Moses Ting's inspiration notebook.
From The Story Factor by Annette Simons:
In his book Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn says, “The most powerful narcotic in the world is the promise of belonging.” To that I would add, the promise of being “known” — not understood, not necessarily even valued — but simply to be acknowledged and seen. In our technological economy, human attention is the emerging scarce resource. People need it, crave it, and will pay for it with their cooperation. In today’s world almost anyone you want to influence is operating under a deficit of human attention. They are not getting enough time or attention from the people who are important to them or the people that they love. They have enough information. They have all the facts and statistics they could ever want. In fact, they are drowning in information. Depression is at epidemic levels because all of this information simply leaves us feeling incompetent and lost. We don’t need more information. We need to know what it means. We need a story that explains what it means and makes us feel like we fit in there somewhere.
When you tell a story that touches me, you give me the gift of human attention — they kind that connects me to you, that touches my heart and makes me feel more alive. Even a simple blueberry crisp story that helps you sell me a microwave makes me feel more alive than a bunch of “product features” because it is closer to a genuine human experience. We crave something that is real or at least feels real.
The revival of storytelling over the last few years is no fad. It is a demonstrable artifact of a profound cultural shift in our society. Becoming a better storyteller is not hopping on some psycho-babble bandwagon. To find you story is to join in a worldwide search for authenticity and those things that are truly important — a search for meaning. The more influential your stories become, the deeper they tap into that which is meaningful.
