How Telling Your Story Can Change Your Life

Here are Evergreen Podcasts, stories are powerful. They are fundamental to our humanity.

Richard Stone, founder of communication training company StoryWork International and co-author (with Scott Livengood) of "Story Intelligence: Master Story, Master Life," urges us to become “masterful at offering our life stories.”

While appearing as a guest on the Minter Dialogue Podcast (a recent addition to Evergreen Podcasts), Stone shares with Host Minter Dial on how to get to the core of what makes YOUR story and all its components.

How to: Craft Your Life Story: Be. Do. Have!

While working with clients through leadership, brand and transformation, Stone uses a model of “Be. Do. Have!”

As a society, he says, we believe that doing and having will lead to fulfillment and happiness but Stone suggests a different reality. “That’s never the case,” he adds. “Because it's never-ending — there's always a bigger house. There's always somebody who has more who we're comparing ourselves to.”

Stone’s StoryWork strategy is to “figure out who you are and who you want to become” from there he says, we are to act out of that center and “good things will come.”

You Gotta Do: the (Soul) Work

In episode 438 of the Minter Dialogue Podcast, Stone adds that if we do not do the “inner work” of figuring out who and what we are, we will catastrophize world events. Instead, by knowing ourselves fully, we can impact the world in the best ways possible because we can put forth our best traits to work for the greater good.

Another core tenet of Stone’s StoryWork is identifying what relates to the individual human spirit in order to tell a “master story.” He cites a saying attributed to Aristotle: “Your vocation is at the intersection of your deepest gifts and talents and the needs of the world.”

How to: Imagine Better

In this episode of the Minter Dialogue Podcast, Stone says it’s important to differentiate between retrospective thinking (stories about the past) and prospective thinking (about the future).

“We are not precise when we think about the future,” he says. “The areas of the brain involved with retrospection and prospection use a lot of the same functionality, and that is why we often replicate what we did in the past. We struggle to think beyond what has already happened.”

Stone describes a study of college students split into two groups. One group was asked to imagine they got an A-grade in a particular course. The other was asked to imagine the process they would have to go through to earn an A-grade. The latter group responded with more precision than the former. Those that envisioned what it would take performed more optimally.

Stone believes ‘envisioning’ it is a muscle that requires some exercise but assures us the more we do it, the better we will become and the better our results.