the beliefs I have. As I went through these difficult situations in my life when I was younger, and I was maybe five years old. I came up with some ways to resist and survive in that situation based on what I knew at five years old. It was good enough back then.

It’s not necessarily the best way for a fully adult male to handle a similar situation. I didn’t have any other resources back then. I downloaded this set of beliefs that says I’m weak, the world is dangerous, or I brought this on myself because I was bad. I’m carrying around those beliefs. As I’m hoping what happens with the work that you do with people, as you’re working into expression, you’re helping them express their emotions.

You’re also helping them understand how they’re the ones creating those emotions and how they’re being created by the beliefs they downloaded decades ago. Those beliefs sit in us like a little nuclear generator. It is spitting out the same negative thoughts over and over again. Unless I go back and find out what that core belief is and see it as false, I’m going to be fighting those negative thoughts the rest of my life.

That’s part of the work. It’s not simply saying, “You have this problem. Let’s address just this problem in your current state.” It’s building the container where they feel safe enough for us to start looking back. What are the instances in life? What are the events in life that started to train them? What are the narratives around that? We start building from there because if we create a timeline of the most important events in our life, and we do both the good and the bad. Depending on the person, it may be difficult to find the good.

Sometimes, it takes some work to pull that stuff out because not a lot of focus necessarily gets put on that by some people. It gives us something to work with, as we’re going through things. Negative beliefs pop up, but look at this part of your timeline. See how this makes that thing align. Here’s how we can approach this in a responsible manner to build you back up. It is very much a building-up process. It’s not just a simple, “Here’s what you need to do. Go out there and do it.” You need the smaller wins before you can get to the big ones.

The Six Steps To Freedom

I want to mention this because it keeps coming up for me. It’s from the original comment you made in this conversation about how we go through these difficult situations in life that we deem as traumatic. We download a belief about ourselves or about the world. Since you said that, I keep thinking about Diederik Wolsak’s Six-step Process to Freedom worksheet.

It’d be a wonderful thing for you to be aware of that work because it’s a very simple six-step process that says, “Admit that you got triggered to some kind of upset, even if it’s only a little upset.” The second step is to admit that it’s yours. Somehow, it’s being created inside you. The third step is to ask yourself, “What emotion am I feeling in this moment?” The fourth step is to ask, “Have I felt this before? Have I ever had an emotion of this intensity and this vibration before?”

He says you’ll always have something come up. It’s a memory from an earlier time. The fifth step is to go back and interview yourself at that younger age, whether it was two months ago or 30 years ago. Simply ask your younger self, “What did you make this situation mean about you or about the world you live in?” You’re uncovering the beliefs.

The next step is simply working with saying, “I see this negative belief as false. I forgive myself for believing it. I forgive myself for believing that I have this gift of life that I can share with others. That never goes away. It’s never chipped, dented, rusted, faded, or broken in any way. My true nature is there to be given and enjoyed by me and those around me.” In that simple process, going back and forth, and coaching both my younger self and my adult self to forgive, let go, and remember the truth. You’d benefit from having that. I’ll send you the PDF file of his. He had it on his website. It’s about that simple six-step worksheet process, but it’s so similar to the way you talk about it. You’d enjoy it.

It will definitely help my work with people, too. That’s awesome. Thank you.

You’re very welcome and deserving. Any last comments you’d like to make as we wrap this up?

Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.

It’s a delight. I’m glad to know there are people like you out there turning their tragedies into triumphs. I look forward to following your work.

Thank you. Likewise.

Take care.

You, too.

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Christopher J. Wesley is a fine artist, fiction author, and transformational coach who helps people look at the stories they’ve been living inside. Especially the ones shaped by survival, success, and self-protection. His work blends art, imagination, and emotional truth to help people reconnect with who they are beneath the roles they’ve had to play.

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About Christopher J. Wesley

Christopher J. Wesley is a fine artist, fiction author, musician, and transformational advisor who speaks on reinvention, resilience, and inner authority. He is the creator of Anthrotonik, an approach that helps high-performing, heart-centered leaders uncover the hidden survival rules shaping their choices and build greater clarity, steadiness, and self-trust.