Story Activities
All of our learning, our ability to change, our empathy and connection to other humans, and our ability to live a good life, comes from storytelling and listening. All of the skills we need to be resilient in a crisis we learn through story, and all the skills we have that we need to share with others we share through story. Story mediates our world and ourselves in ways that increase our adaptability and improve our world. It’s not complicated. It already lives in our brains, bodies, and minds and we can access it through a little practice and some remembering of the skills we all had as children. Once we get fluent in storytelling and story listening, we are able to adapt, learn, teach, share, understand, and cope in ways that will allow us to move with change and lend a hand when the people around us are not moving. The process is available to all of us; it transforms us and our lives and can save the world.
In order to get to our deep rooted and already present skill of story - we can take several avenues: the personal, the artistic, or the way of the deep story listener. To build up some practice in these areas, here are three sets of story activities to ponder, try out, and share with folks to build more connection.
What Are My Superpowers?
This activity is a way for you to get to know YOU a little bit better. We are not always the most reliable narrators about ourselves and so this is a perspective taking and building practice.
You can do this virtually or in person, but pick someone you trust, who sees you a lot and knows what you are capable of, and about whom you feel the same way. Ask them to generate a list of the things they would come to you for, the things you do well, the things you are known for, and the things that they admire about you, the things you do for other people all the time. Do the same for them. Then, you can share your lists and see the reality. The things you dismiss about yourself are actually important superpowers. It may sound a little science fictiony to you, but you really do have these powers with which you can change the world.
Music as Story
Art is a story, dance is a story, textiles and food are also stories. One of the ways that our engagement with the world of creativity brings us all stories we love is through music. The deeply felt emotion of a piece of music or the resonance with the words tells us a lot about who we are and what we love, and it is an easy way into story for folks who think they are not “good at it.”
Find the song or musical or album that makes you feel the way you want to feel right now. How that feels is up to you. Notice what the feelings are, though, and what story they tell you about where you are. Share it with a few people and see what resonates. Ask them to share their musical story with you.
Empathy and Listening
The ability to be a story listener is good for us as storytellers, as humans, as friends and family and community members, and it all starts with a simple body exercise and an easy question.
We feel stories in our bodies as much as we hear them. The ability to find those feelings and work with them is an essential story skill. In the same way we feel our own emotions in our bodies, we can use our bodies as listening devices for other people’s stories. Tune in like a radio, and listen for when music emerges from the static. Your body will tell you what’s important, emotionally salient, what creates empathy and gets you involved. You can use that information, ask questions, elicit more story. The magic invitation for listeners is “Tell me more.” When you get a clear signal from your body, just ask the person: “Tell me more about that.”
Excerpted from Michelle Auerbach’s 2020 book,
Resilience: The Life Saving Still of Story