one_day_at_a_time_workshop.pdf | |
File Size: | 356 kb |
File Type: |
Your Way to Carnegie Hall
“Finding The Smile” workshops employ storytelling as a strategy. Caregivers learn to enjoy getting a positive response – a smile, a laugh, a nod of recognition – to stories about their lives as caregivers. The key is to practice, practice, practice.
The key to finding smiles as a caregiver is to practice, practice, practice! Try pairing up and practicing storytelling with another caregiver.
The key to finding smiles as a caregiver is to practice, practice, practice! Try pairing up and practicing storytelling with another caregiver.
The goals of telling stories about family caregiving include:
1. To invite people to see your life as a caregiver with your eyes.
2. To affirm your choices, struggles and experiences as a family caregiver.
3. To integrate your role as a family caregiver into your larger identity, and to make connections.
1. To invite people to see your life as a caregiver with your eyes.
2. To affirm your choices, struggles and experiences as a family caregiver.
3. To integrate your role as a family caregiver into your larger identity, and to make connections.
Why Storytelling?
Some Thoughts
Some Thoughts
Caregiving is a gift, and not everyone has it. The experience of caregiving is so absorbing we may forget what our life looks like to those outside of it.
Time, time, time! We caregivers often feel prisoner to it, even desperate in its clutches. And getting positive attention and feedback from family members, including our debilitated loved one, may simply seem out of reach.
We may be disappointed with other family member who can’t see what needs to be done, or don’t offer to help. Often we may not know what to ask for. Or, when someone asks us how we are, we respond by saying “okay” simply because we don’t know how to begin answering or we may be afraid that, if we start, we’ll never be able to stop.
Finding something to say about our lives as caregivers, and learning to craft it into a 2-minute story creates connections. Translating our experiences and feelings into stories can lead us to new and deeper realizations about ourselves and our loved ones.
In short, learning to tell a 2-minute story - well -- that is, in an engaging way -- helps us gain perspective and give perspective on family-caregiving situations which can be overwhelming, at least from time to time.
Time, time, time! We caregivers often feel prisoner to it, even desperate in its clutches. And getting positive attention and feedback from family members, including our debilitated loved one, may simply seem out of reach.
We may be disappointed with other family member who can’t see what needs to be done, or don’t offer to help. Often we may not know what to ask for. Or, when someone asks us how we are, we respond by saying “okay” simply because we don’t know how to begin answering or we may be afraid that, if we start, we’ll never be able to stop.
Finding something to say about our lives as caregivers, and learning to craft it into a 2-minute story creates connections. Translating our experiences and feelings into stories can lead us to new and deeper realizations about ourselves and our loved ones.
In short, learning to tell a 2-minute story - well -- that is, in an engaging way -- helps us gain perspective and give perspective on family-caregiving situations which can be overwhelming, at least from time to time.
How to Find a Good Story
Some Leads
Some Leads
You are the hero or she-ro.
|
The hero’s journey is one of our oldest stories, an archetypal myth which crosses time and place and culture.
It’s your story, whether or not you feature as the main character. What’s bigger than we are?-Find something remarkable to feature.. |
KISS
|
Keep it simple, sweetie! You only have 2 minutes.
The more complicated the situation, the simpler the story |
Pay attention to the mundane
|
Tap into shared experiences you may share with your listeners. Nothing gets a bigger laugh than something that makes people say, “Gosh! That’s so true!”
Be specific. Set a mood. Paint a picture. Try colorful adjectives and unpredictable adverbs to capture your emotional frame of mind. “I was so tired that 16 noisy grandchildren using my bed as their trampoline couldn’t have waked me up.” |
Consider what you’re good at.
|
Everyone has their own way of getting positive attention. What’s your strong point?
Some people rely on words (puns, witticisms). Some are good with jokes. Some people have expressive faces and engaging gestures. See what works for you, and build on it. |
Don’t be boring.
|
You have 2 minutes to talk about your life as a caregiver, and that’s if your listener really, really loves you.
Create a story worth believing. |
Meet ‘em where they are.
|
Speak to your listener’s heart, interests, and worldview.
Find something your listener will agree with and build your story around it. |
Find a punchline.
|
Think of it as a symbolic container for the meaning of your story, a personal expression of what you value.
Write it, invent it, then try it out in a 2-minute story. Does it get the laugh, the smile, the nod you want? |
Listen to other caregivers’ stories
|
What made you laugh? Smile in recognition? Nod or shake your head in sympathy?
How did it also happen to you? Do you have someone like that in your life? How is the person to whom you give care the same as the one in the story? Different? What’s your connection? What elements in that situation do you find in your own? Create a context for your story that locates your listeners in a larger experience. The best stories don’t teach anything new. |
How to Tell a Good Story Some Working Principles
Know your audience
|
Use things you’ve always done to reinforce your story – gestures, expressions, turns of phrase. Be believable.
Look for ways to pull the listener into your story. |
Start with a hook
|
Use a formula, if you need to, set a tone. For example, create the mood of a fairy tale to frame a reality.
“Once upon a time, in a world far away, there lived a girl who yearned for a boring life…” |
Leave out the details
|
If you put a gun on the wall, so to speak, you must make it go off in the story.
Your listeners need to have it all add up. |
Keep moving.
|
Keep your listeners yearning to know what’s coming next.
“And then … and then … when finally, …" Repetition (rule of three) |
Show don’t just tell
|
Use posture and gesture and facial expression to emphasize, dramatize, engage. Make eye contact.
|
The ending is your payoff
|
Know where you’re going, and finish!
Practice different punchlines to see whether you’re getting the effect you want. Try something formulaic, such as these ritual closings:
Or invent it, such as:
|
Practice your timing
|
After you deliver the punchline pause and count to 3. Let your listeners get it.
|
Don’t hang around.
|
Once you deliver the punch line – that’s it!
“Be sincere. Be brief. Be seated.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt) |
What makes something funny?
It was with the goal of developing a new, more satisfactory comedic axiom that (University of Colorado professor Peter) McGraw launched “HuRL”. Working with his collaborator Caleb Warren and building from a 1998 HUMOR article published by a linguist named Thomas Veatch, he hit upon the benign violation theory, the idea that humor arises when something seems wrong or threatening, but is simultaneously OK or safe.
McGraw’s theory has another benefit going for it. Unlike other major humor theories, it does a good job delineating why some things aren’t funny. A joke can fail in one of two ways: It can be too benign, and therefore boring, or it can be too much of a violation, and therefore offensive. To be funny, a joke has to land in that sweet spot between the two extremes.
www.slate.com
www.slate.com