Press "Enter" to skip to content

Your Life Story: Using Story Structure to Navigate Crisis | Yuri Lowenthal & Tara Platt | TEDxUCSD


stop us if you’ve heard this story
before guy meets girl in New York City
they fall in love and decide over the
Christmas holiday to go on a
cross-country road trip to Los Angeles
now as you well know the best way to
find out if two people are going to get
along is a cross-country road trip but
before they get even an hour and a half
into the drive out of the blue the guy
proposes in the middle of a snowstorm in
a chi chi’s parking lot she says yes but
from that moment for the next seven days
neither of them brings it up again It
was as if it didn’t happen until they’re
stuck in horrendous New Year’s Eve
traffic at the choke point just outside
Las Vegas the Hoover Dam trapped in the
car like the 10 trillion gallons of
water behind the dam the pressure builds
and builds until they can’t take it
anymore and they decide to get married
in Vegas that night shenanigans ensue
they scramble to find a vacant hotel
room on New Year’s Eve race to get a
marriage license after hours try to find
wedding rings that fit eat poison sushi
in a shady casino and they still have to
get to the chapel on time see when
someone tells us a story it’s very
different than when someone just gives
us information science has shown that
totally different parts of the brain
light up and if that story is told to a
group of people it literally puts
everyone’s brains in sync
stories carry power how do we know this
well as storytellers we struggle with
whether what we do has any true value
we’re always asking ourselves what our
contribution to the world is as actors
writers directors producers is it escape
entertainment sure but we think there’s
more to it than that
in life bubbles burst all the time and
when they do we can find ourselves lost
confused and unsure of how to deal with
the sudden crisis or where to go from
there don’t you wish you had a map some
sort of guide to get you back on track
and moving forward again what if we told
you that stories
books TV movies theater holds a greater
power than we often give them credit for
have you ever heard the phrase be the
hero of your own story but don’t know
how what if we told you that the
directions have been right under your
nose your whole life in the form of
stories witch stories
well kind of all of them as storytellers
and performers who have read and written
thousands of scripts we started to
notice that stories are filled with
these bursting moments as a matter of
fact it’s a necessary component to any
good story you don’t generally you’ll
read a lot of books or see movies about
perfect people in their perfect lives we
wondered could we use story structure to
navigate crisis and to make changes in
our lives
well stories have been told since the
dawn of time to teach us valuable
lessons so is it really that far-fetched
I mean us humans are still around in the
mammoth isn’t so who’s to say we
wondered maybe the reason we respond to
stories and why they keep getting told
and retold is because that’s just how
life works and just so you know you’re
already the hero of your own story even
though you may not always feel like it
now you may say no I’m no hero heroes
slay dragons and save people from
burning buildings and do other heroic
stuff sure some heroes do that but what
if we told you that to start your hero’s
journey to take charge of your story all
you had to do was answer the call but
we’re getting ahead of ourselves let’s
talk a little bit about this magical
road map aka story structure now some of
you who have studied literature writing
or film may be acquainted with this so
bear with us we’re gonna try to break it
down as simply as possible so you can
start applying it to your life three act
structure both stories follow this
structure Act one set up we meet our
hero set up the world and establish the
status quo back to conflict something
threatens the status quo and the hero
goes on an adventure
we get what they call a rising action
that a falling
action which leads us to act 3
resolution the hero beats the villain
and comes back to their life now as you
movie buffs may know it can be described
a little like this exposition again
who’s our hero and where are they
inciting incident something crashes the
party fun and games the hero is off on
an adventure
hello point struggle struggle it ain’t
always easy low point the hero it looks
like it’s it looks like the hero is
toast
climax there is a final fight and the
hero emerges victorious day Numan
basically what happens to the victorious
hero after winning and now for the more
literary minded and fans of myth and
legend the hero’s journey basically and
we’ll use a hopefully familiar story to
illustrate it goes like this ordinary
world life before your bubble bursts
call to adventure your world is
threatened refusal to call you don’t
want to deal with it meeting a mentor
you seek help from someone wise are
crossing threshold your adventure begins
tests allies enemies all the fun stuff
approach the inmost cave you start to
face your fears ordeal you conquer your
fears right yeah if you’re interested in
this part just look up Joseph Campbell’s
the hero with a thousand faces when you
get home in the mean time we have cherry
picked all our favorite bits from all of
those and put them together in a tiny
little package you can take home and use
yourself life story structure refuse the
call find the mentor off to adventure
maybe with allies overcome your fear and
make a change that is so much yeah
basically you something shakes up your
world and you try to ignore it but it
throws you up against a big fear or
weakness and you may need a little help
from an outside party to give you the
confidence to take action to to accept
the call after that you’re off on your
adventure and it’s not always easy so
maybe get some friends to help and then
once you’ve got that you uh it’s just
about building the confidence do you
overcome your fear see what we’re really
doing when we apply this idea of story
to a crisis situation is reframing
reframing is a common psychological
technique to allow someone to get
distanced from a
emotional event and look at it in a
different more positive way in my
experience as a hypnotherapist I learned
that a useful therapeutic imagery method
is to literally envision events in your
life playing out as a movie on a screen
in front of you this cognitive
restructuring allows you to get out of
the emotion of it to step back and
clarify what you really want in order to
deal with it and take action a common
example of this might be an athlete
taking a loss and reframing it as a
valuable learning experience or
basically is the glass half empty or is
it half full remember you don’t always
have to look at crisis as a negative it
doesn’t automatically have to be
negative try to look at it instead as an
opportunity with potentially complicated
consequences so here’s an example of how
life story structure might run through
another movie our first instinct was to
go with another film like Raiders of the
Lost Ark or The Matrix let’s take a
slightly different route this time in
Willy walk in the Chocolate Factory
Charlie gets the golden ticket wants to
sell it to provide for his family but is
convinced by his arguably not a great
mentor Grandpa Joe to take the ride
Charley’s adventure in the Chocolate
Factory is filled with fun and games and
trials and Charlie sacrifices what he
thinks he wants and ends up getting what
he really wants now we don’t have time
to try this out on every genre but when
you get home tonight feel free to Google
your favorite movie plus hero’s journey
we bet you’ll find most of them remember
these examples are not of great people
with easy lives they’re about
extraordinarily unique people like you
and me overcoming difficulties they
inspire us to overcome challenges in our
own lives and learn from the ways they
persevere and in certain stories we
learn what choice is not to make don’t
go in that house there’s a killer in
there we love stories because they put
us in a different mind frame what would
I do in that situation but why wait for
them to make a movie or write a book
that deals with your specific crisis why
not take it one step further empower
yourself and look at your own life as
a story hold on you say if this is my
story
where’s the villain well here’s the
thing even the villain in a story is not
truly what the hero is trying to
overcome they’re just personified
representation of the hero’s greatest
fear or weakness so in a way we are each
the hero and the villain of our own
story the thing we need to overcome is
usually a big part of us for example I
struggle with body image issues and
terror with envy and jealousy
they don’t always wear a black hat and
try to destroy the world every week but
they can be just as threatening but this
is reality how do we use this map in our
lives well first what would it look like
if it’s not a famous movie you remember
that story we started with at the
beginning about the road trip
well we cheated a little on that as you
probably guessed that’s actually our
real life story and now we’re gonna
apply life story structure after the
fact to that real-world example so Yuri
proposing was the status quo bubble
bursting and then the week of us not
talking about it was definitely refusing
the call because it acted like the
catalyst and forced us to answer the
call the Hoover Dam was our mentor and
then Vegas was the beginning of our
adventure and team-building wedding food
poisoning relationship victories and
troubles of which there were plenty were
the ups and downs we needed to
experience in order to make the changes
in ourselves that have helped keep our
marriage together and thus the road trip
story comes to an end but then the
marriage becomes the new status quo and
then later having a baby is a whole new
bubble bursting big bubble big bubbles
we would argue that throughout life were
playing out both large and small scale
versions of the structure it’ll play out
over your whole life over a day in your
life and even a moment a story fractal
if you will okay let’s look at another
real-life example we can run through
this structure now terror recently wrote
a young adult novel and she’s very
passionate about it but after asking for
and receiving several critiques of the
book she’s become paralyzed because she
doesn’t know how to fix the problems
with the story so Tara let’s treat your
crisis like a story
and see where you may be on the timeline
why is this a crisis um because it feels
like the book isn’t good enough and I
don’t feel like I know what to do to fix
it and I feel stuck
what were you excited about the book
when you were writing it of course
that’s why I was writing it so why don’t
you just put it out there because the
feedback I got was that the book has
some major issues okay well what what do
you want I want to finish it I I want
the book to be good I want people to
like it what are you afraid of being a
bad writer not doing a good job failing
you want me to stop asking you questions
yes okay so we know that these are a lot
of questions but asking questions gets
the mind going on answering them even if
we don’t know what the answer is yet
scientifically this is known as
instinctive elaboration basically when
faced with a questioned but mind
momentarily stops thinking about
anything else
and automatically addresses the question
at hand and this can be really good at
getting you focused and coming up with a
solution the refusal of the call in this
instance is if you can’t decide what to
do next and instead choose not to move
on what are you afraid of why don’t you
want to move on identifying in figuring
that out will identify the action you
need to take and ultimately the change
you need to make the hero refuses the
call because they’re getting shoved up
against something uncomfortable if the
decision was easy they wouldn’t have any
trouble with it now you may be in a part
of your life where you’re just sailing
and not pushing up against anything
difficult at all and you can just
happily watch movies and read books
about other people’s trials and
tribulations but if you are bumping up
against resistance then that is where
your story begins in the case of my book
I’m having trouble moving forward and I
don’t know what to do maybe I need to
find a mentor and in this case maybe my
Yoda would be an editor to help guide me
whereas I would argue that she’s already
on her adventure I mean she wrote a
whole novel for for pete’s sake and
maybe it’s time for her to put together
a team that she can trust to help her
get to the next step
see she thinks she’s at the stage where
she needs
mentor I think she’s at the stage where
she’s off are to her adventure already
and here’s the great thing it doesn’t
matter if you correctly identify where
you are in the structure as long as it
gets you thinking about how to move
forward okay let’s look at one final
example because if stories have taught
us anything it’s that things work best
in threes this when we got the call to
come and do a presentation at this
conference I immediately said yes
because who wouldn’t but as the reality
started to set in
I was besieged by fear and doubt who
were we to do a talk at a gathering like
this I thought we’ll never come up with
a good idea soon became oh no people
have already done a whole bunch of TED
talks on the things we want to talk
about soon turned into is it too late to
back out
was I refusing the call I don’t think so
I think I’d already said yes before I
realized what I was getting myself into
but what kept me going then the team
that I had put together mostly that was
Tara who is an unstoppable engine of
finishing the things we start but also
our friends who listen to our ideas and
who sat through rough drafts and and
gave us feedback it can be hard to ask
for help but a hero rarely does it alone
and remember once you’re on your
adventure you can assemble a team to
help you get what you want okay yeah
now in reality let’s be honest when
you’re in crisis mode you’re not gonna
want to story your way out of anything
you’re gonna want to go and get a drink
or eat some cake
and that’s okay remember refusing the
call is part of every great story but
eventually it’ll get old and it won’t
get you out of the rut you’re in you
might as well story on and take action
what’s next that depends it’s time to
ask yourself the hard questions what do
I really want what am I afraid of what
would the rock do
whatever the crisis internal or external
big or small find the story of it decide
where you are in the arc of that story
and then really imagine yourself for a
minute in that movie or that book and
don’t worry about making the right
choice because in here hopefully this
will help put your mind at ease there is
no right choice it’s all about taking
action so I guess that makes every hero
an action hero hopefully this approach
will help take the pressure off you
feeling like you immediately have to
solve a crisis you could just hammer
away at the problem or you could let the
solution take you by surprise the way it
would in any good story so go ahead have
fun make it fun what’s your favorite
kind of story mystery romance action
horror pick a genre and get yourself
motivated by playing out your crisis
through that lens okay
so let’s recap you realize you’re
struggling because something challenged
your status quo time to figure out what
you want and maybe you need a little
help with that so don’t be afraid to get
yourself a mentor then it’s time to act
and you are off to adventure alone or
with friends you’ll succeed and fail
over and over again we could do a whole
other talk on why failure is the fastest
way to succeed and you will repeat this
cycle until you build the confidence to
make that change and get on living your
life and then something else will go
sideways and you’ll have to do it all
over again and again and again if you’re
lucky remember as much as we lost after
them perfect lives are boring dive into
the conflict go on an adventure you’re a
hero
that’s what heroes do and let’s be clear
you don’t have to apply this to
everything in your life you just need to
haul it out when you’re feeling a little
stuck and you need some help getting
back on track after that pint of ice
cream of course so that’s the plan
you’re already the hero you just have to
answer the call now go live your life
story
thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: