What if we could give you a secret weapon against the worries that give you sleepless nights? If you are like me, you are concerned about the wellbeing of your family, how the young people in your life are doing when we examine trends like teen suicide that has gone through the roof in recent years, cutting, and technology that seems to be changing faster than our humanity. There are algorithms that are sucking us in, and so much divisiveness in our world. These are tough problems.
The secret weapon is story.
By telling our most important stories, we can share our values in a way that doesn’t on too strong. We can inspire others to reach their potential to get through the hard stuff of their lives. Story is the way that we process the hard stuff of our own lives and find meaning in it. Story is at the very heart of our DNA. This is what it is to be a human. We've been telling stories since the beginning of time. It's how we share our values. It's how we create a shared culture. It's how we teach without being preachy. It's the only way we're going to be remembered after we're gone.
It can feel daunting because we're surrounded by stories that are so well done. When you think about what Hollywood produces, what's streaming, the video games and the tug of social media, we certainly have no lack of story. And they are created with these budgets. So how do we compete with that in our own families?
When we share a story about ourselves or about an ancestor with a member of our family, they care about it because it's about THEM. (What do humans care about? Ourselves). So, when we share these personal stories, it's like giving them the secret to unlock their own path, their own personality, their own DNA.
Online personality quizzes have an irresistible pull. Why? We want to know who we are. And when we tell these personal stories, it helps others understand who THEY are.
So, we don't have to have giant budget. You can learn to do it amazingly well. You can learn to apply the patterns that make for compelling stories.
It's fun when you're in the flow, and it's a joy when you get in that zone, and when creativity or ideas and inspiration show up that you had no idea would be there. It's absolutely exhilarating. And then when you finish a story, there's no other feeling like it. You think, “I did that I didn't know I could, and I wrote a story and it's good.”
Then, when you bring it to your family, whether it's through social media or you share it at Christmas, it's an amazing feeling when they say it makes me proud to be part of this family. I didn't know that before. That is so cool. It's a gift to others. It's a love letter to future generations
So that's what this new teaching model we are introducing is all about. This is all about us working together to learn the patterns, to learn all the tools, and to learn the steps to bring it together.
Next, I went on this journey to figure out how to do it well. Reading everything I could get my hands on. Doing projects. Taking classes. At this point, I’ve put in more than 10,000 hours of hard practice and learning everything I can about what makes great stories, and how to teach these timeless principles to others.
As our business grew, Rachel and I started speaking and offering small group classes. Then in 2019 we spent the better part of a year preparing to take our curriculum online. We launched our first online class in January of 2020, right before the pandemic went global. The timing was serendipitous to start teaching online. Now, the classes that we used to teach in person include students from all over the world.
Along the way, I have coached some wonderful clients and have realized the power in having people write their own stories instead of me doing it. One was Rob A. Gentile who had a near death experience. When I learned of his story, I told him, “I'm not going to write your story for you. It wouldn’t be authentic. This is your story to tell.”
There were times when he was tempted to have me just work on it because parts really wrung it out of him. But I kept saying, “I will walk with you. I will encourage you. I'll help you storyboard it. But I won't take this process from you”. And his finished product was an amazing, beautiful book that is important for our day. It ended up being a number one best seller on Amazon in something like 13 different categories.