Neuro Linguistic Programming

Fables, and Metaphors Chapter 17: Telling Tales to Reach the Unconscious: Stories,

Stories engage the left side of the brain to process the words and the

sequence of the plots and the right side in terms of imagination, visualisation,

and creativity.

Many stories are told solely to entertain, but you can use stories for a

number of purposes:

✓ To focus concentration

✓ To illustrate a point

✓ To get over a lesson that people remember

✓ To sow new ideas

✓ To get people to recognise their own problems

✓ To make a complex idea simpler

✓ To change people’s mood

✓ To challenge behaviour

✓ To have fun

Working on your storytelling

Stories and metaphors work in business communication just as well as in a

social or spiritual context. You learn from the experiences of other people

and take meaning from metaphors. Businesses tell stories to do the following:

✓ Communicate information

✓ Convey values of the organisation

✓ Educate people

The travelling storyteller

Throughout history, people have told stories,

myths, and legends, and used metaphors to

communicate a message. The oral tradition

preceded the written word and multimedia as

a critical form of communication. Storytellers

were typically travellers who moved from town

to town, passing on important information by

word-of-mouth. Without the luxury of email

and PowerPoint, they used rhythm, rhyme, and

visualisation to aid memory. The more fantastic

and outrageous the story, the more likely people

were to remember it.