Category: Storytelling
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Moving Back To The Rockies
Last Tuesday night, I fell asleep playing 3D tetris in my mind. It wasn’t a dream, though I wished it was. Instead I was mentally orienting all of our furniture to see how it could fit in our 17ft UHaul for our move back to Colorado. It wasn’t that we were unprepared. The previous week…
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The Cheese Is Alive
My French friend told me a story about cheese. After skiing with some friends in the Alps, they discovered a small chalet in Switzerland. Warming themselves up from the cold, they sat down at a quaint table. His face lit up when he spied what was sitting on the counter: “It was the most beautiful…
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Judging a Book by Its Cover
I chuckled when this picture was sent to me. The depiction seems obvious and shocking from the perspective of a first grader. I really laughed though when I read the story that went along with it… A first grade girl handed in the drawing below for her homework assignment. The teacher graded it and the…
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The Anti-Example
I remember thinking, “If I say this, it will be really obnoxious.” And then saying it. This adolescent stage lasted until I turned 16. I remember distinctly when it ended because at the same time my brother turned 12, entering this same stage. Faced with his new-found obnoxiousness, I realized just how annoying I was…
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Paying the Cost Today
If I say this, then she is just going to say this. If I don’t say it though… We all have this type of internal conversation — simulating future possible events and speculating on their outcome. It’s one of the many things that distinguish us as humans. We simulate what the future might look like,…
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Stories Sell
I critiqued Starbucks earlier in their approach to launching Via, their instant coffee. I don’t know how well it’s done, but if signs like this are any indication – people still think they are samples: Consider their problem: they have trained their customer to experience a rich, if not expensive, tradition — they enter a…
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Guest Blog: Mawy had a Yittle Yam
[In response to my post on Tea Bog Beet Knee, Matthew Ritzman, a friend of mine, wrote a response that I thought worthy of more attention. Matthew and I met while he was President of the local Toastmasters club that I attended. His speeches always tied in personal stories and how they impacted him and…
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Lord Of The Rings – A Story from Christmas
Over the Christmas holiday, a friend and I were walking to lunch after a fresh snow had fallen. While engrossed in conversation, I walked into a pile of some snow and slipped. Mostly embarrassed, I got up and felt like something was lost. I checked my pocket for the three usual things — wallet, phone,…
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The Story Of Our Lives
This last week, my wife and I were taking a bus ride between two cities and the bus had a movie going. I recognized the movie as Inkheart, but couldn’t hear any of the sound as the earphone jack was not functioning. My resulting, rather loose, understanding of the movie is that the main character…
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Experiences versus Possessions: Stories Matter
We communicate with stories because they are richer experiences and objects or things. I found this study interesting because it actually helps demonstrate the difference in regard to the impact of buying an experience versus buying an object. When things go wrong, it has a bigger impact, but it also has a bigger impact when…