An example.

The last two pieces that I’ve written (on the paths that we follow) were inspired by material I’d been reading on Hilda Carroll’s site, an amazing series of posts on Life 2.0 (not to mention the thoughtful comments that follow) and Adam Kayce’s ‘Monkifesto’.

After writing it Robyn pointed me towards a serendipitous post that the amazing Liz Strauss had also just penned on choosing our own path, and resisting peer pressure.  I love the way Liz writes.  She always gets right to the heart of the matter.  This time she reminds us to

Choose not for others, but always hold your choice for yourself.

Later this evening I found that Nick had written another great piece that picked up some of the threads of the writing from Liz and myself, and turned it into an amazing new tapestry.  I would really encourage you to go and check out his thoughts on ‘walking our path: know how or no how’ – and if nothing else to remember the question that he throws us.  Simple.  Powerful.  Effective.  Strong.

How does the truth of who we are wish to express itself now?

Talk about a great coaching question. 

I’d love to know what answers, what possibilities this question starts to awaken in you?

Different authors and voices; different backgrounds and experience; people living in different continents who have never and may never meet – weaving words together.

In the words of an African proverb:

“It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story”

Or as Liz would say – together we can change the world.

My chosen book is Lewis Carroll’s "Alice In Wonderland." I guess it’s a suggestion that won’t often appear on the shelves marked "business thinking" – but it was a great help to me at a difficult time in my career.  It was a point when I was struggling to make sense of my way too busy, stressful career in a very large public service organisation where things often seemed more than a little crazy if not back to front or even upside down.

So how did the book help me?

1. It helped me to realise that some things about large organisations just were plain perplexing.  There wasn’t much point worrying about it.  You just had to get on with it. Well that’s how I read the advice from the Cheshire Cat anyway.

" ‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice.  ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat.  ‘We’re all mad here.’"

2. It helped me to stop worrying about the rules that we were supposed to follow.  It wouldn’t have been humanly (or inhumanly) possible to comply with them all.  You just had to get on with it – and apply dollops of common sense.  I can’t remember which character gives Alice this piece of advice but it always make me smile when I find myself getting hung up on lists of things I ‘should’ do.  (The last point is particularly important don’t you think?)

"’Speak in French when you can’t think of English for a thing, turn out your toes when you walk and remember who you are!"

3. You just can’t keep a straight face when you’re reading Alice.  So the book helped me to smile through otherwise dark days.  It reminded – reminds me – to lighten up.  Who wouldn’t with great advice like this?

"’Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely, ‘and go on till  you come to the end: then stop."

I’m sure there are lots of serious and important business strategy books that I should have been reading so I look forward to reading people’s suggestions at Brad’s site (or hearing yours here, of course.)  If you want to play, the questions are very simple, just identify:

1. (Of course) the name of the book and author.
2. When you read it.
3. The one, two, or three big ideas you got of it.
4. How it made a difference in your career.

I started thinking along the usual lines of national heroes who had amazing stories to tell, of courage and justice and the triumph of truth.  Then wondered about people who were great storytellers and raconteurs who would hold our attention rapt at the dinner table.  But after a while I figured it would be amazing to host a dinner party of poets.  People who can weave words into magic, spin a web of hopes and dreams and imagined worlds.  People who have lived amazing lives and seen some of the dark side.  People who can tell it like it us, often with a real sucker punch.

So poets it is, and here’s my dreamy guest list:

Maya Angelou. Writer, activist and storyteller as well as a poet, she has an amazing ability to express the human desire for an authentic life.  Here’s one of my favourite lines on the importance of the individual’s story:  "there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

Rumi. I have to confess I’ve only read snippets of his poetry so far but it contains lines of astonishing beauty and power. Words written hundreds of years before that still have the power to stop you in your tracks.  "You were born with wings.  Why prefer to crawl through life?"

Spike Milligan.  Change of tack here to make sure our dinner guests keep their feet on the ground.  Best known as a comedian (including comic poetry) but with some stunning dark material too born out of his experience of depression.  Again some great one-liners – this time to make us smile.  "Well we can’t stand around here doing nothing, people will think we’re workmen!"

Shane Koyczan.  A Canadian spoken word performer, sometimes called a rap poet.  I heard Shane a couple of years ago at the Edinburgh Book Festival and it was a stunning experience.  He moved his audience through a spectrum of emotions with the power of his words: anger, laughter, frustration and tears.  No one-liners here, and you need to listen to the poems for best effect.  You can sample his poetry here - click on the ‘play our jukebox’ for a selection of his work.

Raymond Carver.  Well just one of my favourite writers and poets.  I’d love to have had the chance to sit down and have dinner with this guy.  Again he has some lines that stop you still, questions that will continue to run through your head for long enough, who knows?  Maybe even the rest of your life.  Here’s a favourite, from Late Fragment:

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?"

So that’s my choice of dinner guests for an evening of poetry and power, of musings and magic.   Who would you want to invite along for supper – and why?

I was gifted two such stories last week.  I got talking to a businesswoman and we drifted onto the subject of her family.  She told me a heart stopping story about the illness her young daughter was living with and the impact this had on their lives.  But it was a story told without self-pity, designed not to shock but simply to explain.  A tale not of sorrow but of courage and patience and love.  Laced with comic episodes and told with smiles, not tears.  I could only step back with wonder at the ability of this family, this woman, to transform a terrible experience into something positive, and good.

Later the same day I was chatting to a Big Issue vendor.  Just up from London he was keen to talk, trying to work out how best to engage with the Edinburgh shoppers.  His story was also a roller coaster affair, a reminder of how quickly life can unravel once one part of the marriage-work-home equation starts to unravel.  But this man was an optimist.  It was good to be in the fresh air of Edinburgh, selling in front of the Castle, looking across to the crags on Arthur’s Seat.  It would soon be Festival time.  He was a busker, a unicyclist, a juggler.  If he could just find the money to get his unicycle up here there was money to be made in the summer.  Always new balls to be thrown, a different tightrope to ride.

Two different faces of Edinburgh, two completely different stories.  What linked them together was the attitude of the story-tellers.  They had reframed what to most of us would be end of the world circumstances.  Chaos and catastrophe.  Things falling apart.  The end of life as we know it.  Taken that old story and transformed it into something new: a story of courage, and optimism, of persistence and love.  A belief in possibility.  Not looking back, never looking down: riding the tightrope of life.

"I am the hero of my book.  I have my dreams."

If you’d like to support their work you’ll find out more on their site – or you can sponsor their contribution to the Walk for Life event by clicking here.

It was from the Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum.  And there in the midst of her miscellaneous adventures she throws us a big question: Who is narrating your life?

It’s the question we ask when we realise we’ve lost the plot.  The feeling so many of us get when the story comes to a dead end.  What happens to people when they

…wake up when they’re forty and go, “Wow, how did I end up here?” and realise they’ve had an unfulfilled previous twenty or so years because they’ve never actively narrated their destiny. It was easier to “go with the flow”, when really that flow was a rip taking them out to sea.

And when you stop, and look around you, and see how far you’ve come or how far you’ve drifted, maybe… what’s your answer to the question:

Who’s narrating your life? Who’s telling your story?

One of my favourite Zen stories is in response to the age-old question of identity.  And if any of you have ever found yourself wondering ‘but who am I, really?’ (and don’t worry, you’re not alone…) I hope you enjoy this:

A distraught man approached the Zen master.  "Please, Master, I feel lost, desperate.  I don’t know who I am.  Please, show me my true self!"  But the teacher just looked away without responding.  The man began to plead and beg, but still the master gave no reply.  Finally giving up in frustration, the man turned to leave.  At that moment the master called out to him by name.  "Yes!" the man said, as he spun back around.  "There it is!" exclaimed the master.

Any favourite Zen stories or sayings you’d like to share, or would love to see here?

If the storytellers on Gliese 581 were binding spells and chilling spines with the feats of their planet’s heroes and heroines.  How they had learned to protect and conserve their precious resources.  To make sure everyone had food to eat.  To encourage the unique and amazing contribution that each person could make.  To turn away from self-destructive wars and pursue a path of peace, however impossible it once had seemed. 

If they they had found a way to challenge the narrative of their naysayers. To answer back when their scientists, like ours, told them to prepare to enter space, to leave their home, because of the threat of a changing climate, a nuclear war, the devastation of disease.

Had learned how to take control of the script.  To create a new ending. 

And to make that the start of a completely different story.

There are some stunning descriptions about the power and benefits of story-telling. Storytellers, she says “have as profound a purpose as any who are charged to guide and transform human lives”. She talks about stories as medicine – and of times when we need to “tell stories to one another as if our lives depended on it”.

But ‘The Art of Storytelling’ does not just describe the power of this art form. Nancy also shows you how to use it to start telling the most important story of all: your own…

The book is crammed full of storylines, prompts, questions, stories and creative activities that will set you off on the path of telling your own story, of bringing it to life.

She introduces us to many of the core features of traditional storytelling: the characters – fairies, angels, dragons, wizards; the settings – mountains, forests, swamps, castles, kitchens, the high seas; and recurring themes – even simple things like doors, locks and keys.

Each one comes with a number of questions that will set your imagination running. She shows us for example how doorways and thresholds might be just the right place to start telling your story:

How do you know it’s time to unlock the door? What lies behind the door? What does the door look like? What kind of key will fit it? Where will you find the key?

I found the book a great stimulus to my own imagination as well as an invaluable resource to help explain ‘why storytelling matters’. It’s no small purpose. As a storyteller, she says, “you are a co-creator with the thriving live of the universe.”

Enjoy reading the book, and creating your story.

We can see elements of coaching, the hero’s journey if you like, in many traditional tales and fairy stories.

If we think about Jack and the beanstalk for example, we might start off by saying that it was about slaying giants, finding the courage and the confidence to destroy your demons, real or imagined.  Or maybe it is about climbing a beanstalk, up to a bigger and better place, finding not only gold but the source of wealth itself:  the hen that lays the golden eggs.

But then again it’s about planting magic beans, whatever anyone else might say, and waiting to see what grows.  And seeing how the beanstalk grows up, and up, and round, and out, leading to all sorts of extraordinary places that you couldn’t have imagined when you threw down those beans.

Or maybe the story is about how people change, and grow – or remain stuck in character.  There is Jack of course: curious, confident, hungry, full of desire, at times over-reaching.    But what about the Giant, striding around his empty castle, trapped by his own wealth and power.  Or his sad lonely wife, desperate for children, longing for any sign of love.   And then there’s Jack’s mother, who does nothing but worry and moan, the voice of negativity… and yet, at the end, is the one who fetches the axe.

And when we think about it maybe the story is not just about slaying giants – because the giant only dies when Jack and his mother are able to chop down the beanstalk.  Perhaps it is about breaking the ties that bind, real or imagined…

But what does all this have to do with coaching and NLP?  Well, it is a story that begins with a problem state (no money, no prospects, no joy in life) and ends in a positive end state.  We can see that in material terms (wealth, economic freedom) but mainly in the transformations that have taken place through the course of the story (freedom from fear, courage, confidence, a sense of your own power).  There’s some magic along the way, of course, but everything flows from the resources they have already got: the milk cow (poor old Daisy), and Jack’s confidence, resilience, curiosity, believing in the impossible…   What the magic beans do is open up new possibilities and let the story unfold…

The beauty of this and other stories is that there is no one answer… but many layers of meaning that curl and twirl like leaves on a beanstalk… meanings that we make and take from our own experience and map of the world… meanings that change over time… and with each reading… and I don’t know which part of the story has the most meaning for you now…?