Here’s an important fact you should know. According to scientists, sugar is bad for your brain health. Because of this fact you are surely going to skip the ice cream, right? Maybe not. Facts don’t easily change our motivations or behavior, and there’s a good reason for why. We don’t have a mind for facts, we have a mind for stories. A story has 7 strands.
Our brains are built to absorb facts that matter to us, and stories determine what is meaningful to us.
Storytelling is an unique human brain superpower, so let’s take a peek under the hood to see how stories work.
Stories share meaning
Stories share meaningA story, or narrative, is an account of related events that unfold over time in a certain place. A story has a beginning, middle, and end, as well as a shared social significance for teller and listeners, a lesson to teach called “the moral of the story.”
To facilitate social bonding, a newborn’s brain gets busy right away building the four neural pillars of a story: place, time, me, and we. Think of how easy it would be to engage a child’s attention with these words: “Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a little mouse lived with her family in a deep underground nest…” A child would consider the story as make-believe with such vague language for time and place. The little mouse and her family would be proxies for “me” and “we,” respectively.
By age 3, our brain keeps the mind in a perpetual state of story-readiness.. Since a child has so few memories from life experiences to draw on, the line between reality and fantasy is very thin. Thus it is easy to tell make-believe stories to a young child. However, even fictional stories allow a child to grasp norms and values from the social context. This social awareness improves a child’s ability to understand the desires, motives, and intentions of others to prepare for success in social roles and relationships.
Photographer: Derek Mawhinney on Oct. 23, 2005
Subject: A game of Jenga(r) in progress.
Stories prevent crashes
Throughout life, stories expand our view of possible actions to avoid fear and make adaptive, life-enhancing choices. Just as a flight simulator prepares a pilot-in-training to fly without crashing a plane, a story gives the adult brain a safe learning experience to avoid social-emotional “crashes.”
Beyond the here and now, a story presents a mental simulation of a possible outcome in a given context. As the characters engage our imagination, the brain prepares for future action by learning from the mistakes of others without risking life and limb or social status.
As adults, our minds live in a sea of stories encountered in daily life. Conversations, books, movies, plays, songs, dance, sermons, speeches, articles, blogposts, and meetings and other activities offer opportunities to share stories in different ways.
Our brains are so predisposed to the influence of stories that you have to be wary about which ones you absorb. How easily we can suspend disbelief and return to the imaginary world of a child. A compelling story can be conjured up to hoodwink just about anyone! Next thing you know, fiction overwrites facts in your brain.
Story has 7 strands
Story has 7 strandsDespite the damage done by false narratives, the benefits of stories have outweighed their drawbacks. Otherwise, humanity would have crashed and burned long ago.
Since stories are here to stay, let’s review the main ingredients that go into a story. A story has 7 strands:
- Perspective: the voice of the story’s author, expressed in first person (I or we) or third person (he/she/it/they).
- Place: the setting and conditions of where the story occurs.
- Period: the timeframe for when the story takes place
- People: the people who act in the plot, including hero, allies, and opponents.
- Plot: the sequence of events with a beginning, middle, and end that reveals the characters’ desires, motives, intentions, actions, and outcomes.
- Problems: the challenges faced by the hero/heroes in pursuing their goals.
- Point: the meaning that the audience is to derive from the story.
When it’s time to boost your mental health, pass on the ice cream and go get yourself a nice, big, nourishing story. And when you have important information to share with others, get busy and weave a 7-strand story rope of your own. They will gobble it up!
To learn more about boosting mental health with storytelling, see Chapter VI in Better with Age: The Ultimate Guide to Brain Training.
