It’s a shame you can’t remember your earliest moments with the people who loved you first.
If you could, you would remember a time in your life when you could do no wrong and everything you did was wonderful to someone.
Although you can’t remember all the details from then…
You still can use the experience to gain perspective.
Let’s do something…
Let’s pretend.
Pretend like you can remember what it was like to be three years old.
Your imagination is just getting fired up.
Your imagination is what made story time one of your favorite things.
You were naturally in each story as you listened.
You were the center of someone’s universe at that age (hopefully).
The people who read to you as a child may not have known it then but they gave you an incredible ability.
With their verbal guidance, you were able to live inside the stories you were being told.
When you were 3 years old you were a blank slate of possible outcomes.
Everything feeling possible is what made it so easy to place yourself inside of the stories you were read.
Stories about people talking to dragons and fairies were possible because the realities of the world had not overpowered your imagination with the disappointment of facts yet.
More importantly, at three years old people were not telling you sad stories or painful stories like the ones we hear about when we are older.
The ones that separate the non-fiction from fiction.
Compare what you said at three years old to what people will permissibly allow you to tell them now.
At three, a parent or grandparent reads a bedtime story to an anxious child, leading them permissibly into a world of perfect pretend.
Once you were lead into the story you could imagine anything you wanted of the details in that world.
Now, as an adult the same methods work for connecting and working with the people around you.
The easier it is for people to place themselves in the stories you tell them, the easier your life will be.
Because you have importance and relevance to the agenda of the other person when you tell them a story they can see themselves in.
Yes, our agendas change with age and responsibility.
What doesn’t change is our basic need to be able to visualize ourselves in the possible outcomes as they are presented to us.
As adults it becomes our turn to read to children and though natural instinct, our agendas are secondary in those moments.
The child understanding and enjoying the story comes first.
Maybe we enjoy reading to children because we understand their ability to enjoy their own imagination.
Everything takes care of itself in the child mind as you read.
All you have to do is read the story.
The child fills in the blanks.
Adult life is not much different.
Let the stories you tell people connect with them, let them fill in the blanks and your agenda will take care of itself.
Tell stories in your adult life and see how much easier you job becomes.
#strikeamatch
CDM Think Tank LLC 