Why Story Listening Makes You Thankful
Contents
1) WHY STORY LISTENING MAKES YOU THANKFUL
It’s not too hard to be thankful when things go great. But in hard times, thankfulness requires some outside help.
That’s when it especially pays to listen to stories. Story-listening tends to make you grateful, no matter what is happening, in part because it reminds you that happy endings can follow difficult trials.
More than that, I believe that listening to good stories makes you grateful because it first assists you in feeling positive about yourself.
Ten Qualities You Gain Through Stories
Story-listening helps you feel all 10 of these:
1. Powerful
When someone tells you a story, you can discover your ability to imagine the sights, sounds, and feelings the story evokes. You effortlessly re-create the story’s images in your mind. In time, you learn that you can imagine anything in the world - and much that has never been. What power!
2. Rich
Maybe you’re not rolling in money, but you can afford to listen to stories. You don’t need a television or a cable subscription, just another human to tell you a tale. Further, you never run out of new stories. Even better, you’ll be reminded of your own life experiences, which are, after all, a form of wealth you can never lose.
3. Brave
Having faced dangers and adversity - often of (literally) epic proportions - with the characters in a story, you renew your determination - to do better than the evil characters who must be foiled in the end, to face obstacles rather than run from them, to be the one whose actions save the day. Armed with stories, you have new strategies for prevailing and, therefore, are more willing to take on challenges.
4. Refreshed
Stories awaken your senses. When you imagine the scenes of a story, you call on your internal ability to see, hear, and feel. You leave the foggy world of abstraction and anchor yourself once again in the palpable details of scene, character, and action. Further, you leave your own cares behind for a while and can return to them after the story with a new perspective.
5. Connected
When you listen with others, you share the experience with them, even as each listener’s experience is unique. This creates a sense of tolerant connection among you. Further, when you listen to stories with those you love, you may be prompted to tell stories to each other. This draws you closer, as you entertain and instruct each other by sharing the personal experiences that you find fun, beautiful, or moving.
6. Cosmopolitan
Stories let you travel to many lands - without going through airport security!
7. Independent
Storytelling requires no equipment, special facilities, or dependence on foreign oil. When you make a habit of enjoying stories, you realize that you can live a full life even without your television, computer, and video games.
8. Wise
Through stories, you walk in another’s mocassins without getting your feet muddy. You identify with characters, experiencing their points of view and thus increasing your compassion. Further, you learn new ways to act on values and new consequences (both positive and negative) of human decisions.
9. Environmentally Responsible
Storytelling is eco-friendly, humane entertainment. It creates no pollution, adds to no landfills, and harms no animals!
10. Happy
What makes you happier than surviving, with a story character, a life-threatening experience, hopeless situation, rejection, failure, or near disaster? What makes you more hopeful than a series of well-deserved happy endings?
Together, This Adds Up to More
As important as each of these ten qualities may be, they add up to something even greater. After all, who has more reason to be thankful than one who is blessed with power, riches, courage, alertness, human ties, world travel, independence, wisdom, environmental prudence and happiness?
The moral of this tale? Listen to more stories. You’ll be thankful that you did.
2) GO GREEN AND SAVE WITH DOWNLOADED RECORDINGS
I mentioned above that stories are environmentally friendly. But RECORDINGS of stories are usually sold on petroleum-based, non-biodegradable CDs that will eventually show up in landfills.
Fortunately, there is a solution: get your recordings electronically!
And you can listen to your downloaded stories and professional secrets on your computer, your iPod or by burning them to CD. (At least you save the earth from shipping and packaging materials!)
To give you the recordings you need for holiday travel or just to fortify you and boost your business during depressed economic times, I have introduced downloadable mp3 versions of six of my most popular recordings.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that you save over 50% in the process!
The Professional Storyteller’s Collection
Now you can buy three vital recordings for any performing or teaching storyteller, via download. And you can save even more by buying all three at once. Double-click on this link to learn more:
http://www.storydynamics.com/downloads
Learn to market yourself and your products, record your stories or workshops easily and efficiently, and put together an integrate storytelling life that energizes (not exhausts) you.
The Adult’s Collection of Stories
My three most recent recorded performances include my heart’s own story, “The Soul of Hope,” which is, itself, an antidote for times of despair. Double-click to learn more:
http://www.storydynamics.com/downloads
Download any one of these 6 recordings (one featuring the great Jay O’Callahan) for as little as $10.47. (Most are 2-hour recordings costing $19.98 to download.)
The Mother of All Downloads
If you purchase both of these collections by Monday, November 24, you will get a free bonus: the Storyteller’s Car Warm-Up Kit. This $30 value (for CD; $10.47 for download, including a pdf to print out and keep in your car, plus a $10 discount certificate) will keep your voice warmed up and healthy, even when the winter weather chills your bones.
Read more here:
http://www.storydynamics.com/downloads
Yours in storytelling,
Doug
P.S., Please check out the downloadable recordings. The free offer ends Monday, November 24!