I write a lot of true stories from my own life on this Website. You may be wondering why I tell stories when so many other personal development authors are turning out short bulleted lists instead.
I write stories for two reasons: I enjoy it, and I honestly believe that a good story is often the best way (and sometimes the only way) to accurately communicate complicated life lessons.
We do not live in a neat little world where all our personal development philosophies can be connected with clean lines and wrapped up with a beautiful bow. We do not live in a world where all of our goals, ambitions, and motivations can be quantified in cute little bulleted lists. No, you and I, we live in the real world, where life gets messy and our attempts to improve our lives are often thwarted by very real obstacles. And sometimes, when a situation gets really messy, a good story is the only way to cut through the muck to what really matters.
Don’t get me wrong. Quick numbered lists (like the one in this post) still have their place, and I’ve written plenty of those too.
But if you’re looking for something that’s a little deeper and a little more entertaining, I offer you the 7 best story-format posts on this site. Each story comes with a series of take-away points and life lessons. I hope you find these stories entertaining, educational, and inspiring.
1. Jason’s Story: Life Lessons from a Tragedy — By far the most popular, emotional, and heart wrenching story on this site.
2. How to Learn from Your Parents, Even if They Weren’t the Greatest - A moving story about parent-child relationships in an imperfect world.
3. Life Lessons from the Ghost of Christmas Past — Another true story of parent-child relationships in an imperfect world. This one has “Christmas” in the title, but its lessons are relevant all year ’round.
4. 13 Simple Words That Could Change Your Life Forever – A true story of how I dealt with bullies in gradeschool and the lasting impression it made upon my life, complete with a lesson on the power of personal accountability.
5. How to Stop Being Envious of Other People — A life lesson from a gradeschool canned food drive carries over into adult life.
6. My 7 Most Significant Life Lessons of 2007 — job loss, unemployment, crazy bosses, and a massive heaping of life lessons.
7. Lessons from a Horsefly Attack! — Yep, you heard right. I’ve taken a hilarious personal anectdote about bug bites and turned it into a fun-filled romp through the land of personal development.
All of these stories are true, of course. But I think there’s something more important in these stories than their honesty and accuracy, and that’s their spirit. What I mean is that sometimes it’s possible to get all the facts right and to completely miss the point of something in the process.
And while I freely admit that short bulleted lists and informational posts have their place, it is in this area — the area of the spirit of a thing — where these posts simply cannot compete with a good story. Because the meaning of life is not about the facts nearly so much as it’s about the ambiguous and the nebulous, not nearly so much about the mind as it is about the heart, and not nearly so much about the truth as it is about the way the truth feels.
This article is copyright © by John Place. For more personal development articles, visit John Place Online.
