The Fun of Telling Stories

from Glory Ressler

 

I am blessed with doing the sort of work which is inherently 'deeply fun' to me. As a specialist in using story for personal and organizational transformation, I am privileged to design creative experiments within true life stories, myths, and fairy tales and then in their facilitation, I can watch the fun unfold! I am also honoured to be asked to tell tales and to listen to the stories of others. What could be more fun than that?

One of the aspects of this work that is so amazing to me is that people really do go to a place of deep fun. What I mean here is that the work with story is both deeply profound and highly enjoyable.

Let me give an example... During a recent two-day, pre-conference session I delivered on 'Story Goes to Work', I was witness to telling and exploring story that threw us into gales of laughter and deep reflection and/or tears in rapid, alternating succession. Stories of saving beloved pets and then deciding to put a suffering animal down, stories of achieving miraculous goals like running marathons and transforming long-standing conflicts, stories of births and defeats and accidents that changed our minds and hearts - funny stories of our exploits and adventures.

Deep fun and deep play ARE naturally transformational and the best fun is when the group takes the thing into an entirely new, unanticipated direction! Fasten your seat belts, the ride is about to begin!

Put in terms of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'Flow':

a sense of playfulness - telling stories is very playful (look at children) - even more playful is when we conduct activities within the context of stories (creative, planning, etc...)

a feeling of being in control - we have a sense of control both with regard to what we tell (or don't tell) AND how we choose to interpret the stories of others concentration and highly focused attention - this naturally happens when stories, from the heart, are being told

mental enjoyment of the activity for its own sake - my experience is that most people love stories, for their own sake. When this is added as a means to achieve work goals, it gets even better

a distorted sense of time - we definitely experienced this at the session I mentioned. Slowed time, accelerated time, no time. In fact, participants chose to stay late until the final storytelling circle felt 'finished'.

a match between the challenge at hand and one's skills - because story engages us simultaneously on the cognitive, emotional and spiritual (making meaning and attaching value) levels, there are challenges inherent that match most people's skill strengths.

1. Make it a game

Look at your task as a game. Establish rules, objectives, challenges to be overcome, and rewards. For example, retell your organization's history, present and future vision in the form of a fairy tale. Analyse for useful information, insight, and develop action steps

2. Powerful Goal

As you play the game, remind yourself frequently of the overriding spiritual, social, or intellectual purpose that drive your efforts. One of the most powerful and apropos overriding goals here is that 'we are all the authors of our own life story - if it isn't as you'd like, you are the only one who can change that AND the first steps are believing that you can and envisioning a new one'

3. Focus

Release your mind from all distractions, from within or without. Focus your entire attention on the game. In a well facilitated story session, this occurs naturally. Humans have been doing this since the earliest recorded history of the species.

4. Surrender to the Process

Let go. Don't strive or strain to achieve your objective. Just enjoy the process of work. Listening to stories of others - which you may disagree with or find troubling - provides an avenue to exercise this skill.

5. Ecstasy

This is the natural result of the preceding four steps. It will hit you suddenly, by surprise. But there will be no mistaking it. From the big Ahas! to prolonged feelings of flow, connection, warmth and openness - I've felt it and observed it in others

6. Peak Productivity

Your ecstatic state opens vast reservoirs of resourcefulness, creativity, and energy. Your productivity and quality of work shoot through the roof. Whether it is with regard to a work task immediately at hand OR overall in your work and personal life - deep reservoirs are tapped into with story work.

Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy. Learning to listen deeply to others and then to choose how we interpret what we've seen and heard is core here... getting past our knee-jerk reactions to an individual's take on a story, their emotional tone and the overall import they attach. Working with one story, from a myriad of perspectives and editions, aids people in seeing that they are, in fact, in control of their own perceptions, emotions - reality is what we make it... etc...