I recently started to talk to people about my work and interest in the art and craft of storytelling as a way to help people understand their pain and transform negative experiences into valuable lessons - and it occurs to me that most people think of "storytelling" as something you do to make people more entertained, or perhaps make people more interested in you or what you're trying to sell.
It became clear to me that there is a wide gap of understanding when it comes to what "Storytelling" means when I use the term, versus what most people think of when they hear it.
Storytelling is happening everywhere, at all times. Storytelling is all the times you said to yourself "Man, I wish I could be like that person. Why can't I be more like them? If only I was more like them, my life would be so much better and I would have the things that want just like that person does".
Now - if you repeat those thoughts to yourself you are effectively inducing a kind of self-hypnosis. You are creating a story that you are making up all by yourself, and you are making decisions based on it as if it were factual. And the longer you repeat and listen to a particular story in your head, the more it becomes a part of you - and the more you find yourself automatically behaving as though it were true. And fascinatingly enough, you will find that you will actually begin to manifest a life in which the story you tell yourself in your head more and more resembles the life you are creating.
This is why it is imperative that we understand how storytelling works on these deeper, personal levels - because the stories we tell ourselves can be the difference between creating a life of meaning, of purpose, of balance, and of integrity, or creating a life of limitation, of resentment, of diminishment, and of spitefulness.
Storytelling isn't just about how well we come across to others or how to tell better stories. Storytelling is the mechanism through which we create who we are, and is one of the most important things we as humanity need to master.