Now more than ever before the world needs deeper meaning FULL stories.
The idea of Story3 is to challenge ourselves to share stories with breadth, depth and just the right length. The symmetry of three comes up for us in many worlds; the world of science, of culture and symbol and of art. I call the pattern SAS, Science, Art and Spirit.
The greatest stories have all these elements, they appeal to the logic, the emotion and the primal instincts in us all. I have read again a great speech from Martin Luther King about the three dimensions of a great life. He talks about building our values through the breadth, the depth and the length of the life we live.
For Maori, the indigenous people of the land where I am from, patterns of three are important in symbol, the spoken word, and in actions. It has a balance. there is to three, in the spoken word, the tricolon. Great speakers such as Martin Luther King, as President Obama have used this rhythm to communicate powerful stories.
It is a pattern that is easy for us. In navigation, triangulation is used to work out where you are, three points to anchor your position.
Stories help us find where we are, give us a place and a connection. And the greatest stories often have three parts to them, at a simple level, a beginning a middle and an end. There is always a journey in these stories, through good times and bad. We need to have the dark and the light in stories, that is how we learn. And so in a time where there is more media to communicate than ever before in our history, more glossed over content and doom and gloom content, we need our stories to be clear, to stand out, and to have an integrity. And that are clearly shared in service of others.
My office wall has become adorned with post-it notes re triangulated stories. I have a big story to write about a very complex issue and this has inspired me to look at it a little differently, thank you.