Whenever I hang out with my niece and nephew, it’s always a new world.
They are so quick to come up with a new game, rules, characters, and new worlds.
It’s uninhibited creativity.
Researchers over the years have agreed that creativity can be nurtured in a method of convergent and divergent thinking.
This framework, coined by American psychologist J.P. Guilford, has been used since 1967 by corporations, military, ad agencies, and start-ups.
Divergent thinking is built off memory.
So how is it that children that don’t have the same level of memories as adults can be more creative?
New research is coming out that another way to boost creativity is available to us – storytelling.
Narrate Your Way
We usually look for grand solutions to our problems.
We forget the simple practices and habits that can help us achieve our goals.
Although achievable, these habits require discipline which our bodies initially resist. That’s why most people don’t value deliberate writing and storytelling.
Most of us are currently knowledge workers.
We are no longer in the factory.
Our brain is the factory.
That’s where we do most of our work – solving problems and communicating.
The schooling system did not equip a lot of us with the tools to adapt to the complexities in the world.
One day a machine is taking over your position.
The next day a 12-year old is teaching you how to make your first million on youtube.
Things are changing quickly!
We are in the creative era.
You might think: “Oh, but I’m not creative”
“Creativity is meant for the…well, creative”
The reality is:
Creativity is not bestowed to a select few.
It is available to everyone.
It is a practice that has to be nurtured.
We want to self-express, be healthy, make connections, and build wealth.
You can achieve all that by cultivating your creativity built on the foundation of writing and storytelling.
Writing will help you thrive in this world.
4 Ways to Use Narrative to Create the Life You Want
The sooner you embrace your creative self, the better.
If you happen to be solving any problems in your personal or professional life, that’s creativity at work.
You don’t need a trending song on spotify to be creative. Neither do you need to be the latest trending AI artist.
Creativity is novel problem-solving that can be used on a daily basis at work, in the kitchen, on the basketball court.
This creativity has to be nurtured and there are systematic frameworks to do so.
One of them is through narrative.
With a system of deliberate storytelling, you can nurture your creative self.
You’ll be more confident in your ability to solve problems. You’ll take charge of your career and direct it.
You’ll come up with novel ideas, insights, and solutions that allow you to consistently reflect and grow.
You’ll live a more meaningful life on your own terms.
Here are 4 ways to us narrative to build the life you want
1. Boost creativity, self-expression, and problem-solving
You don’t tell stories because you are creative.
You are creative because you tell stories.
In a linear way of thinking, storytelling is the cause, creativity is the effect.
I’m always amazed by how quick kids can come up with a new story or game.
Creating worlds in an instance.
Even AI can’t compete with these children.
It’s because they are using a different part of their brain that doesn’t rely on data or computation.
They are world-building with stories.
Creativity is the generation of novel ideas (and some will argue – “novel ideas that are useful”).
It has been thought that creativity came from divergent thinking – where creativity relies on memory, pattern recognition, and analogies.
However, children tend to be more creative than adults even though they do not have the same amount of memory and a less developed sense-making machine (the brain).
Why?
This paradox can be explained with the role of narrative in boosting creativity.
Divergent thinking has been the most operationalized method to foster creativity – used by the military, corporations, and schools.
The reliance on this form of creativity-boosting activity emphasizes the use of computation over everything else.
The study of the evolution of neurons gives some pointers. Each neuron started as an action-generation node to get food and evade danger.
Neurons also send out random action-generating pulses.
These experimental actions do not correlate with the pure function of getting food and evading danger.
Using this experimental action-generated model, it can be explained that AI’s reliance on computation is limited to steady conditions.
The brain has a higher ability to deal with unsteady and volatile environments.
That’s where narrative in the earlier stages of creativity is useful.
It can be used for action generation – cause and effect, as narrative is a string of cascading action.
For my corporate folks, this can be operationalized through world-building, perspective-shifting, and action-generation.
There is an increasing demand for creativity in business, military, and science.
Narrative theory can be used to bolster the established methods of creative-boosting techniques.
Learn how to craft and develop narrative to boost your creativity and problem-solving skills.
2. Make meaningful connections
Love is the source.
Creativity is the act.
Connection is the result.
When I make music or engage in any creative practice, I do it for myself.
I do it to bring some order to the world around me. It’s the way I bring context and understanding to my life.
However, some things I create, I do get an urge to share.
This is the second leg of the relay race.
It’s the point of connection.
The biggest validation I receive from this is when another person says they “understood something that I expressed”.
All of a sudden, the world feels a lot less lonely. I don’t feel as crazy expressing myself.
It becomes a shared narrative that me and that person can reflect on. The point that sparks the dialogue to mutually build empathy.
At the end of the day, what each individual craves the most is connection to another human being.
We are social animals.
We thrive in packs.
That’s why we have all flooded into digital communities to continue the love bug of being human.
The reality is that we don’t need to be connected with everyone. We just need to be connected to the right people for us.
Writing and building out narratives helps us self-express and filter through the noise to find the right people to connect with.
Making human connections is one of the main things we do while we are on this rotating rock orbiting around the sun.
Crafting narratives allows you to build empathy with others, making the world feel less lonely.
Improve your storytelling skills to build empathy and make real meaningful connections.
3. Build communication skills, businesses, and brands
This world is shaped by storytellers!
In 2014, I started writing a small blog about business in Nigeria. That morphed into a blog about business in Africa.
In a few years, that blog turned into a business – one that helps global organizations with their entry and expansion in 18 African countries.
When I started writing, I had no clue my storytelling skills would help me create a business.
I’m not sure why I was surprised, business brands are all about narrative.
Steve Jobs is famous for quoting that:
“The most powerful person in the world is the story teller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda for an entire generation to come.”
Apple, the company started by this visionary, is now the largest company by market cap in the world.
I know, you might think that throwing in a Steve Jobs quote is cliche. Sure! No problem. But he’s right. (He also started Pixar – the animation studio. You know, Woody and Buzz).
A lot of people want to be entrepreneurs and business owners.
Mainly to have autonomy.
Also, to get away from that annoying boss.
And yeah…that coworker that loves to take credit for eveeerrrrything!!!
I do believe that the most important thing to learn as a business owner is sales.
It might not be obvious but sales does require a lot of storytelling.
Crafting engaging emails, problem-solving with your prospective customer, and telling a compelling story of how your solution is the best fit for the outcome they are looking for – that’s all narrative.
Besides sales, perception goes a long way. This is where your brand comes in.
How do you want to be remembered?
How do you want to be perceived when you make the first contact?
What type of experience do you want your customers to have?
All this requires strategic communication and engaging narrative.
Your business might not be as big as Apple’s but regardless of how small it is, “people buy from people” and your personal or business story will take you a long way.
Develop your narrative craft to build wealth on your own terms and in an authentic way.
4. Drive Impact
You are here to serve the expression of the collective aspiration of the universe.
As a big music head and amateur scientist, I really believe that everything can be expressed in frequencies.
Every object vibrates at a certain frequency, communicating its properties in a dynamic field that connects everything.
Even when I make a beat, the function of each instrument is to complement the whole.
The drums sit nicely with the baseline. The saxophone sample glides with the piano melodies. This harmony is brought together with a gestalt effect.
Every instrument is there communicating with the other, in a perfect symphony of creation, in service of what is being expressed through me.
This analogy with how we come together is a strong understanding of our purpose here.
Our purpose as humans is to be right here in relationship with one another and the universe.
Spiritual advancement happens when we move away from self-identification to a connected spiritual identification.
Just like a lamp plugged in to shine the light of the electrical source, we are here plugged in to express the natural intelligence of the universe.
When a cell decides to go against this function it becomes a cancer.
As well, when humans go against this function of collective partnership, and start thinking “it’s all about me” then we become diseased with a malignancy that affects us all.
Stories help bring order and meaning.
When I write, I write to explore my interests and understand myself.
If someone can relate to the stories I publish, I’m glad that I can bring some order to their lives.
Literature contains ordered information that can help people cut through distractions and bring flow experiences to them.
It provides past context that readers can use to bring order and ultimately meaning to their lives.
It helps with the consistent complexity of differentiating ourselves individually and also integrating with the whole.
When you tell stories, you become a teacher of your experience.
You pass that knowledge on to someone else, who then goes to do the same – multiplying your impact.
“The highest power thought is not – I am unique. The highest power thought is – I am just like everybody else”
Author and Activist Marianne Williamson, on Oprah’s Super Soul Podcast
Write narratives to increase your impact and help others.
Final thoughts
There are 4 main pillars that humans strive for: self-expression, human connection, wealth, and health.
Developing your narrative skill will help you thrive in all four.
Your experience and personal narrative is so unique that you can leverage it to build the life that you want.
By developing your storytelling skills, you will train your creativity and become a better problem-solver. A skill that will be useful in any career that you choose.
By developing a practice to finetune your narrative skills, you can make meaningful human connections, build authentic businesses, and impact the lives of people you care about.
Develop your storytelling skills to create a more enriched life.
