Story Magic

I’ve coached founders who’ve cumulatively raised over a billion dollars and hired hundreds of people.

My clients and I have used stories to shift communication patterns like conciseness and confidence, and tactical behaviors like social risk taking and daily cognitive habits.

We’ve also used them to shift core relational patterns like interrupting, eye contact, giving feedback, and power dynamics. In multiple cases clients have shifted patterns they’ve been living for 20-30 years.

Now I’m sharing this modality with the world. If you’ve ever read a story and felt something shift, you know it’s real. Let’s unblock your life with a story.

The Process

First we’ll get clear on something you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s starting a new campaign, creating a new product, or reaching out to someone you admire. Maybe it’s calling a friend you haven’t talked to in a while.

The reality is we avoid important things in our lives because we don’t feel safe taking action, and we rationalize the behavior with clever explanations.

Then we’ll articulate the beliefs that would create safety. You’ll discover the underlying tension that’s linked to the thing you’ve been avoiding. You’ll come up with a few core beliefs like “Creating new projects that have something in common with a prior failure feels really scary.” or “Sharing my own need with someone when there’s a risk they’ll ignore me feels unsafe.”

Then we’ll use custom stories to build capacity. This is where the magic happens. We’ll create stories tailored specifically to you, that speak to your deeper beliefs in a way that deeply connects. You’ll notice tension in your body releasing, an ease in reasoning about next steps, and the ability to move forward. One client of mine described it as “Thirst quenching for a part of my brain that doesn’t get fed as much.”

Finally you’ll take the action (or a few first steps) and notice what arises next. For some people the blocker in their life disappears quickly, and another arises. For others, it’s a few week process of integration and practice while they adopt a new behavior.

Backed by Research

My approach relies on both western academic research and millions of years of human evolution. In every society ever studied, humans told stories to each other and most of these stories have morals embedded in them. Whether the Tortoise and the Hare, Little Engine That Could, or Spider Man, morals and role models shape our own nervous systems as we immerse ourselves in the world of the protagonist.

Our issues arise when we have formative experiences that aren’t balanced by supportive stories. We learn something about the world like “Interrupting is rude”, or “Taking a social risk isn’t safe”, or “I need to work constantly in order to feel safe” or “I need to achieve incredible things to feel loved.” These rules get burned into our subconscious minds, and when they go out of date as we enter a new phase of life, we don’t know how to unlearn them.

Great therapists and coaches help us loosen these learnings over time by logically questioning them, taking small risks, and creating a base of self-compassion to ease the transition.

Powerful stories have several advantages. First, they put you in control of the pacing. A therapist you meet once a week has pacing built in (perhaps by your insurance company), and it’s easy to meet them fewer times. But if you want to have a breakthrough quickly, it’s hard to speed up. By using stories, you can read them twice a day if you want, and use techniques I’ll teach you to amplify their effect. You can also create your own stories that no one else can read, which lets you process a sensitive belief yourself before sharing it with someone else.

Second, stories let you loosen existing beliefs and install powerful new ones. Imagine there’s a rainbow of capacities, and a therapist helps in large part by modeling a specific one. Perhaps they’re exceptional at modeling self-compassion for the young parts of us, and that’s white on the rainbow. Or perhaps a coach is amazing at modeling comfort in managing money, and that’s green. Stories are whatever color you need at the moment, and you can choose a dark blue or a light pink based on your mood and life’s challenges.

Third, stories outperform average AI queries because they’re a targeted, ancient form of emotional learning. An AI will suggest common approaches therapists use, but it has thousands of therapeutic approaches to choose from, many of which act on a much more logical, literal level, and require accompanying emotional skills to get a lot out of. Stories and the integrative approaches this program teaches help you step into a deeper level of emotional learning, where your intuition fully accepts the new belief you’re trying to learn.

This course has another: when you share a story with a group, it offers a set of people to witness a change and support you in sharing it with others. This builds support for your growth, and helps keep you on track when other priorities in life arise.

About me

I’ve loved stories since I was a kid. When I was young I read a lot, including folklore from around the world, novels, and Harry Potter. My career took a different direction into technology and venture capital, but I never forgot the profound emotions that can open with a great book or movie.

Now I’m a coach and I get a ton of joy from bringing people joy, wonder, insight, and emotional release. Stories are the most human tool for doing that.