Tell me a story

Throughout human history, story tellers have been among the most important and revered people in every culture.
Be good at telling stories.
It will serve you well.

Things people buy

People don't buy things.
People buy stories.

That is a lesson from recent months. It holds true, and is powerful wisdom;
and it can stand to have additional light shine on it.

People also buy function; Such as a house cleaning service, or a tool to drive screws.

If you sell only the function, where the story is not important, you are selling in a commodity market where prices are low, competitive and out of your control.

People need to buy the function of transportation, but the car dealers know better than to sell function. They provide the function, but they sell the story; the sex appeal, the muscles, the fantasy.

Sometimes the only function is the story; such as an autographed baseball. Without the story, the ball is worth a few bucks. With the story it is worth maybe a million bucks. Value in antiques is more story than function. TV, movies, books and fame of all kinds are all about stories. Art and crafts usually have some aesthetic value, but they command big bucks if there is a good story about the artist.

The food pendulum has swung way to the commodity side; cheap with no story you would want to talk about. Now food is swinging toward the story side. You want to know the ingredients, know it is organic, even who grew it and where.

The ideal items to sell would...
a: provide superior functions
b: have a very interesting and compelling story that fits the times.

Informing the giant

Lately I have been studying lessons about communications, perception of reality, and guidance. It has been occupying some of the best hours of the day.

Some of the lessons from this morning's bath, while staring into the water...

Whether they are objects, or ideas, or emotions, the only things we actually observe are the surfaces of neural network energy topologies.

Similar to seeing the world as it is reflected in a pool of water, everything we observe is reflected in the topology of our personal neural network. The dynamics that we observe around us are often ripples in our own surface. A tiny ripple can create enormous distortions.

We can calm our internal ripples and thus get more accurate observations.
We can set up our internal ripples to make us perceive more life, love and good intent than may actually be the case. We can set up our ripples to make us perceive more inertness, hate and mal intent. In either case, we react accordingly. Every other neural net observes us, making our attitude part of their reality. Thus, our attitude ripples through the larger neural landscape that we call reality.

We can apply this knowledge by minimizing emotions, pre-conceptions or body cycles that distort our perceptions when we are dealing with people.
Another way to apply it is to be generous when we think of people. Assume the best of them. They are human and will react accordingly. They will occasionally lash out in anger, or fail in other ways, but they will eventually rise to meet your expectations.

Moving my Giant

I have been emotionally moved lately by watching well done works of animated art.

Last night we watched The Little Mermaid for the first time in many years. I was struck by how smoothly the story flowed and how well it was told. When we watched the "how it was made" feature, it brought tears to my eyes. I was left wondering what it was that affected me so. The best answer I could come up with... It was the story of teams of genius coming together to create something great.

Tonight we watched Spirited Away. There was no need to watch how it was made. The teams of genius showed through in almost every scene.

The emotion is still strong. I am inspired to believe that we must pull our team together and commit an act of genius.

Judging from the animated examples, an act of team genius includes...
Keenly observing mundane details of the world around us.
Inspiration on many fronts and from many talents.
Years of dedicated hard work.
Much practice and focus and editing.
Appropriate public relations.
Spirit guiding us to time things right.

Reduce cholesterol, good side effects

If properly administrated, this way to reduce cholesterol can only have good side effects.

It is a small study that showed a reduction in cholesterol when people wrote affectionate notes about someone in their lives; An even bigger reduction if the note was to your loved one, rather than writing in third person.

Finding my giant

Last weekend, at an impromptu time, Amber guided me on what became a spiritual vision trip.
It was powerful.
I am still absorbing the feelings and the ramifications.
I am changed.

In my paper journal, I wrote details of images I saw. I find myself periodically writing additional thoughts about it; like a list of ingredients that helped make the experience work so well.

In the experience...
Some early images included pagodas and many variations of eastern temples. Then I was traveling towards a radiant ball of energy, like a portal. The ball became a sun rising over a lake. Soon I was traveling on the lake, almost at a right angle to the sun.

The lake was getting narrower and I passed several iconic dead critters.
The lake got narrow like a canyon, then almost like a cave. As I entered, there were waves traveling vertically; up. I could sense that they were alive. Two different streams of undefined energy were also traveling up. I ascended with the energies.

The first thing I saw in this new space was shapes. Clear, simple geometric shapes that I could not define or name. After a few other images that I could not define, I saw simple happy creatures. Clearly these were not any life form known on earth. The feeling was that my guides were very happy to see my arrival. They were showing me that I was now experiencing additional dimensions and it is going to take a while to learn the territory.

Soon I was looking down on sand and pine trees (home). I was able to move around freely while viewing from above. The view was slightly curvy, a little like a fish eye lens except as I moved I could sense the macro view and interior micro details at the same time.

I viewed around me and everywhere I looked the landscape quickly turned lush green. I laughed. Soon I was traveling (like walking 100 feet high) fast enough that I could see the curve of the earth. I was looking everywhere and making much of the continent turn green and lush and productive. I liked the implied message.

Later I saw a storybook opened up to a picture printed across both pages. It was an ocean with a ship on it. The ship sailed out of the two dimensional pages into the three dimensional world. It sailed into a narrow area with land on both sides (similar to the lake in the earlier part of my trip). Crowds of people cheered jubilantly and confetti was in the air everywhere. A closer look revealed that the confetti was actually bees and butterflies.

At the start of the vision trip, I had traveled alone in a small canoe sized boat going North, past iconic dead critters. At the conclusion, I was traveling South through the same passage way; but now in a ship; and abundant, jubilant life was celebrating on all sides.

It took me hours to bring my mind back into this (normal?) world.
I feel larger,
and guided,
and supported,
and more confident that we are successful and doing the right thing.

And we have much to learn.