The Heart Of The Story

The heart of the story is the art of the story.

🚌I was drowning in Nordic winter gloom.

The sky was a heavy grey blanket, the cold rain a constant companion to my dreary mood.

It was thirty years ago. I’d been in Norway for just two months. I was broke, jobless, living with my girlfriend...and her mother!

And let me tell you, nothing says "I've made it" quite like sharing a bathroom with your girlfriend's mom.

The long, dark days blurred into a frozen haze of northern melancholy.

What the hell am I doing here?

Then, life surprised me.

One day, with hands deep in my jacket pockets, I approached a cobblestone intersection. I glanced right instead of left.

Just as I lifted my heel to step forward, a yellow bus roared past from the left, missing me by mere centimetres.

A sharp gust of wind slapped my face. I was frozen.

Then came a long, shaking exhale of mortal relief.

I was alive.

And that was close.

I call it My Yellow Bus Moment.

That near-miss jolted me from apathy. Despite the grey, the world looked bright again.

From that day on, I saw my life as positive, filled with opportunity, and everything began to shift.🚌

Decades later, that story still lives in my bones. Each time I tell it, I feel the rush all over again.

And when I feel it, you feel it too.

Because our bodies remember.

Every experience is etched into our nervous systems.

This is called implicit memory. Physiologically speaking, we are our stories.

That’s the heart of my work, helping people tap into the emotional core of their stories.

Because in business, the best communicators aren’t the ones with the slickest slides or the flashiest pitches. 

They’re the ones who make you feel something real.

And the best leaders?

They don’t draw power from corporate scripts.

They draw it from lived experience, and the courage and practice to share it.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

💡The stories that move others most are the ones that moved us first.

💡As we shape our stories, our stories shape us.

So, let me ask you:

🚌 What’s your Yellow Bus Moment?

🚌What story lives in your bones, waiting to be told?

Start there:

Find it

Feel it.

Shape it.

Share it.

Because the heart of the story...IS the art of the story.

P.S. I deliver an interactive keynote on this topic.

If you're interested in injecting a dose of strategic story and feel-good authenticity into your business communications, teams and organisation, let's talk!