Stories: Guide To Healing Stories

Do you need a special degree to be a good story teller? Absolutely Not!



My colleague and friend, Susan Trivers, has created a step-by-step How To Guide for you to tell stories. Stories have magical power to touch people's hearts, inspire them, make them laugh, and create new relationships and bonds that increase everyone's level of joy.



Take a few minutes and follow Susan's Guide to Healing Stories. When you finish crafting your stories, you will have great fun playing the games in "Cancer and the Healing Power of Play."



It's your turn to have fun now! Go for it!



Every Person’s Guide to Telling Stories of Healing and Renewal
By Susan Trivers

“Lily was a bare 85 pounds, with shriveled limbs, sunken cheeks and a voice that had been robbed of its projection ability by aggressive Parkinson’s disease. I asked her if there was someone she would like to write a letter to because she had learned to communicate by pointing to letters printed on a sheet of paper.

She dictated a letter to her girlhood friend: “Dear Selma, I am holding my own.”

Ten days later she died in my arms.”

This is my story about my mother. It encompasses the years of her illness and also tells the listener that she was not her disease. She had held her own in the face of many obstacles and challenges throughout her life and in her final days, she was still telling her best friend that she wasn’t giving in. She always faced her obstacles with dignity and quiet confidence, and she did the same in that precious moment.

She remained Lily, mentally strong and optimistic, till the very end. When I tell my story about my mother, I am also telling her story for her.

As I face my own challenges in health and in sickness, I hear my mother’s voice and I remember to “hold my own.”

What’s Your Story?

What story do you want to leave as a legacy? How do you encapsulate your years of ups and downs and struggles and triumphs in a few sentences? More importantly, do you want your story to be one about your struggles or about your outcomes?

You will feel peaceful and joyful when you write your life’s story as one of outcomes. You faced crises, you did what you had to do to overcome the obstacles, and you came to a resolution. These three elements are the essence of a story: crisis, obstacles and the efforts to overcome them, and the resolution.

How you craft your story is your choice. This short book shows you that crafting your story as one about outcomes is an act of love for yourself first and for others who will hear your story.

Let’s spend a moment talking about what a story is NOT:

It is not a news report. That is, take off your reporter’s hat and forget the “who, what, where, when, & how” of good news reporting. You will have lots of details that fit those categories. I’m sure you know them by heart and have deep feelings about the details of your illness or those of the person for whom you are providing care.

It’s not easy to get out of the reporter mindset when your days are filled with schedules of appointments, medications, and therapies. You spend hours and days on the “who, what, where, when, & how.” These may be the only things you can see at times. It is hard to put them on the back burner.

What IS a story?

· A story is about challenges faced and outcomes reached.
· A story is about your feelings including fear, mystery, joy, anger, disappointment, determination, persistence, rejection, and acceptance.
· A story is about shaping others understanding about you: your values and who you are as an individual.

If you are a caregiver you can craft a story about your challenges, outcomes and feelings or about the character and legacy of the person you are caring for.

Crafting your story

I use the word “crafting” instead of writing or telling because I want you to first think that a story is a work of art. It is the same as if you painted a picture, made a photograph, molded a sculpture of clay or chiseled one out of wood or stone.

Think about physical art. The artist has to select the elements that go into the work: which colors, which details, what size, what kind of mood?

You will do the same when you craft your story.
Details tend to be the biggest nemesis. Your head is filled with them and they seem to be what the story is all about. I believe that a story is more compelling when you select only a few details.
Step 1:
· Write a list of the details that come to your mind right now. This is not a test—just a stream of consciousness moment. Write down whatever you can in 60 seconds:



· Now write down a list of challenges. These can be big (surviving cancer) or smaller (getting to the doctor’s office). Your mind is full of these as well. Give yourself 60 seconds to make a quick list of those at the top of your mind.



· The next step is to write down how you overcome your challenges. Take 60 seconds to write down what actions you take to overcome the challenges.



· What are your feelings about these challenges and the way you act to overcome them? Do not hesitate to write down the real, accurate truth about your feelings. And be sure to allow yourself a range of feelings from anger and frustration to contentment and joy. Use the most evocative language you can to describe your feelings.



Step 2:

Now pull one or two of the most powerful items from each of the lists you made in Step 1.

Details:

Challenges:

How you overcome your challenges:

Feelings:

Step 3:

Think of the items from Step 2 as building blocks. You can move them around to determine the best order. For example, instead of details first, maybe your story would be better if it begins with the challenges.

· Use great writing tools such as analogies and metaphors. Maybe tubes and beeps remind you of something else from another setting and time.
· Ask the listener to participate: “Imagine if you had to… What would you do?” Then give a brief line or two about how you or the person handled the situation.
· Create an emotion: “The doctors left the room in a hurry. They were whispering urgently. What was happening?”

On the rest of this page and on other pages if needed, jot down the elements of your story in different sequences. Read your drafts out loud so you can hear what the story will sound like when you tell it. Finally settle on one version and write it out clearly and cleanly.
Build your story here:

Complete your story here:

Write down the best version. Make notations in it to remind yourself to add various voice qualities. You will include places where you will speak loudly or softly, quickly or slowly, and where you will pause.

Think of the story you craft as part of a conversation. When you tell your story your goal is to sound like yourself, polished.

Most important are your feelings when you tell your story. Try to live in the moment and experience again the warmth of love of the person at the heart of the story.

Taking Fun Seriously

By Roz Trieber, MS, CHES

One of my favorite words is Fun. Life has to be fun. Isn’t that what we really wish everyone when we send birthday and holiday greetings? Our greetings convey a message for a healthy, happy, vibrant, life --- Every single day of our life.
What is Fun?

FUN is pure energy. It reflects a certain attitude and willingness to live. Having fun means being amused, creating more opportunities to play, sing, and dance, doing what you love, and feeling the joy of living. When we are experiencing fun, we are living in the moment, with a smile on our face, and a twinkle in our eyes.

Do you have to be a “funster,” somebody who likes to have fun or who enjoys telling jokes, in order to be happy, laugh, and play in this over stressed world packed full of fear, competition, and disease?

What is Play?

Play according to the National Institute of Play “is a state of being that is intensely pleasurable. It energizes and enlivens us. It eases our burdens, renews a natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities.” Play may be a silly thing and its playfulness and lightheartedness are essential to experiencing fun for its many benefits.

Play has a significant role in shaping our brains, developing creativity, innovation, and helps us adapt to situations. When play is included as part of our social practices, we are able to dramatically effect our personal health and our relationships, the opportunities to be innovative, resilient, and self reliant.
Research demonstrates that play practices are antidotes to public health trends like depression and stress. When you are playing, there is an inherent and unique feeling of reward. Playing generates optimism, seeks out novelty, makes perseverance fun, leads to mastery, gives the immune system a bounce, fosters empathy and promotes a sense of belonging and community. Each of these play by-products are indices of personal health. When play is absent from daily living, stress and its effects are enhanced.
Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, says “without play, ‘‘there’s a sense of dullness, lassitude and pessimism, which doesn’t work well in the world we live in.’’

Give yourself permission to be silly. There is no need to care about what others are thinking. You are living in the moment and laughing all the way!If you didn’t have a funectomy (the removal of our fun gene) when you were born, this is how your sense of humor might have developed.Remember when you were a preschooler and you rolled over laughing when you heard a riddle that went like this: “What do you get when you cross an elephant with a jar of peanut butter? The answer was You get a peanut butter sandwich that never forgets! You weren’t trying to be funny, you were having fun naturally.By the time you were eight years old you were beginning to develop your witty sense of humor and have more fun. You could identify comical aspects in the craziness of daily life; remember this riddle? “Why do hot dogs come in packages of 12 when hot dog rolls come in packages of eight?” This riddle continues to circulate on the internet. You are older than eight years old and you still laugh.
Play and Create Your Own Fun:

With a little bit of creativity, you can create our own fun words. Fun never goes out of style. Try this on for size. A silly rhyming game. Choose a word, any word and follow it with rhyming nonsense words or real words. For example: busy, dizzy, tizzy, frizzy and so on. Now it’s your turn. Turn to the person sitting next to you and rhyme a word for the next 30 seconds.

Have you ever thought about words that have fun as their root and we miss the point! Take the word Fundamental for example: Fundamental means the basics. The first three letters spell fun. That means enjoyment needs to be the basics for just about everything you and I do. If you’re working at a job and not having fun or enjoying what you are doing, get a new job! At least do something that brings you joy, pleasure and laughter no matter what the situation.After all, when we laugh together, we like being together.
I like to think of fun the way Dr. Clifford Kuhn, author of “The Fun Factor” thinks of it:” When you’re making others laugh, you’re having sex with them. But if you’re sharing a laugh with them, you’re making love.”
Have FUN now, why wait?

Cancer and the Healing Power of Play - The Ebook

Please contribute your experiences, success tips, and suggestions for additional games in the comment section of our blog.

WHY WE LAUGH: THE 3 BASIC FUNCTIONS OF HUMOR

WHY WE LAUGH: THE 3 BASIC FUNCTIONS OF HUMOR by Izzy Gesll, M.ED, CSP

To experience what it is like to try and definitively define humor, rent the Japanese movie Rashomon. In this 1950 film, directed by Akira Kurosawa, a crime witnessed by four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways. The Rashomon Effect is the effect of the subjectivity of perception, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.

Humor also is a shape-shifting concept. Highly desired in both personal and community relationships as a vehicle for joy, laughter and connectedness, it can just as easily arrive as a gift that when unwrapped causes tears, anger and emotional distance.

Generally, humor serves one of three functions. As a shield, it protects us from pain caused by outside sources. If we laugh at ourselves before others do, the truth won’t hurt us as much. I think it’s important here to differentiate the concepts of self-derogatory humor and self-effacing humor. Self-derogatory humor is about laughing at who you are; self-effacing humor is about laughing at what you do. As human beings we all look foolish at times. That doesn’t make us fools.

A second function of humor is as a weapon. Hurting others or diminishing them can make us feel better or release pent up anger. It’s a way of dealing with fear or the sense of low-status. If we can “put someone down,” by definition our status is raised. This motive is the driving force behind negative humor such as ethnic, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic or racist jokes. By making fun of what scares us, we diminish its power to hurt us.

An interesting social quality of humor is its ability to allow difficult information to be received in a non-threatening way. As George Bernard Shaw said, “If you ever want to tell someone the truth, better make him laugh, or he’ll kill you.” Humor is one of the few forms of social interaction that has a trial balloon attached to it. If you say something that is received as offensive by someone else, you can always attempt to defuse the negativity by uttering the well-worn phrase, “just kidding.” This may keep tempers at bay. However, “just kidding,” does not mean, “I didn’t mean what I said.” It is true that a lot of truth is said in jest.

The third and most constructive purpose of humor is as a bridge, bringing people together. Laughing together connects people on mental, physical, emotional and spiritual levels.

Mentally we are thinking alike; we share a point of view about the topic; Physically, we are releasing tension. Laughter is one of the best tension relievers because laughter and tension cannot exist in the body at the same time. Picture two people trying to move a heavy piece of furniture. Arms taut and straining. What if one person starts to laugh? That’s right. Can’t hold the tension.

Emotionally, we are connected to each other. Think of the position we take when we laugh- heads nodding agreement as if to say, “I get it. I’m with you. We are not alone.” I believe that the people we laugh with most often are the ones we trust the most.

Spiritually, our load is lightened, our spirits lifted. We understand, at least for that moment that there is another reality; another way of looking at the world.

The first step in expanding your own sense of humor is to pay attention to how you use humor and how it is used by others around you. Obviously, the more bridges you build, the more joyfully connected to others you will be. Don’t dismiss, however, the importance of recognizing when you are using the shield or weapon function of humor. It will give you a pretty clear insight into personal areas of thought and belief you may not have been aware of.

Izzy Gesell is a keynote speaker, group facilitator and speech coach. He can be reached at izzy@izzyg.com

Holiday Happiness

The economy is in the cellar and stress is at peak levels! Is it possible to experience, fun, happiness, and joy this season?

Lighten up, Loosen Up and Happiness shows UP!

Consider thinking of “Happiness” in terms of Psychological Wealth; a phrase coined by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener in their book Happiness. This book puts the “How To” of achieving Happiness in easy, understandable terms backed up by evidenced-based research. Did you think happiness was all about having lots of money and no worries! Forget about it! Having lots of money and no worries will make you happy is a great big myth! Discover the truth about happiness.

Happiness Truths:

1. Happiness is the name we put on how we think and feel about our life.
2. Happiness is a process and not a place.
3. People who are truly happy do not just experience joy and other passing pleasant feelings, they also experience an abundance of positive emotions such as love, commitment, and gratitude that connect them to others.
4. Happiness is a balance between life satisfaction (personal fulfillment), life meaning and purpose (spirituality), positive attitudes, positive relationships, health, money, and engaging activities. How do you feel about each one of these domains?
5. Happiness is beneficial to effective functioning. That means when we experience positive emotions, we become more creative, more alert, more productive, and more focused on healthy self-care habits.

If you want to increase your positive emotions, feel connected to others, take action and engage in creative and fun activities this holiday season. My first suggestion is to play the games described in my very soon to be published E-Book “Cancer and the Healing Power of Play…A Prescription for Living with Presence, Acceptance, and Trust co-authored by Izzy Gesell. This is a book that will provide a process for you to experience positive emotions, connect to friends and family, laugh, and help you enjoy play for the sake of play. Your immune system will love you! Click on the book cover on the right for more information.

My second suggestion is to take a look at books Authored by Rebekha Delgado and illustrator Joy Delgado. Their bilingual story books are unique and bring a new concept to learning. Their newest book “Zooprise Party” teaches the reader interesting facts about some unique animals. Learn more about “Zooprise Party / Fiesta Zoorpresa” and get lots of free activities at:

http://www.laughing-zebra-children-books.com where we go beyond reading.

Read about the ‘V Zoo’, book reviews and world zoo news with Zebee the laughing zebra at: http://zooprisepartyfiestazoorpresa.blogspot.com/