The Tipping Point

Few years ago I attended an event organized by the University of Toronto (UofT). It was about personal storytelling and I — along with many people in the audience — was reticent about the idea of sharing stories about our own lives. Why should I? Who would be interested??

At one point, someone stood up and asked these questions. The answers gave by the two UofT professors completely changed my perspective. It was something like this:

Imagine an underground river that every human being is connected with. When you share a personal story, it touches that river. Being connected to the same medium, others might resonate with your story, directly or indirectly. It might spark an idea, bring back a long forgotten memory to learn from or heal, or see things from different perspectives. You’ll probably never realize the full ripple effect your story has on others, but one thing is true for sure: sharing our personal stories affects others.

I loved the river metaphor! Since then, I didn’t look at personal stories as being only mine. They’re part of the collective story of humankind. So who am I to keep them only for myself if they can help others???

The tipping point

Few days ago I was a speaker at the “Spoken Lives: 5 Amazing Women Share Their Stories” event organized by Elizabeth Verwey. While waiting my turn to speak, I noticed again how true that river metaphor was. I resonated with every story shared, each touched me differently. Although they were distinct stories, we also noticed common aspects. Like threads going through all of them. I wonder: are these threads waved in that river? Elisabeth noticed the “fearless” aspect present in all those stories. I noticed the tipping point. They all had at least one; a situation or idea that shifted the storyline in a different direction. All the stories we heard came with lessons for both the narrator and listeners.?

The tipping point in the first story was accepting a friend’s challenge: “Let’s act for a week as we’re fearless and see what happens.” Based on the sparkles in her eyes while sharing that story, the speaker’s life definitely took a good turn since.?

For the second, the tipping point was realizing the need for more balance. And intentionally looking for something that feels good, to counteract the impact on her of making documentaries about atrocious situations. She found that balance in photographing and watching her pics of nature (macro).

The third story's tipping point was a brief interaction with her autistic daughter, who confronted her. She was no longer willing to accept her mom’s advice on what she should do. From that point on, the mom embraced her daughter’s autism as a superpower, and watched her grow and succeed on her own terms.???

Subtle signs

That aspect of turning to nature to balance ourselves reminded me of how much nature means to me, for the same reason. And that, when I got my first digital camera, outdoors and nature photography became my best friends. For years, I didn’t know why I take so many photographs of nature. Until one day, when I sat down for 24 hours (without sleep) and went through all my nature photographs to gather those “spoke” to me. And I wrote, for each of them, the insights triggered in my mind. I called it “Meeting With My Self” and seemed like a photo-coaching album. Self-coaching, actually. Then I became curious if it has the same effect on others. It does.

“I first used this album when I had lost my job because of the economic downturn. It changed the way I thought about my circumstances. Instead of grieving, I thought of the possibilities. I realized I was limiting myself and I have so much more to offer. It helped me to stop whirling around in circles and to create a map of where I want my life to go.” ~ A.B.

I clearly remember the message received from a former client. She was happy that —?after almost a year — her teenage daughter finally opened up and shared the traumatic experience her dad put her through a year earlier (which made her stop talking). The 40 therapy lessons didn’t help her daughter, but this photo-coaching album did. She stumbled on it in the house. Going through it at her own pace, it helped her find her own answers at a time when she didn’t trust anyone anymore.?She opened up the day she finished going through this album. “Every teenager should have this album” — she told her mom.

The more feedback came in, the more I realized this photo-coaching album can help people at different stages in life by triggering valuable insights.

After self-publishing my first book in 2017, I used the same process to publish this photo-coaching album as a book for self-coaching to improve the relationship with self.

Coming back to that river metaphor, it might have a deeper meaning.

What do you think?

• Is nature another way to connect with our intuition, this wiser part of ourselves??
• Can nature trigger us to get ideas and insights, as others’ personal stories do?

Based on my own experiences with nature, and designing photo-coaching books, I believe that nature is an excellent medium. It sharpens our ability to capture messages from our intuition.

The more we pay attention to the subtle signs we’re exposed to — from nature, others’ stories, situations and events we’re part of — the better we become at catching the insights they trigger in us. And some of these signs could become tipping points for our personal and professional journeys.??

Could that river metaphor be a double metaphor?

It also brings together nature and human nature, illustrating that we’re all connected: the nature ecosystem and the humanity system (which we belong to). These two systems are interconnected; they're part of a bigger system, no matter how much humanity tries to solve its problems using only the conscious mind.

Gabriela

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Gabriela Casineanu, MSc, MBA, ORSC

System Inspired Coach |?Award-Winning author

GabrielaCasineanu.com?|?IntrovertsAcademy.org?|?Books