Which story will you choose?
People often have a choice as to which story they associate with an event or a memory. We can decide what value and what meaning we attach to it. Which story do you choose?
In a time of harsh words and radical language, the world is becoming more and more divided. People are hardening and a growing group has a negative outlook on society, causing that necessary connection to be neglected. Personal leadership is therefore more important than ever.
Follow the whisper of the heart, dare to stand up and become visible in your environment, be who you are. Do what you can do. It sometimes takes courage and the smallest movement counts. By telling and sharing (personal) stories, people can experience what it is like to be the other, we can empathise better with each other.
That is precisely why we at Storytelling Centre value the small stories in our training programs within the social domain. Small, personal stories that touch the heart, that make the “big” light up. What ever that may be. That represent something of essence and therefore inspire, show the power of vulnerability, that are about the human dimension and at the same time show how people manage to transcend themselves.
Little stories like drops in the pond whose ripples are going to touch each other, there is no other way. Helping people to dig those small “big” stories out of their own heart and life, that’s something we love to do. Connecting these people through these stories. We have developed several performances to make small stories big, but we also provide a lot of storytelling training sessions to make stories that have been blown out of proportion human again. For example, in conflicts , in neighbourhood quarrels or intergenerational communication .
People often have a choice as to which story they associate with an event or a memory. We can decide what value and what meaning we attach to it. Which story do you choose?
In this article, Arjen Barel reflects on the concept of the ‘single story’; the reduction of an identity to a single narrative.
It’s a question that comes up in almost every training session or presentation: “What is the real difference between applied storytelling and therapy?”
The plain truth can be woven into a narrative to make it more appealing and easier for audiences to accept, but the narrative must never obscure the truth.