What are your favourite stories? Mine are those that jump out the page or screen into the substance of my life, where I recognise myself inhabiting the narrative I read or watch in ways that resonate with my heart and hopes. I had this experience recently when immersed in Manda Scott’s new book Any Human Power. This is a thrutopian novel, with a story pattern that starts from where we are, facing challenges and uncertainty in early 21st century Earth, and which then follows the trail of the main characters giving their everything to finding a way through as best they can.
Story patterns
I love this term ‘Story pattern’ because it names a transferable element we can gain from a narrative and apply to our lives. Tales have been told for thousands of years not just to entertain, but also to teach and inspire, to pass on patterns of behaviour and qualities of being that might help us. That’s why I weave story patterns into the way I work, using storyboarding and other narrative tools to support regenerative transformation, healing, recovery, resilience and wellbeing.
A story pattern has a recognisable shape to it even when the content, context and people involved differ. With a Thrutopian storyline, our central characters face testing times and may ask themselves ‘How am I (or we) going to get through this?’ To develop a better version of how things might go, they’ll need to apply themselves, find strengths, hidden potentials, allies and resources, along the way discovering swing factors that help turning points occur. As well as considering risks they face, they might draw inspiration from wondering about the best that could happen too.
Do you recognise features of this story pattern in your life? Or in the lives of those you support? Can you see how the shape of a narrative like this might also help us face collective challenges like climate crisis and societal decline? I invite you to try these sentence starters and see where they lead.
- A challenge I’m facing is…
- What might help me through is…
- If it were to work out well, I’d hope that…
- Something I can do to help that become more likely is…
You can adapt these sentence starters when supporting someone else, or when applying a thrutopian storyline to challenges we face collectively. If you draw a blank and don’t know what might help, you have a choice. You could give up on this tool. Or you could see this as a story still unfolding, and keep coming back to it. Thrutopian story patterns don’t end in the first few chapters. They have bumps and dips and times when it all seems impossible. They also have swing factors and turning points. A swing factor is anything that helps turn the flow of events in a better direction.
I applied these four sentence starters to my writing of this newsletter. If it were to work out well, I’d hope that you find a swing factor here. Something I can do to help that become more likely is alert you to opportunities for learning tools to support thrutopian wellbeing. Two of these are free.
If you’d like to go deeper with this approach, we have an 8-week Su Ha Training.
Then on September 26th, I’m offering a three-hour online workshop on Storyboarding Resilience. The advantage of doing this as a live workshop is it offers a supportive context to try out tools and discuss them, with others alongside you. I’ve developed a range of storyboarding tools that help you map out features in the story of real life challenges you face, and then identify swing factors supporting turning points in directions you hope for. I value using these tools in my coaching work and also in my personal life. If you’re attracted to the workshop, but can’t make the time, you can get a recorded version afterwards. I’ve also developed a scaled down hour-long one to one personal consultation version of this workshop. Please contact me if you’re interested.
Lastly, on Tuesday 15th October, the Resilience Practitioner Training begins. Based on my book Seven Ways to Build Resilience, this is my flagship course that hundreds of people have done over the last nine years. It runs over eight webinars, accompanied by an online resource with tutorial videos and interviews with leading practitioners. Recognised by the Association for Coaching for CPD purposes, it offers a pathway to developing confidence and credentials as a certified Resilience Practitioner. Past participants have also found it incredibly useful in their own lives too, as you’ll see from some of the comments on the course information page. If the dates don’t suit you, I have a recorded version of this course available too.
I’d love our courses and resources to hit the spot well for you – please help us do that by telling us what you’d find useful. We’re also developing our programme of 3-hour online workshops, and would love to find out what the best day of the week and times might be for you. Please let me know by completing this short survey.
Hybrid training/mentoring improves outcomes
Research shows benefits of training significantly increase when one to one mentoring is added to an existing course. So we’re offering an option to do any CollegeOfWellbeing.com course alongside personal one-to-one mentoring from Chris Johnstone. This can particularly help recorded courses become more engaging and effective.