Telling Stories A Powerful Communication Tool

Storytelling was powerful magic to our ancestors. Primitive men told stories of hunting, in the hope it would improve their success rate, and they painted their stories on the walls of their caves. Wall paintings at the Lascaux caves, in France, date from 35,000 years ago.
Metaphor
Telling stories remains a powerful way to communicate. The right description strikes a chord with the listener or reader that communicates something of real importance.That’s why our language is stuffed full of metaphors: descriptions that convey one thing in terms of another. Use the phrase “a misdeed always comes back and bites you” and your listener can see a picture in her mind: much more memorable than “don’t do that”.
Learning
Children learn about life through stories. The tale of Little Red Riding Hood warns your child about the dangers out there in the world, while he remains safe at home with you. What’s more, he’ll remember the story for the rest of his life. It’s easy to learn through pictures in the mind, conjured up by storytelling.
Hypnotherapy
Storytelling helps people alter the way they think and act, according to Milton Erickson. A renowned hypnotherapist, he used stories to bring about real change in his client’s lives. Powerful stories can be simple. In her book “NLP at Work,” Sue Knight recounts an Erickson story of how a stranger returned a lost horse to its owner. He guided the horse along the road it wanted to take, encouraging it to keep going. When the owner asked how he knew where the horse came from, he answered, “The horse knew.”
Explanation
You use storytelling to make sense of all the information that comes at you, every day, suggest Ramachandran and Blakeslee in their book “Phantoms in the Brain”. A story lets you fit the information into your own understanding of the world. It avoids telling you what you should do, and allows you to make your own decisions. Each person, on hearing or reading Erickson’s fable, is likely to find something different and maybe even life-changing.
Unconscious
Erickson suggests that most of life is “unconsciously determined.” Much of what you do is the result of activity in parts of your brain that operate without your knowledge. That’s why you keep breathing, whether you think about it or not. It’s why you may suddenly wake in the night, remembering something important you had forgotten. Stories can tap into your real hopes, fears and desires, at an unconscious level.
Practice
Telling stories is easy. Anyone can do it, though some feel reluctant to try at first. Talk about something you’ve seen or heard; tasted or smelt. Try this exercise: in a group of three or four people, take turns to tell a short tale. Any topic will do, but remember to keep it short. After all the stories, everyone must take it in turns to tell each of the others what he enjoyed most about their story. You’ll be amazed at the different meanings each simple story will hold.
Advice
Avoid trying to explain what you meant by your own story. It may mean something else to the listener and your explanation could be confusing. Let your story speak for itself.