Good Life Project - Why Stories Work Better Than Advice.

Episode Date: June 22, 2017

Ever have something really important to say to someone? Something you know will help? Some bit of wisdom or advice that can make a big difference. Could be at work, at home, in your personal life.So, what's the best way to "get your point across?" How do you share your idea in a way where the person you most want to get it...gets it? Then, acts on it. Instead of rejecting it out of hand.Turns out, framing your wisdom in the form of a well-told story, rather than a point or moral or bit of advice, demand, order or imperative, can work wonders. It can bypass all the automatic defenses that lead us to reject being "told what to do."That's what today's Good Life Project Riff is all about.Rockstar sponsors:Camp GLP - Register by June 28, 2017 and lock in your $100 discount. After that registration returns to full-price. And, more important, we don't have a lot of spots left, so there is a decent chance we will sell soon and have no spots left at any price. So, come grab your spot now! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I've been thinking about the idea of story lately, and mainly, if you're trying to convey an idea, is it better to lead with the point or to lead with a story and somehow meander around to the point? That's what I'm diving into on today's Good Life Project Riff. So I remember a little while back, I was at an event, and I had the great fortune to be on stage. And the person who was on stage right before me, who's become a friend, was Tiffany Schlain.

And if you recognize that name, it's because, maybe for a lot of reasons. Tiffany is a documentary filmmaker. She's also the founder of the Webby Awards. And she's done so many incredible pieces and created some of these collective, collaborative filmmaking pieces that have exploded massively, virally, online, around the place. And I remember I was backstage, and I heard Tiffany speaking on stage. And I heard her say something like, I won't get her exact language, but she was saying there came a time where she realized, actually, that if you lead with humor, that people become

much more open to your message, rather than just saying, here's the message. And it really got me thinking, because I believe if you can sort of shift somebody's emotional state, then I agree, that enables them. It sort of drops a certain defense mechanism, and you become much more open to an idea or to a message. And I really started thinking, well, humor is certainly one way to a message. And, you know, I really started thinking, well, you know, humor is certainly one way to do that. But on a larger context, you know, I think it's almost, if you're funny, if you have the capacity to be funny, you're like, I could totally do that, let me do it. But there are a lot of other people who feel like, but I'm not funny. And I want, I want to open

people to ideas so that, you know, good stuff can come in and we can have conversations. So what I realized is that in my mind, it's not so much about humor. It is about creating some sort of experience that allows somebody to lower their shields. And for me, one of the most powerful tools to make that happen, it can be funny, it can be sad, it can be dramatic, but it's about story. It's the idea of storytelling. So what's interesting is I'm telling you all about speakers today, right? A couple years before that, actually, I had the chance to hear Malcolm Gladwell on stage speaking. And it was really fascinating because he kind of comes out and just starts telling a story and you have no idea where he's going. But he's telling a story and you're immediately drawn

into the story because the second he sets the scene and introduces the characters and then introduces the question and the quest, you can't lean back in your seat until you know how it ends. And then what he tends to do is he creates nested stories. He then opens a second one within that story and then opens a third one within that story until you're kind of going deeper and deeper and you're almost in this story-driven trance state. And then slowly, one by one, he closes the inside story and then he closes the loop on that middle story. And then finally, he comes full circle and closes the loop on the story that he started out with.

And from that, the point finally rises up. And you're like, oh, that's it. That's what this whole thing has been about. And your mind is kind of blown because he barely has to tell you what the point is. You've now sort of, it's been baked viscerally into your mind and into your body through the vehicle of story. It's like, you know, the actual idea, the principle, the point, it's just this mini punchline. But the payoff really is it comes in little bits and pieces along the way. And Glaucon,

by the way, does that in his books as well, if you've read any of them. And what I realized over time is that I do believe story to be the big emotional opening lever, the big opening lever that allows people to drop the fences. Because story can be told in a way that allows us to transfer into the experience. It allows us to play a role, to see ourselves as one of the characters within the story, to step into the world in some way, shape, or form. And as we transport ourselves, as we step into that fiercely present moment, it becomes brutally hard to continue to posture, to continue to keep shields up. The bandwidth of propping up shields and defenses happens when you are anticipating something

or lamenting something. It is brutally hard to live in a state of protectionism when you're living in the present moment and to keep those shields up because the shields are there to protect you against what you believe is coming or what you fear happened in the past. When you're in the present, you just don't have the cognitive ability to keep the shields up. And what story well told does is it drops you out of anticipation and lament, and it pulls you into the present moment. It allows you to participate in a story as it's being told. And in doing so, it kind of bypasses a lot of defenses.

Now, some defenses are there for a good reason. But a lot of our defenses are there because we want to be protected from truth. We want to be protected from the realization that we actually need to do something, to become, to move, to act. So one of the things that I've learned and that I've really been playing with a lot and doing in both my writing and my speaking, and this is not just, by the way,

speaking from a stage or writing books. This is in conversation on a regular basis. This is in short little things, is I've been sort of running some experiments and saying, what if I led with been sort of running some experiments and saying, what if I led with story? What if instead of just saying, here's the point, here's what to do, here's the idea, what if I actually led with story? What if instead of being the person who says this is how it has to happen, I instead was the storyteller and through a story that was well constructed

I allow somebody to move into the experience of the present moment to in some way experience the joy, the emotion transfer into the story and through the way that the story is told and the ideas in the story and the resolution of somebody who's in the story and the resources and solutions and the ideas in the story and the resolution of somebody who's in the story and the resources and solutions and the ideas in the story, that through participating in that story and being exposed to these things, that they become the obvious catalysts for action and the obvious ideas and solutions that somebody may then experience and invite in their own lives

every day as the story winds up and they're delivered back into their own reality. You know, it's interesting. Sometimes I wonder if one of the most effective things that we can do is spend less time telling people what to do and more time telling stories of people who have been in a similar place as them. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's you who've been in that similar place and simply telling about your experience and telling how you resulted, telling how you struggled, and telling what you found to be really helpful. And then just offering to them, look, I have no idea if this is going to matter to you. I have no idea if it's helpful to you, but I thought I would share it.

And if it is, that's great. And then allow somebody to have the experience of determining whether it's valuable to them or not and stepping into it and implementing on their own rather than being told, this is what you should do. This is the idea. This is the knowledge. This is what works. Because for some people, that's going to make them say, yes, I will do this. For other people, they will reject out of hand an idea that could be deeply valuable to them, simply because it did not arise out of their own experience

and it was mandated or offered as something that's coming from somebody who they perceive to be trying to position themselves as being more in the know and they don't want to be seen as being lesser than or less knowledgeable than. So something to think about. As we go out into the world and we're trying to make a difference and we are trying to inspire others maybe to take on ideas and actions, behaviors, solutions

that may make a difference in their lives and their work. That's what I'm thinking about as I sit here in this studio recording. I hope you found that valuable. As always, go tell a story to a friend and see how it lands with them. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.