The Power of Storytelling
May 7, 2009
I am trained in the field of NLP which stands for Neuro-linguistic programming. NLP is the study of personal mastery and how to harness the powers of the mind and it was modeled in part on the work of famous hypnotherapist, Milton H. Erickson, MD. Milton was known for his miraculous cures with thousands of patients and is legend for his storytelling abilities.
Several years ago, I spent twenty-one days and many thousands of dollars to take my NLP Trainer and Consultants training with the renowned trainer Robert Dilts. Twenty-one days is a long time and you would think that I would have learned something right? But I came out of that training feeling like I hadn’t learned a thing. How was that possible? I was so convinced however that I hadn’t learned anything, that I started to believe that I had wasted all of that time and money.
However about a month after the Training, I was hired to lead a one-day retreat for a hospital health center. As I leading the training, I noticed how much fun I was having and later realized that a good third of my program was new information. Where had it all come from? I thought I hadn’t learned anything. So afterwards I realized that maybe I had learned something after all, in fact I’d learned quite a lot.
It was at that moment, that I realized the power of story. Most of my twenty-one days of training had been taught using story. Some months later, I went to another training with Robert and I mentioned this funny phenomenon to him. I said “Robert, I hate to admit this but I thought I went to your training and didn’t learn a thing! But then a month later, I led a retreat, and I couldn’t believe all of the new information that just poured out of me.”
Robert just smiled and said “Annie when I used to go visit Milton, I would think that nothing happened. He would just sit there and tell me stories. But then three weeks later, my whole life would change.”
Milton Erickson definitely new the power of story….and I have dedicated my life’s work, to passing on it’s magic and power.
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I love your site Annie. Well done! It is wonderful to have fellow storytellers in cyber world sending our positive vibes.
One thing I really appreciate is the way you frame story within a contemporary, visionary perspective, with clarity and a sense of exploration and fun. You place it squarely in the imaginal realm that allows us to alter consensual reality both for ourselves as well as the collective, and activate a new future for us all. Thank you for this. I’ll be eager to see the rest of the site as it develops.