Story Spirals™
Building meaningful human connection, one story at a time.
The concept of Story Spirals was born in a meeting that I’ve described, with no exaggeration, as the most exciting conversation of my life.
I was speaking with Drs Matt Lee and Byron Johnson, who are two Harvard researchers at the helm of a study that’s a joint initiative between Baylor University, Harvard University, and Gallup, called the Global Flourishing Study, which is a five year study of 240,000 individuals across 22 countries.
The scientists behind this study are collecting data across a broad range of wellbeing outcomes, and the purpose of the study is to determine what it means to live well. To be truly happy. To thrive. To live a life of meaning and purpose.
They’ve identified six determinates that lead to a life well lived, and are looking for ways to disseminate their data.
That meeting was thrilling for me! Because I know that the best way to disseminate data, or to teach anything, is through storytelling.
The greatest teachers throughout human history taught through stories, using them to illustrate and bring to life universal truths. Jesus of Nazareth. Buddah. Socrates. Confucious. Aesop.
And the telling of personal stories, specifically, has always made us feel and understand things in deep, visceral ways. Ways that have led to lasting cultural change. Frederick Douglas. Anne Frank. Helen Keller. Martin Luther King Jr.
Stories have the ability to transform individuals and society, because when ordinary people tell their lived experience, listeners begin to see the world differently.
I also learned in that exciting conversation that one of the top predictors for human flourishing is Close Social Relationships. And storytelling does that too! It connects people at the heart. It builds bridges, and sneaks under the fences of our political and religious and socio-economic differences. When someone tells a true story about their life, other people lean in and listen, and something inside of them whispers, “me too, friend. Me too!”
I knew immediately, that real people telling true stories, was not only a powerful way to get this scientific data into the world, it was a way to connect them to one another in the process.
But the most exciting thing I learned in that meeting is that in order to change culture, in order to have a global impact on humanity, the tipping point is 3 billion people.
I thought, the only way to do that would be to create a ripple effect.
Something that starts slowly and simply, but grows exponentially.
Like a spiral.
I pictured the beautiful spiral stained glass windows in the ceiling of our interfaith chapel, and I knew that I was in that meeting for a reason.
What if that little interfaith chapel, and the simple idea it was based on and built in homage to, Gratitude - an idea that transcends religion and culture and is available to literally everyone- what if that little chapel was the inception point of a ripple effect of good will, and good information, and good resources, that could not only connect people to one another in meaningful ways, but could grow exponentially, and possibly affect real cultural change?
What if we could use storytelling as sacred civic infrastructure?
My Story Spirals initiative consists of five levels designed to do just that.
Level One:
Put a broadly diverse group of people in a room together, and using a structured meeting format, have them tell each other their stories. But not just any stories. Important stories. Stories about pivotal moments that changed their lives for the better.
I’ve created a series of 40 storytelling prompts, based on an overlay of the Six Determiners for Human Flourishing as described in the Baylor/Harvard/Gallup poll, and 40 basic human virtues or positive attributes that create a meaningful life, as described by Kyle Ogden in his beautiful essay, The Art of Being Human. “Courage: Tell us about a time when you were afraid to do something, but you did it anyway. Or you stood up for what you knew was right, or for someone who wasn’t in the room. Beauty: Tell a story about something that took your breath away. A moment that made you appreciate the world or the people around you.
Gratitude: Tell us about a moment or an idea or a person that changed the way you see and move through the world.”
This is storytelling that is specifically engineered not only to connect people to one another in meaningful ways, but to unite them together toward a common, greater good.
Level Two of my Story Spirals, the second turn of the spiral, will be a series of educational workshops where we take the stories shared in Level One, and though a series of proven narrative techniques, craft them for maximum impact, giving participants the tools to tell stories that are clear, compelling, and meaningful.
In Level Three of Story Spirals, these stories will be presented and recorded live on stage, in joyful community gatherings. Each show’s theme will be centered on a determiner of human flourishing, and will feature as broad and diverse a cross section of individuals as possible. At this level we are not only creating community, engendering empathy, and encouraging civic engagement, we’re also creating a living archive of important community stories.
The fourth turn of the spiral, Story Spirals Level Four, will be the training of teachers and facilitators who can take the simple, replicable formats used in Levels One, Two, and Three, into the broader community. Into libraries and schools, community centers, and places of worship.
And Story Spirals Level Five will be the broadcasting of these stories through podcasts, social media channels, and public television and radio. This is the level at which our initiative has the potential to become viral - to create an exponential ripple effect through media, which actually has the potential to change culture.
My hope is that these Story Spirals will be replicable, scalable, community events that are not guided by a central figure, celebrity, or guru, but by a simple framework that will ideally remain free and accessible to everyone, and that has the potential become a national, and hopefully, eventually, international model for sacred civic storytelling.
My goal is nothing less than to create a movement of kindness, gratitude, community, and flourishing. The Story Spirals initiative is designed as an inflection point for meaningful and lasting cultural change, one heart, one mind, one story, at a time.