For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. -Atul Gawande
—
Last month, I began a 4-Part series on the Art of Storytelling to help you craft meaningful, impactful stories that carry an emotional resonance for you and your hearers.
You may recall from Parts 1 and 2 of this series that I have been unpacking these insights by telling one of my own stories and sharing reflections from it.
As a brief reminder… the story I have been telling is one that took place 15 years ago when I broke my left hand diving for a softball in left field. The story continued as my failed leap in left meant that I had to make a host of other ‘leaps’ in my life - leaps of trust, dependence, and vulnerability.
And for many years, I thought that was the whole story. Want to hear how I got these scars on my left hand? Sit back, and let me tell you about the failed leap in left.
But… a few years ago I felt the story was growing stale.
It was still fun to tell, but my emotional connection to the story was not nearly as strong.
Ever had that? A tried-and-true story that you’ve told a million times… but anymore it’s hard to feel it? Difficult to tell with the same sense of surprise and vulnerability?
What do you do?
Well, one thing I continue to realize about storytelling is this:
Stories do not have a singular, settled, and firm beginning, middle, and end. We may begin and end a story one way for years only to discover that now it seems the story would best begin in another spot. Or end in another spot. Or both.
Another way to put it: because we are living, growing people, our stories are living, growing realities.
This is truly one of the great wonders and joys of storytelling!
We decide how to, retell, and evolve the story so that its emotional resonance is real for us (and thus real for the hearer). Indeed, the way that our 20-year-old self tells it is likely quite different from how our 40 or 60 or 80-year-old self tells it - and that’s good!
Still another way to put it: we get to decide where the chapter breaks fall in our stories.
Do our stories end…
In the valley of despair?1
Ascending out of the valley?
On top of the mountain?2
Heading back down to the valley?
Perhaps we have stories that ring true with all of those kinds of endings?
Regardless… you decide, right?
Or… sometimes life itself lets us know that the story needs to end in a different place. That is precisely the surprising thing that happened to me last December with regard to my softball story.
THE FAILED LEAP IN LEFT STORY CONTINUES…
I attended a men’s retreat in downtown Austin with 125 other guys this past December. We spent the very first evening laying on individual yoga mats in a huge conference room and doing something I’d never tried: 75 minutes of guided breathwork.
If you’ve ever done this kind of thing, you know that this work often draws you into your unconscious mind. Me? For awhile I experienced nothing other than a general sense of calm. But then, about midway through and rather suddenly, memories began to flood to the fore of my consciousness.
The first memory was that softball leap in left.
And then the break.
And then, rather incongruently, that memory was followed by various trumpet solos I had in middle school and high school.
I was a fairly good trumpet player and so would be given these solos – but I was terrified doing them. All I could ever think about was what everyone else would think.
What if they don’t like it?
What if I miss the note?
What will they say?!
Inevitably the fear would tighten my breath - the exact opposite of what you want for making notes come out of a trumpet. Not surprisingly, this lack of breath made my notes go flat, unsteady, or entirely wrong.
As I watched these memories of the broken hand and broken solos, I realized for the first time in my life that every single time I had experienced a memorably painful or embarrassing break I had some sort of terrible mantra running laps in my head. I was constantly worried about what everybody else was thinking - and it made my body super tense.
I kept breathing, watching, realizing…
And in time I was given this memory of childhood Bobby playing first base. Back then, my nickname was “The Wall” because nothing got by me. Teammates made wild throws to first all of the time - and I had no problem scooping them out of the dirt or leaping high into the air to bring them in.
I smiled as I watched that little boy take such unconscious joy leaping on the field.
And then slowly but very surely, with all 125 guys around me, my smile became a song (to be sure, most of the guys around me were very much having their own kind of moment, too). Quite audibly, I began singing aloud some of the old trumpet solos where I missed the note or otherwise messed up. But instead of singing the solo note for note, I improvised.
I sang new variations.
Tried new riffs.
Full lungs, full notes - no sense for what others might think.3
It felt like I was receiving a gift. Or more precisely, like I was receiving a very old gift returning to me again.
And at one point amid my singing, I heard a familiar Voice speak unto my depths without a sound: “Bobby, remember who you are. You leap. That’s what you do. That’s who you are. That’s how I made you. Trust yourself.”
And so here I am in 2024 having just celebrated the first Easter in fifteen years where I was not leading a service of worship on that morning because - professionally and vocationally - I am currently mid-leap following that same Voice into something that is both quite familiar and quite new.4
In many ways, it feels like the ball has been hit to left again, and the Invitation is to go get it.
And yes, I may well crash and break and discover a need to take a whole bunch of other leaps I did not intend. I’ve lived that story, and I may well re-live a version of it.
But also… this time I’m mid-leap with my legs feeling limber, my heart feeling full, and my whole being anticipating how the solo might go when the Breath moves freely.
Because, of course, there’s a new mantra jogging through the mind (and doing its best to outrun the old ones):
Bobby, remember who you are. You’ve got this.
—
I thought the Failed Leap in Left story ended fifteen years ago. Turns out life invited me to move the chapter break forward - to today! Now when I tell it, the story feels alive again - because it is. I’m living it!
What about you?
Any stories about your life where a change in the chapter break might change the entire tenor? Perhaps even the meaning?
What would it look like to take one of your tried-and-true favorites from yesterday but now tell that story with the ending unfolding today? How does that change what the story means to you? How does it change the emotional resonance for you (and so for any who hear it, too)?
It’s a simple enough tactic, but once you start playing with it, you discover the profound power that you have not only over your stories - but your very life, how you understand it, and how you step into your next chapter.5
—
LET'S CONNECT!
Speaking of next chapters, part of this chapter in my life involves keynote speaking. Do you have a connection to a group, venue, conference, or faith community that might appreciate hearing about and interacting on either Storytelling or Leadership? See the brief blurbs below about a couple of my keynotes, and email me if you’d like to discuss a possibility.
FROM DATA TO DRAMA: How Storytelling Drives Innovation, Collaboration, and Growth
We live in an age of information overload, and oftentimes the pitches, presentations, and proposals that we see only add to the pile with their numerous bullet points, data dumps, and long, unmemorable acronyms. And yet the fundamental thing that helps us see, remember, and act on what is most important? Storytelling.
Join Bobby in this interactive keynote to discover how your organization’s unique story is the central catalyst for your next chapter of innovation, collaboration, and growth. You will also learn the fundamentals for how to name and tell that story (and your own story) in a fresh, clear and inspiring manner.
BUSTING MYTHS AND BUILDING MOMENTUM: Leadership as Promise, Presence, and Shared Performance
Leadership. It’s...
A promise, not a title.
A presence, not an answer.
A shared performance, not a solo.
And it is the singular and sustaining catalyst for organizational vitality, creativity, and growth. Join Bobby in this interactive keynote in which he challenges common myths about leadership and provides leaders with space to rediscover the fundamentals that allow their leadership - and their organization - to thrive.
Some people always seem to end their story in the valley. “But then it went wrong again. Failed again. Didn’t work.” Does the chapter have to end there, though? How is failure a teacher, for instance?
Some people always seem to end their story on the mountain. “We won! We overcame! We were not deterred!” And that’s a very American way to tell a story for sure but… sometimes those don’t feel real if those same people have no honest stories about the valley where it was genuinely unclear if the valley reality would end.
I’m telling you, breathwork is no joke. You really have no idea what’s coming, but my limited experience (via a good facilitator) suggests it’s likely exactly what you need.
And, oddly enough, my work is now done alongside of and on behalf of the very kind of men who once intimidated me - as you may recall from the early portion of my softball story.
To be sure, there are many things about our stories we cannot and do not control. My point is simply that we also have more control than we sometimes recognize - in particular in relationship to how we tell our stories and how we decide to take the next step in that story.