Changing Stories

Try this. Say to someone "Let me give you a lecture." Say to someone else "Let me tell you a story." Now you know WHY you need to frame more of your communication as stories.

The trick is this: almost all people are not only natural-born storytellers: they are also expert story listeners. They will not respond well to a story that is "faked" - a story that is only a thin disguise for a lecture, sermon or argument.

When you want to tell a real story, remember that stories are different than real life.

1. Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. People sometimes forget the beginning; they often forget to quit at the end.

2. Stories are about someone (even when the "someone" is disguised as an animal or piece of furniture). That "someone" is often part of everything that happens in the story (they do not go offstage to catch a nap or a bathroom break). Who is your story about?

3. Stories happen because people move and change. What gets your story moving? Is your "someone" trying to change the world or is the world trying to change your someone?

4. Stories happen. There are events, surprises, challenges and obstacles that suddenly appear. What happens in your story?

5. It is often hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Not always - but often - the people you think will help your main character are the same people who get in the way. And the people who get in the way sometimes help.

Think about it. Tell stories that are stories.

When we tell a story, we entrust our thoughts and states to the story. We agree, as the teller, to engage fully with the beginning, the middle, and the end, knowing that all stories include ups and downs, struggle and challenge and reconciliation and integration. As the teller of the story, we own all of it.

If there is something you want someone else to own, and if they are ready to own it, then the most powerful thing you can give them is not your own story but a chance to tell you their story. As they tell you their story, they will give themselves up to a pattern that they know will be useful to them. They will teach themselves what they need to know to make a change or take a step.

I could tell you stories about people who have led significant change by asking for stories and listening to them. At other places in this lens, I offer you links to stories like these. If you click on the links and read the stories, you will experience stories that draw you into a world of change and conflict and triumph and healing.

Or. . . you can simply think of a story. Because there has been, somewhere in your experience, a person who made a difference in your life or the life of someone around you because that person was good at drawing out stories and hearing what they had to say. Somewhere in your life, you told a story to someone who wanted to hear it, and that made all the difference. Somewhere in your life, someone said "tell me about a time when . . ." and you did.

The best way to change the stories you are telling yourself and other people is to listen to more stories with more attention. Let the stories you are hearing move through your senses and your memories and your emotions. Let them stir up your problem-solving areas and linger in your decision making processes. Let them wiggle down through your body.

Listen so that you can try on different stories the way you would test the right clothes for an important event or the right equipment for an important challenge.

Listen so well that the story you are hearing becomes your story, too.

Then pass it on.

I used to begin a course on public speaking by asking the students to notice their reaction when I said "Let me tell you a story." It's an almost irresistible invitation, a chance to connect with ideas and each other in a way that is both natural and powerful.

Storytelling works by establishing a multi-layered agreement between teller and listener to temporarily suspend difference and enter a shared experience. Because the story is "only a story" it is a safe place for us to interact and connect. Because stories are central to the way we organize meaning out of circumstances and events, the story is a powerful place for us to interact. Once we have shared a story as teller and listener, our relationship changes. We become people with common experience.

Storytelling is a performance; like all performing arts, it depends on a particular relationship between performer and audience. Every performance is different. The same story cannot be told twice: in each telling it maintains a central integrity (so that we know it as the same story) and yet changes in response to the unique relationship that unfolds between teller and listeners.

A story opens with a formula that sets apart what follows. We know where life is suspended to make room for the story, and when the story ends and the flow of life resumes. "That reminds me of a story" or "I once knew a man who. . . ." are variations of "once upon a time" that let us know we have stepped out of current reality and into a story. We cannot argue with whatever follows because what follows is a story - not a truth and not an argument.

Thus once we agree to the opening formula as teller and listeners, we agree to let the story unfold. As it does, the teller offers clues and the listeners fill in details. The story is not in the words, but in the responses those words evoke in the minds of the listeners. Each listener hears the same words and experiences the same patterns. The details are different for each as each travels with the teller from the start through obstacles, explorations and achievements.

We all end up together - teller and listeners have moved through time and, imaginatively, through space to finish at precisely the same spot. We know lots more about one another after we share a story - know the patterns with which we move through sensory information and memory to make sense of where we arrive together.