Riding the Creative Flow

Notice that as soon as we wake up we start building stories inside our minds. It's a mixture of yesterday, now, tomorrow with a pinch of apprehension and a few drops of fatigue. We never take things as they are, we irresistibly build scenarios. When we do not create our own stories, we listen to the stories others tell every minute around us : people, radio, newspapers, television. And as we feel it is not enough we even pay to get imaginary stories through books, movies, theater plays,etc.

Some people think we should focus strictly on what they call "reality" and try to get rid of this need to build scenarios about what happens around us. But, in fact story telling is something vital for us and we should understand that it is not an escape from reality but one of the most powerful tools we have as human to transform and create reality. It is one of the fastest way to modify the world we live in.

How can we master this tool? For that, we have to understand that the most important power of stories is that they CREATE A FLOW OF ENERGY. What does that mean? Let's take an example, the word CAT and the word CHAIR, just 2 words, 2 potential energies without any movement. If we create the basic story : "The cat jumps on the chair", energy is moving. And if we say : "The chair falls on the cat", we have a different story and a different movement of energy.

Without stories all situations stay in a potential state.Stories are ways to make potential energies move in different directions according to chosen scenarios. This is one of the magical rule of story telling and it is a very powerful one you can use in any situation in your life. To make the point clear I'll give you a negative application of this rule: somebody wakes up as he does everyday, he considers 2 potential energies present in his "reality" : RAINY WEATHER and BAD FEELING.He thinks : "The weather is so rainy and I am feeling so bad that for sure today will be a disaster". This is just a story. Do you see where the energy is going to move if this scenario is brought to a reality level? I am sure you can find in your imagination a lot of scenarios to use more positively a rainy day.

It may sound very simple but because it is so simple people often do not believe it will work and they look for more difficult or painful solutions. Let me show you a difficult way to build a story : To explain this rainy weather and this bad feeling I can imagine other elements, "irrational elements", for example recently many things have been going wrong in my life for some astral reasons and today even the weather is bad and my feeling are worst, so I may burn some incense and perform some rituals to purify my environment.

There is no "Good" or "Bad" story, what I want to show here is just that any story is a way to move energy to produce a result. To drive nails you have many choices, you are free to use your fist, a hammer, a chair, a cast iron pan, a big rock,...It is unlimited.And it is all scenarios. Some choices may only be easier or more economic than others. When you face a problem, look at your reality as you would look at a fiction. Think : I built it. Then look at the general atmosphere : is it a comedy, a drama, a boring scenario, a fun adventure, a pleasant happening? Take some distances and see if you did a choice that make you feel good.

If not, because you see it is just a story you created and not a fatality happening outside of your reach you feel free to change anything you do not like and build a better reality.

Patrice Julien is a "Lifestyle designer" living in Tokyo. In his books, conferences and talk shows he teaches an empowerment process based on "storytelling" practical techniques inspired from semantic theories and zen practice.