But I'm not a storyteller . . .

You’re not a storyteller? Really? Of course you are a storyteller. We tell stories every day . . . with our families, with our friends, sometimes with strangers we meet in the supermarket checkout line.

Story is our communication currency. It’s how we make sense of a complex world and abstract concepts. We need to hear and tell stories daily in order to understand what’s happening to us. And this is the way it has been since the dawn of man – from cave drawings and pyramid glyphs to the printed word and our modern story constructs of TV, cinema, and TED talks.

But you don’t need to have the word story in your title, you don’t have to be a TED presenter, you don’t need to be a writer, filmmaker or TV producer to be a storyteller. You are human and that’s all that’s required to be someone who shares stories.

You’re probably wondering what’s the story with the picture in this post?

It’s my proof that anyone can tell a story.

One day I was out in the yard with my youngest daughter who’d just turn two at the time. She looked up at our house, she looked back at me and asked “is that our house?” I said “Yes, that’s our house.” She looked back at the house, paused for a moment, then asked “is it our house’s birthday?”

Huh?

My eyes scanned the walls of our house then up along our roof and then . . . ooooohhhh, the finial! And what does the finial on our house look like? A candle. And what do candles mean to a two year old? A birthday.

My clever little girl used storytelling principles to make a correlation between the thing she saw but had no word for and the abstract concept of a birthday. She created a simple metaphor to bridge a gap in her vocabulary and figure out what the heck this candle-like thing is on her house.

She can do it, and you can too.

So, repeat after me “I am a storyteller.” Now go have some fun telling stories!

What story did you tell today? Share it with us in the comments will you?