Heather Box

How Your Story Sets You Free by Heather Box

This short book (I read it in under an hour) makes a case for how personal stories can change the world. They help us relate to each other, break us out of isolation, and release others from their isolation.

Words, writes Box, can change minds; stories, on the other hand, can change hearts. We may or may not remember a lecture, information, directives for living but we will often remember a story for the rest of our life.

Box writes (quoting Brene Brown) telling your story requires the courage to be vulnerable. But the payoff is that you become more authentic, more free, and that others can see themselves, their secrets, often their shame in your stories and realize that they are not alone.

When you connect with your stories and share them you can move others to action. Box writes that requires you to know your values and how your content connects with them. Preparation is essential: you don’t just “wing it”—whether in speech or writing, you go over what you want to say, you clarify it, you understand it, you know it.

Box offers an exercise to help you understand what your story is: 45 minutes in which you reflect upon your life and draw its story. (Obviously there is more to it than that but you’ll have to read the book to see what it is!) I have done this before but I will most likely do it again following her instructions and see what is revealed.

Although the book is very short, it presents a convincing case for understanding and sharing your story in order to move people to action. I’m not sure it will change lives but I am convinced that telling your story can.… (more)

How Your Story Sets You Free by Heather Box and Julian Mocine-McQueen was not the book I was expecting it to be. Turns out that is a good thing. I expected more of a writer's guidebook, and this misconception was all on me and what I was anticipating when I read the blurb. It certainly can serve as a bit of a writer's guidebook but it is more about communication, regardless the form, and the role storytelling plays within that area.

I hesitate to use the phrase "self-help" because I find the vast majority of books that promote themselves as such to be more about publisher/writer-help in making a dollar of people wanting a better life. I have personally gained more in my life from other nonfiction and fiction than from the hundreds of "self-help" books I've read over the years. That said, this book will help you in many ways, both internally and in the world. So whether one labels it self-help or not, it does actually accomplish that objective.

We don't, on the whole, realize the impact our stories can have on others. As a result, we keep things to ourselves. Sometimes doing so inhibits us beyond just a feeling of not being important enough to "have a story." Yet if we think back we realize that everything that has had an impact on us was likely in story form. From the sciences to how best to handle life. A story makes information more memorable and thus retained better. A story will also help to lower barriers between people so that we can begin to understand that we are far more alike than we are different. So...

Tell your story. Whether you want to make change in the world, in your community, among your friends, or within yourself just tell your story. Of course, just telling it doesn't always work. Maybe we're still unsure whether it is important or useful to anyone else. Maybe we just haven't stopped to think about how to engage people actively so we drone on in a monotone, or write in a basic "this then this" style. That is where this little book can make such a huge impact. Why tell your story? How to tell your story. Enlisting help and support (which is vitally important for someone such as myself who prefers to stay on the periphery of most groups). The ideas, examples, and suggestions here will help you to decide to tell your story and prepare you to do so effectively.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.… (more)