Re-Story Yourself, Re-Story Your Community, Re-Story Your Organization
- Re-Story Yourself
Finding balance, joy and wholeness begins with recognizing the story we are each living in—and deciding whether or not that story is working for us. If it’s not, we need to change it.
The stories through which we live come from experience: some are taught to us by our parents, some from the culture around us, the schools we attend, the books we read, even the movies we see. Everything shapes our perception of how things are or should be. By understanding that we experience our lives through stories, we can decide to either amplify or modify our existing stories, or step out of them altogether into new stories that we find to be more life-affirming. Often serving the communities and organizations we are a part of requires a deep awareness of our stories and a willingness to transform the narratives that no longer serve us. This is Re-Storying ourselves.
NewStories offers guidance, support and resources for Re-Storying Yourself through Great Transition Stories, our website oasis for people seeking to increase the coherence of their lives personally, collectively and globally.
- Re-Story Your Organization
We know that organizational transformation happens by developing and deepening authentic relationships both within organizations and the communities they serve.
Re-Storying your organization often emerges out of intentions to begin Re-Storying yourself and your communities. The process of Re-Storying in organizations also involves clarifying values & principles, and developing routines, rituals, protocols and practices to make them real. Re-Storying work is always nested in larger systems, like organizations, and action steps for transformative change are beneficial at every level.
- Re-Story Your Community
NewStories has worked with communities around the world, at times when they are at breaking point, at others when they are pursuing a new opportunity.
We have pioneered participatory processes that support people in communities to earn each other’s trust and discover what they truly care about in order to formulate new plans for action. We call this Re-Patterning and Re-Structuring. We weave participatory processes together with methods for wayfinding, planning and assessing results in an approach we call Principles-Guided CoCreation (PGCC). PGCC effectively guides communities through Re-Storying in uncertain and chaotic times because it grounds action in deeply held values.
Our work is context-specific and co-created with each community. We start with our Core Principles to guide us and begin with deep listening. Sometimes we are called into community by community members, other nonprofit organizations, government or universities. Other times leaders in community themselves ask for our help. Sometimes we do the direct work of organizing, facilitating conversations, and designing campaigns. At other times we host workshops, group sessions, and co-create unique community led initiatives. Our role changes based on your needs. Find out more about Working Together.
