Something in your story stopped working.
Not because you failed.
Because the conditions changed.

You can feel the misfit before you can name it. The old script fails faster than the language can catch up.

ShiftStory™ was created for moments where nothing holds long enough to plan. It is a narrative practice designed for instability, not certainty.


What ShiftStory is

ShiftStory™ is a structured encounter with what's breaking, so you can adapt quickly. It listens for friction first. Insight follows pressure, not polish.

It’s not:

  • It is not soothing, optimizing, or repackaging you.

It is:

  • A deliberate engagement with confusion as signal.

  • A threshold

  • A recalibration

  • A moment where story updates to reality


Why You’re Here

Your language lags behind who you're already becoming.

You’ve built a life, a role, a reputation.
You are a mosaic of life moments.
But something’s shifting.
The old narrative doesn’t quite fit.
The new one hasn’t fully emerged.

This is where ShiftStory™ lives: in the translation between
Now, New, and Next.

Common signals that you need a shift:

  • The metrics you have no longer predict your outcomes.

  • Your roles change faster than your language for them.

  • What once guided you now misreads the terrain.


How It All Works

We start with 24 minutes because constraint sharpens perception. A focused encounter where friction
surfaces before explanation.

You'll get a time-stamped footprint of what resilient adaptation looks like right now. This is not a path to certainty. It is a practice for adaptation.

A mosaic artifact of Tamsyn A.'s Walk 'n' Talk in Dartmoor, Cornwall
and her reflection story


What Happens After the Talk?

You will receive a personalized ShiftStory™ Reflection Artifact and a timestamped mosaic of what emerged. From there, you may be invited into the full ShiftStory™ Pilgrimage. This isn't a funnel. The work is not formulaic. It's a human invitation.

The ShiftStory™ Pilgrimage Components

  1. Walk 'n’ Talk Discovery – 24 min conversation

  2. Now Work Session – Conditions & Constraints

  3. New Work Session – Intentions & Environments

  4. Next Work Session – Futurecast & Identity Integration

  5. 4 Activation Conversations – Insights and Feedback loops

  6. Capstone – A Final reflection and Go-to-market intentions


Who It’s For

You’re not lost, you're recalibrating under unfolding conditions.

ShiftStory™ is for the humans between chapters: the corporate climbers, founders, creators, thinkers, mid-life reframers, and soul-driven leaders.

Our Archetypes (discovered in the work):

  • The Restless IntegratorOne who facilitates achievement into alignment

  • The Legacy AlchemistOne who turns lived experience into purpose-driven outcomes

  • The Polymath ProvocateurOne who owns the right to be multi-dimensional

  • The Systemic HealerOne who reforms institutions from the inside out

  • The Relevance SherpaOne who Maps and optimizing human value

  • The Bridge-Builder MysticOne who catalyzes innovation horizontally

  • The Kindness LeaderOne who fuses empathy with ambition to drive change

  • The AmbassadorOne who navigates solutions across disciplines

Your story, your timestamp, your turning point.


Participant Feedback

ShiftStory™ does not protect you from change. It helps you grow meaning because of it.

A mosaic artifact of Ana A's Walk 'n' Talk in Princeton, NJ


Start Your ShiftStory

If something in your story is under pressure, begin here.

A mosaic artifact of Mo L's Walk 'n' Talk on the shores of La Jolla, CA


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Bio

Tobin Trevarthen is a Narratologist. He founded Spatial Shift and created ShiftStory™ after recognizing that thresholds do not announce themselves politely.After selling more than $1B in marketing solutions to the Global 1000, Tobin left environments built on certainty. Not to escape success, but because the signals no longer aligned with the terrain ahead.Across executive roles and startup creation, he observed a repeatable failure mode: capable people succeeding by outdated maps. That pattern, not inspiration, became the work.For more than a decade, Tobin has worked with founders, executives, creatives, and catalysts at moments when identity lags reality. The work begins where forward motion outruns language. His process is deliberately minimal. It uses pressure, constraint, and conversation to surface meaning before it stabilizes. Systems thinking meets lived experience. The poetics arrive last.He is a published co-author (Narrative Generation), lives in San Luis Obispo, and writes Now New Next, a weekly practice of noticing momentum before it becomes obvious.ShiftStory™ emerged from what held up under pressure and what didn’t. It is not a framework. It is a practice refined by letting go.This is not a workshop. It is a threshold experience designed to change the way you relate to uncertainty.Tobin does not lead from ahead. He walks inside the moment where story is still forming.


Contact Tobin
[email protected]
Follow Tobin
Tobin's LinkedIn for daily wisdom.
Tobin's Newsletter for Weekly Discoveries.
Tobin's IG for Narrative Mosaic Art.

© 2026 ShiftStory by Tobin