If you’re human, the answer is Yes. If you open your mouth to speak, you can be certain you’re telling a story.
Now, here’s an interesting thing to consider
Animals are also communicators. Note, I didn’t say ‘storytellers’. Can you guess why?
It’s because their communication is entirely embodied ie they use their bodies exclusively to communicate.
Their bodies, which are in constant communication with the world around them, communicate – through sound, movement, chemical signals and colours – critical information that helps keep them safe and able to procreate.
We, humans, on the other hand, use our abstract thinking faculty, a critical function of the prefrontal cortex to organize our information, filter what we want to leave out, emphasize what we want to highlight and set up the sequence of our story.
Our thinking also determines which stories we tell and which we don’t. In other words, our storytelling is subjective and selective.
What this means is that we are a step removed from our direct (unmediated) embodied communication with the world. And this crucial step makes all the difference.
This step, takes us from the most direct and accurate form of embodied knowing (like that of animals) to our indirect and inaccurate way of knowing ie through thinking.
Humans privilege thinking over being!
And this is how our communication gets muddy. Stories are always muddy. No two people who have experienced a thunderstorm will tell the same story or tell it in the same way.
So, how do our stories get muddy?
They get muddy because we fill them with…
Our Judgements
Our personal biases, likes and dislikes
Our personal history and our interpretations of events
Our learned/habitual reactions such as fear, anger, anxiety, restlessness, distrust…
Our demands and expectations of ourselves and others
Now, here is the key point I want to make with all of this:
What stories (or story) are you telling and do you keep telling?
Why am I asking this?
Because, if you keep telling the same story (and most of us do), you are never going to experience a different reality to the one that your story currently reflects.
It’s a simple fact:
Tell the same story, create the same reality.
Tell the same story and nothing will change.
You see, your story is your way of life. It dictates how you show up in the world. It tells you and the world who you are.
So, if you want a different life, if you want to show up differently in the world, if you want to be and have something different and better – radically and meaningfully better,
Learn to express (not just tell) and embody a better story.
Interested in Mentoring?
EACH MONTH, I work with a small number of people (about 6) in a mentoring capacity. It is highly personalized and uses a body-centred phenomenological (lived experience rather than theoretical) approach and draws on mindfulness and reflective practices. If this sounds interesting to you, you can find out more here.
Interested in Meditation or Workshops? Get in touch!