On discovering the power of storytelling

I decided to study business because I had the feeling it turns the world a big playground to explore, and that since we live in a capitalistic world, I would have all the freedom to do so.

I was a good student, very dedicated, super serious, but always too sensitive. I would even find myself crying easily if people were slightly too tough with me. It was so embarrassing, it needed to change fast if I wanted to be taken seriously one day. After my graduation, I chose to start working as a buyer, to learn a key skill that I was clearly missing: learning how to say no, and not being intimidated anymore. I spent 9 years working in Procurement, with all the crazy negotiation situations I’ve been in, I can proudly say mission accomplished: you can now yell at me all that you want, throw a chair across the room, and not only I will keep my cool instead of breaking out in tears, but I will find the best way to turn this in my favor and negotiate a beneficial deal for my company - but these stories are for another article.

Then I realized I succeeded to learn what gave me the most fun in procurement, and that the challenges I was now facing in my job did not excited me anymore. The new skill I wanted to acquire was storytelling.

The first sparkle ignited while reading the book of Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens, in which he explains (much better than I am about to do) that what differentiate humans from other animals is our capacity to create stories that we believe and share at the planet scale. The best example of that is the story of money: it does not exist, it is simply a concept humans invented, and yet every single person across the globe believes and acts according to this story.

That thought woke up something in me about the power of stories. I now wanted to be able to tell stories, share them, and entertain people with it. Not only I would have fun learning and practicing this new skill, but I felt like I entered the matrix and found a new great key to make myself comfortable in the world. After spending years trying to challenge the established stories, I wanted to be able to create my own.

This happened just after I came back to work from a burn-out and I was actually worried about my brain performances. Not that I was anywhere close to being a rocket scientist before, but i could clearly see that my reasoning was much slower than before. I was very worried I could never again take new challenges like I used to do. And since overcoming difficulties is usually my main source of motivation at work, I didn’t know how I would overcome this.

And then it hit me: the first and more powerful story I should craft was one for myself: the story that with patience and determination, I could re-wire my brain to work efficiently again, and have fun creating stories. This page is one of the best example of how I do it since then.