Do you have a Good Story? Story-Telling Tricks from the Muse Herself, Mother Nature. Will Artificial Intelligence take on Adversting?

Can You Write Your Own Story With Mother Nature As Your Muse?

Can You Have Mother Nature As Your Secret Creative Ally?

Story Telling and Metaphors from the Source, Mother Nature Herself

The Story of Martin H., advertising wunderkind

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.” - Gregory Bateson

Our thought processes and neurology create and respond to stories.

Life is not only about discovering yourself, but life is also about creating and re-creating yourself so that you can always rejuvenate your story.

The need to create is an instinctual, natural force much like our survival mechanisms so for this reason every person has the ability to create. Our neurology is circuited in such a way that although it can create patterns and concepts on its own, it needs you, its guiding force to direct and curate these to work to your advantage. If you don’t someone or something else will.

Everything changes at such a rapid tempo it sometimes seems as if we are all in the whirlwind of a turbo-driven discovery expedition.

We have never had so much new information, literally at our fingertips, just a mouse click away.

When confronted with new information it often requires us to completely revamp our lives and our perspectives – on multiple levels, of course!

It is already the case that most of us have to learn new jobs and expand our skills-sets on a routine basis and, more often than not, this re-tooling regularly requires us to phase out our old selves to create new selves – in the future, perhaps every 7-10 years.

These disruptions of course mean that, perforce, creativity is indispensable! Indeed, creativity is an ultimate essentiality: it is a hard, a soft skill and everything in between combined! It is the sine qua non for survival.

In order to find “creative solutions”, as some of my clients and I have discovered, it can help to “mirror nature’s metaphors” in order to spark new ideas.

When you think of the chaotic and topsy-turvy world we live in think about nature: how does nature achieve such brilliant creations and manage change with such elegance, grace and agility?

Client Case: Martin H. – His new Story

Remaining relevant, re-creating yourself, expanding your skills set, rejuvenating your story-telling

The Immortal Jelly Fish (Turritopsis dohrnii) can transform - re-create itself - from an adult into an infant, again and again, and basically it rarely ever dies. How? When it senses danger, starvation or physical injury, for example, it can transform all of its cells into a younger state in order to survive. This biological immortality with no maximum natural life has led to a great deal of aging and pharmaceutical research centred on this creature.

Each human has billions upon billions of brain cells which we never use! Think of your billions of bored drifting brain cells and activate them should you ever suspect you have no more resources!

Enter Martin - a successful advertising wunderkind.

Martin presents with the problem of having become convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) will learn to create great advertisements. He believes that, as a result he will be replaced and become a member of the “useless class” – a phrase coined by famed writer and thinker, Yuval Noah Harari.

Martin was so obsessed by the horrors in his head that he “ceased being creative”, which as a “creative crazy one” in advertising, was a death knell and could become even a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Martin actually envisioned clients being able to enter the subject of their desired advert in their computer and getting a dozen or so proposals within minutes in their monitor, all immaculately created, with a witty bon mot, and of course all for free! It had become so palpable that his family and even some colleagues urged him to seek an “outside perspective”. His thought processes had obviously backed themselves into a deep “negative trance” corner.

During our first session I gave Martin the assignment to discover what the so-called “expert” futurists and others “in the know” recommend as survival measures for the impending AI revolution, which will purportedly disrupt the very foundations of life as we now know it.

He was to make a list of what he found and determine if he was doing any of the things already and what he could undertake immediately to get on the “track” of the experts.

The advice from the experts had to do mainly with attitude, inner dynamics and mental processes: developing emotional intelligence, maintaining mental balance and making life-long learning your credo.

As an intervention, I framed the Immortal Jelly Fish as a story and referred to its model for survival, i.e. creating new cells as a way of rejuvenating and re-creating itself to start life over again.

He seemed at first startled by the idea of learning from a jelly fish, but you know what they say about life. But then he understood the connection and exploded with exhilaration when I informed him of the billions of brain cells we all have in our neurology which just sit idly by and (I jokingly said that the cells were just “watching soap operas”), - so why not use them?

I suggested a number of activities to help activate just a couple million of these billions of brain cells and awaken them out of their redundant state in order to learn and acquire that which the experts advise. After all, in their current state the cells are but members of the “useless class”.

My additional suggestions included to discover times in his life when he exhibited the behaviours of the “three expert tips” and explain both how he accomplished these successes and how he planned to deliver en core performances of these in the future.

Additional coaching tools were then implemented as appropriate.

After several sessions he was able to breach his negative trance and nudge his inner dynamics into the solution space which he himself created. Once again, it is the client who has become their own hero.

Martin enjoys creative impulses on a regular basis and he is able to implement them even more easily than ever before. Thus, he is more relaxed and his family life is returning to normal.

Grand Finale

Martin was able to write and re-write his own new story by utilising two key practices: first, he mirrored models in nature. Second, he (re) discovered and (re) implemented the resources he already possessed and had previously used.

Indeed, he the hero of his own story.

Remember:

Life is not only about discovering yourself, but life is also about creating and re-creating yourself so that you can always rejuvenate your story.

Dear Readers,

Now it is your turn for an assignment: Think of a something you would like to achieve and associate yourself into nature. Which model or solution can you find there? Remember, Mother Nature is always ready to show her hand. Whilst doing so you may even discover some of your long-lost resources while they are watching a soap opera.

I would love to hear about your experience! Just send me an email. Your response will be held in utmost confidence.

NB: Client names have been changed to protect identity.

Bibliography

Links about Richard Branson

https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/richard-bransons-advice-to-dyslexics/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgHH7ZxWO5k

Locusts and swarming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust

Professor Peter Kruse – (1955-2015) was a German psychologist and taught Organisational Behaviour at the University of Bremen, Germany

Link to the interview with Professor Kruse (in German)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyo_oGUEH-I