Shake up your story
Artist and father of two, Raghava KK didn’t like the children’s books that he saw. So he created his own genius versions for iPads. Take a look at this Ted talk and you’ll see him demonstrate the sheer magic of his work. In a nutshell, and without giving anything away, if you don’t like the version of the story you are looking at, you shake the iPad and hey presto, you get another.
Raghava says that he believes that art is the way to teach children empathy, because art is all about perspectives. As soon as you get that there are as many different perspectives as there are people, and you begin to peek at what someone else’s perspective might be, you have the origin of empathy.
I loved his ibook, was utterly captivated by his ideas and thought, why stop there? How many times do we get ‘stuck’ in a perspective in our own heads without anyone else’s influence at all? We can fall so far into the stories that we tell ourselves that we forget we are only actually dealing with one point of view and we might not have fallen into the one that is best for us.
We make sense of our lives by creating stories around the events that happen and what they mean. Not only that, but the stories that we tell fall into patterns or themes. And it’s those patterns or themes that create our reality – not the events themselves.
Years ago a wildfire swept through an area of California where creator of the Journey, Brandon Bays, lived. Many houses were burned to the ground, including the one belonging to her and her family. Nearly everything they owned was destroyed and because they were living in an area where such fires happened frequently, they hadn’t been able to insure the house and its contents. In short, they’d lost nearly everything.
As happens at such times the area was flooded by news reporters who were pouncing on locals and asking for comments. As Brandon and her family were picking through the smoking ruins of their life, a reporter thrust a microphone in her face and said, ‘How are you coping with the loss and devastation?’
The theme of the story that the reporter wanted to tell was clearly Disaster, Doom and Gloom. That makes good telly, but it wasn’t Brandon’s story. She said, ‘Oh, we are so lucky. These are just things. But everyone survived and we have each other.’
Maybe if we literally shook ourselves at those times when we find ourselves telling a story that disempowers us or leaves us stuck, a whole host of perspectives will tumble out of us. Then we can go through them and pick the one we want to use.
So the next time you feel stuck and stale, or you know that the way that you are looking at something is robbing you of your creativity and juice, literally shake yourself and ask, how else could I look at this? What other stories could I tell? Try on the stories for size, like jewels, and pick the one that lets you sparkle.
