Once Upon A Time..

“I have fallen in love with the imagination.  And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free      spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything”. Alice Walker

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to travel, have adventures and learn from new experiences. As a child, of course, I could only do so in my imagination, creating stories of my own, listening to other people’s and, pretty soon, reading them. All of these I shared with my imaginary friend. Today I still love the stories that I find everywhere in life and I still share them – though now my audience includes real friends, plus family and clients – old and young.

I was lucky to be encouraged as a child to seek out the stories: they played a vital part in making me who I am, so I am naturally a passionate advocate of story-telling as vital to every child’s education.

Here are five reasons why I think it’s good to gather stories:

  1. To escape temporarily from the everyday and have an adventures in my head
  2. To learn and stimulate my curiosity
  3. To help make some meaning of what is around me and in the world beyond
  4. To change how I see, understand and act
  5. To gain empathy with what others feel about their experiences and keep my humanity compass true

And five reasons to share those stories:

  1. To inspire and excite others
  2. To imagine and create something new
  3. To entertain
  4. To change how others see, understand and take action
  5. To pass on my love of story telling

Put all those reasons together and they might add up to an effective way to improve who, what and where we are.  What stories do you tell and why?

A remarkable story to see and hear is Hyeonseo Lee’ TED talk My escape from North Korea.

Also if you want to read some great stories (not only for girls despite its title) - ‘the real-life fairy tale book so inspiring adults are reading it’ – Bedtime Stories for Rebel Girls.

And Richard Branson’s collection of inspiring storytelling quotes to check out – top ten quotes.