Time and Relative Dimension in Space
/It is quite the journey to become a confident, skilled and inspiring storyteller. There are many steps and missteps along the way, and just like any development journey, there is no real 'arrival'.
Read MoreKate Lawrence writes about storytelling, presenting and story facilitating, exploring the reflective, creative, and meaning making process of storytelling and persuading.
It is quite the journey to become a confident, skilled and inspiring storyteller. There are many steps and missteps along the way, and just like any development journey, there is no real 'arrival'.
Read MoreOne Sunday morning a young woman was out walking when she spotted ahead of her the wise old healer of the village. The young woman, who was home on holiday from University, hurried to catch up to her.
They fell in together walking and chatting, and finally the young woman turned to the old woman and said
Read MoreSelf - confidence is a tricky, mercurial thing: as soon as I feel like I've got a handle on it, it slips though my fingers and I am plunged again into self doubt.
Read MoreIt is possibly the hallmark of all true personal storytelling, that we must walk through the valley of the shadow of failure, and keep walking, not give up, not turn around and go back the way we came in, but push forward, taking the lessons of the failures with us, believing in ourselves, our voice and our stories.
Read MoreI love playing sport but I am not particularly competitive. What I love about sport are the moments of grace that occur when something goes well, when the ducks line up, the ball comes at the right time, the body moves with a certainty only appreciated in hindsight, and the stretching connection of body and ball results in something unexpected and amazing.
Read MoreI am no psychologist, neurologist, scientist or academic of any kind or calibre, but what I have learned in nearly twenty years of meditation, is that imagination is what happens when we let our minds relax, and open to nothing. It is the opposite of striving for an answer or forcing a solution, and more about allowing the mind to coalesce images out of clouds of swirling nothing and everything.
Read MoreThe second way we are called to draw on emotional courage in storytelling is in the double step act of facing our experiences, again, all the emotions that came with them at the time, processing them so we can then share them, making sense of them so we can bring an audience to a place of peace, hope or resolution around them. This is huge. This is the work of a lifetime.
Read MoreEmotional courage in personal storytelling is almost a tautology because the word courage is derived from the latin word ‘heart’ and it originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." - A particularly apt description for personal storytelling.
Emotional courage may also be described in modern parlance by referring to the word vulnerability, made specific by the work of Brene Brown. In her work she argues that we cannot have courage without vulnerability. She defines vulnerability as any situation where we face uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.
Vulnerability and therefore courage are required in storytelling in two ways, and this post is about the first and more obvious way.
The very act of standing and telling a story, any story, is an act requiring courage, exposing us to vulnerability, because we don’t know how it’s is going to go, how well we’ll do, how the listeners will respond - it is an uncertainty. There is a risk that we will fail and fail publicly, there is also a risk that we will be judged negatively, that others will not accept us and how we have told the story.
And if we are nervous, which we often are, there is added risk: we are dancing along the knife edge of our fear being seen - sweating, shaking, freezing, going blank; the fear of the fear changing how we reveal ourselves - we might come across as arrogant, or wooden and dull, because we are stiff with this fear, and this fear is undermining our confidence, and in the ultimate viscous cycle the fear of failure feeds our inner critic which can make failure more likely. All of this is why public speaking is sometimes rated worse than dying as a fear.
So we need to draw on our emotional fortitude in any of the multitude of ways available, and take heart that the more we do it the easier it gets, that the road is paved with many who have felt and faced the same terror and they have not only lived but grown from the experience.
In order to begin the journey of becoming a storyteller, it helps to understand and gather to the front of your mind the qualities that will enable you to learn, practise, grow and perform from deep within your heart, with a strong and clear voice. These keys will enable you to play the story like the strings of a guitar, feeling into the heart, challenging the mind and landing with deep satisfaction the gift of story.
Read MoreThe internal journey, meaning making and reflection on what it means to be human, are the essential ingredients to a good personal story.
Crafting a personal story reminds me a little of dream work, but easier. Dreams are set in a coded language that can be hard to crack.
Read MoreWorker disengagement is at extraordinary levels - in Australia, according to Gallup, over 75% of the workforce is disengaged, worldwide the figure is 87%.
While the causes and solutions for this epidemic in lack of workplace engagement are no doubt many, varied and complex, I want to suggest one cause/solution for this problem, relating to emotions.
Read MoreRecently I watched the TED talk by Carole Cadwalladr (pictured above) and I was reduced to tears, because she is talk about the ripping of the very fabric of democracy.
Read MoreCall me idealistic, but it’s always been one of my great desires to work in an effective, supportive team, where I feel I belong, its fun, I can contribute and we are making a difference in the world.
And there have been many times I have experienced this.
Read MoreI think we tell stories in two ways. The first is raw, natural, not consciously shaped or crafted. We tell stories this way to share our experiences, to be seen and heard, to connect to have others bear witness and to try to integrate our emotions and thoughts and actions.
Read MoreFor some reason we persist in believing in power over other people. Even those of us who fight for social justice, for an end to discrimination that puts white men above all other social classes, even we settle into hierarchies for work and accept the ladder of importance.
Read MoreRecently we went to the beach for a week's holiday. We hired a house that turned out to be right next to open parkland and my 13 year old son, who has been keen to take up golf, had a golf ball with him but no golf clubs.
Read MoreIt's one of those high school debating topics 'That the ends do not justify the means’, and it invites an endless conundrum of situations where the ends might justify the means, like when peace justifies war, or you need to be cruel to be kind.
Read MoreConfidence in telling our story, in standing up in front of others and speaking, is one of those cart before the horse, or chicken and egg situations, where you need confidence to do it, and doing it gives you confidence.
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So you’re just a little bit terrified of public speaking, and just the thought of telling a story, your story in public has your blood run cold. Welcome to a very large club that most people stay in their whole lives even though the door is there with a handle that just needs turning.
So I’ve got a new program, yep, in a bright red, enchanted portal to a parallel universe, still with that old-made-new program smell, like fresh sandalwood, is a world of voice, expression, drama, connection and story.
Read MoreStory Wise aims to inspire, encourage and excite people to find, craft and tell stories from your experiences, to show you story structure, skills, tips and tricks that are at the heart of good storytelling.
Hear your stories, know your aim and your audience, and give you tailored and useful feedback.
G'day, welcome to this, the Story Ground blog.
Here I write about inner and outer worlds, storytelling, speaking and leadership. I explore through story and ideas, the reflective, creative, and meaning making process we engage in to bring our whole selves to the world.
Here I play on the word continuum, from ethereal to shaped, and back again
I am a teller, writer and a teacher of story. A host, a participatory process canary, a thinker and speaker.
At the heart of all my work, musings and pursuits, is self exploration and human connection.
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