By Kristel Keuren
Suddenly it's there: that one insight that makes everything make sense again. Relief follows. Choices are made, trips booked, important conversations held. But... what led to that one insight? How did that clarity arise?
Often it is a subtle process. A chain reaction of moments, or just that one perfect nudge at the right time. A friend who dared to make a critical remark. A quote that was just right. Or an experience that took you away from the delusion of the day and made you feel what is really going on inside you.
Space in the now
Through my company The Storytelling Buro I like to work with the latter. Bringing people to the now by letting them step into an experience. Because there, in that uninhibited experience, space is created in which insights can gently slide in. Sometimes this happens with full awareness, during the training sessions and workshops I give. And sometimes unconsciously, when people ‘just’ step into an experience or game. I often use the personal story as a starting point.
It just happened
I myself regularly find out unexpectedly what these experiences have unleashed. For example, I recently returned to the Hogeschool Leiden, where I had been training management. One of the participants shot at me: “Kris, so cool, since that training I suddenly remember why I get out of bed in the morning!’ Wonderful, I think. Or after an open training: ”That day I felt so much again who I really am. So... I quit my job and started training!“
They didn't come to get that insight purposefully: it just happened. And that is exactly what I try to create the optimal conditions for in the story-experiences I develop.
Connect and ye shall find
At Seats2meet in Utrecht, I also came up with all kinds of storytelling concepts together with the creative team. Think of a wall full of cassette tapes with unexpected messages and empty tapes to share your own story. Mini-challenges in an audio tour that stimulate, relax and inspire. Or a space where you use old books to shape a new story.
This is how I carry out my secret mission every day, in all sorts of places: to reconnect people with themselves, through the power of their own experience. Through the story to the now. Because the greatest insight is always to be found here, within yourself... precisely when you are not looking so hard.
