Telling a person’s life story is building a bridge between his (or her) past and future. Better still, if he can integrate his own life story into a macro story e.g. that of a group, organization, country, world,….God’s story.
The telling process can help the story teller:
-to recall more clearly his past endeavours and reflect upon them
-to understand himself better : passions, strengths and weaknesses, life goals, etc.
-to relieve himself from psychological obstacles
-to see more clearly visions for doing forward planning
-to increase self-motivation and faith needed for moving forward
The life story telling process can reflect a person’s values, character, thoughts and life styles.
It can work well with personal counselling or life coaching, if done on a one-to-one basis. If conducted in a group process, it can also facilitate mutual empowerment and learning. Questions and answers subsequent to a story just told can be very inspirational; it can even help the story teller to understand himself better.
Organisations have also used the story telling approach to implement participative management: enabling employees to participate in learning from the past and drafting the future story of their own organisation together, leading it to a brighter future. This is an enhancement to corporate planning.
In future postings, a 4-stage approach to telling a life story, a structured way to guide the thoughts of the teller, will be introduced. The dynamics of how life stories are told by each member of a group (called REST Group *) will also be described.
(*) Communications with the group leader is welcome, through email to Dr Charles Lam (charles155@gmail.com)
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