“Somebody Feed Phil “ Taught Me Again The Importance Of Storytelling
I have never known how this simple thing proven to be world’s strongest force
These few months I have been looking deep into the idea of how stories can attract, interact and ultimately transform someone’s life.
I know some people always told me like “ Hey come on that’s just another story to tell “. Weirdly enough I have never felt like a story is just another story.
There is this one TV show on Netflix “ Somebody Feed Phil “, maybe you’ve ever heard about this TV show as well. The whole narrative of this tv show is actually about a guy travelling around the world trying good foods of a certain city that he visited.
The first episode that I watched was when he visited Morocco and I thought this TV show is just like the other Food Travel Shows, but they proved me wrong. Phil himself is a very attractive character to watch, and he went all around the world to get good foods and ultimately get stories. Personally, I got like strong punch in my heart that this is the kind of stuff that I want to do, listening to people’s stories from all around the world.
All around the world can get you pretty excited, isn’t it? But when I dug deeper into my heart I realised that my whole life also transformed by someone telling and listening to my stories.
#1 It Connects With People’s Heart
When people tell their stories be with a deep stories of their life just another funny stories that just happened last weekend. We are drawn to those stories, I just felt like as human we are hooked with stories, we want to listen to stories, we want to know about other people. I just felt like that’s the deepest core of our human being, we are a storyteller.
Microsoft powerpoint was published in 1987, but storytelling has been here thousands of years.
I still remember the first day, I was invited into a certain group and the group was there for us to tell our stories, they don’t expect me to do it, but everyone in that group cried and laughed and one thing that I realised that’s not in other group I have ever seen is how their hearts were connected like woven into one.
And that’s my first visit till today and we’re still friend and I have never felt like a group of people that can listen and accepted my stories for what that is.
#2 It Is A Very Human Thing To Do
As a business person, I know I can be very crazy with work and in our Indonesian cultural context, I think being hustle bustle with work had never been our strongest culture. It is just these days, startup culture and hustling, grinding norms are getting in our society that people start forgetting about human interactions.
But, I know as Indonesian, myself, when we have lunch and we talk and tell stories, we are back into who we are. We are being more like human as we tell stories, we put our empathy into the stories being told and unexpectedly, people are actually keen to listen to our stories as well.
As someone who’re actually extremely shy and introverted to the border of no self confidence, I used to believe that nothing in my life is actually interesting, nothing to be talked about and no one would want to listen to my stupid stories.
But as I grow older, actually not really old but just older and perhaps more mature. I see that all the stupid stuffs I experienced and all the embarrassing things that happened actually are lessons to be told for future generation.
I forgot to say this, but I love this so much:
Turn Your Mess Into Message
This is one thing that I feel like we’re here for, we learn stuffs and those stuffs are our learning curve so that we can tell those stories with other people and be human.
Unexpectedly
After few years in that group, I see the transformation happened in my life, I feel like more confidence, I am able to tell my deepest darkest secrets in front of many people. I think I have told the stories dozens of times in front of hundreds of people.
The craziest thing is that I am changed without I have ever tried to change it, I learn to ride the wave to transformation. Simply by telling stories, got confirmation from others and when the insecurity feeling, feeling of not worthy and other stuffs kick in, I tell them my stories and weirdly enough, once again, I actually feel better.
I do not know whether do you believe this story to be true or not but I have done this and seen this thing in many people’s lives. I hope you have someone who you can trust your stories, who would really walk with you along the journey of your life.
Cherish those people and you’ll see how stories can turn your life around.
