Exploring Your Creative Genius: Episode 45
In the two-part conversation with Christopher Gergin, the topic of Story came up a couple of times. Here’s a couple more useful bits:
“Before stories, the human mind was only a partial participant in its own conscious experience of life, restricted to the recent past and near future, to its immediate surroundings and fragmented memories of other places. By telling stories, early humans gained unprecedented autonomy over their subjective experiences: they could dictate and record extensive histories and make intricate long-term plans; they could obscure, revise, and mythologize truth; they could dwell in alternate worlds of their own making. Storytelling transformed our species from intelligent ape to demigod.”
Powerfully put, yeah? We were only partial participants in the world until Story helped us manage our experiences. That’s from ‘The Story of Story Telling’, by Ferris Jabr, the March 2019 issue of Harper’s. Lots of good stuff there.
Having found our humanity through Story and the stories we tell, we need Story. If, at work one day, the boss came in to a gathering of employees and shared what was presented as important information but didn’t deliver it wrapped in a Story the first thing we will do when the boss leaves is come up with a Story that will help us understand why this information was so important.
When I start a segment on Story in one of my workshops or labs I often say something like “I could talk about Story for two hours and through it all you will be nodding your heads, saying, yeah, I knew that already” — and that’s one of the creative strengths of Story, we all know how it works.
Once upon a time….
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
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