Out of the subjective experience many ideas arise worth sharing. When we feel like the story sharer is good/effective/has a deep point/is evaluated due to some other illusive and/or abstract measure we call it art. Arts’ main purpose is to share a meaningful story. The quickest example that comes to mind is, of course writing. Mostly because we automatically associate story with a spoken or written word. but it doesn’t have to be a book or a movie. While words are powerful means of transferring information, they are not the only ones. if we think about the story in a more abstract way - as an exchange of information, the focus of which is a transmission of some sort of a subjective human experience - our space of choices promptly inflates and its borders disappear in the distance. Not going far for examples: a visual artist shares stories through paintings or photographs, musician or composer tell abstract stories that have ability evoke the strongest and primal responses - emotions - and, as by magic make them dance as the artist pleases. Sometimes the story is less of a personal experience: news or similar things that aim at delivering information about objective reality. However, even in this case they cannot avoid a destiny of being dressed into a palatable digestible form (leftist vs right news outlets), but more about it later. Ads on the other hand pay more attention to subjectivity narration. Every person around us, every human-made object is radiating a story.

Opposing this external intake of storyline resides the other, very important type of story, the one that we have touched upon very briefly and the one that is, arguably, the most important, yet the most elusive one: our own story. This is the beast of a story, a literal God that is going to define every other story that comes from every external source and decide to which pile does this specific piece of information or personal experience belong. It is on the collision of these two types of stories - internal narration and external influx - our reality is taking shape powered, of course, by the internal story. While the power of this story is no lesser than God-like, there are good news. We are those gods who tell it. Granted, we are not only the narrator, but also a listener, the story goes through quite a bit of a broken phone-like procedure before getting into our hypothetical ear. The stoics figured the basics of this procedure long ago: the only two things we are in charge of are: 1. our thoughts and 2 - our actions. Sounds simple enough. However, due to this "broken-phone-like" mechanism and the fact that much of the line being under water (read: subconscious or very efficiently automated) fixing process isn’t the most obvious one.

Somebody one once told me that information alone isn’t enough to promote a change. Priding myself on being a rational human being I squeezed my face in disregarding disbelief. Surely, if one is as rational as I, they will have no problem understanding information and facts. I, the one who smoked for 15 years, was a drug addict and in general made a multitude of questionable choices in life. Our life story can be thought of as a fabric, carefully put together by time and repetitions of behavior. This fabric can be changed by a couple different means, even words, but usually these words are quite special. s

How would we go about changing this story? Changing this story fabric by ourselves is reminiscent of being able to zoom in on separate threads that make up the fabric, training our mind to be focused and using this needle-like focus pick out harmful story-threads in order to have them replaced by the ones that we would actually like. This is a process of meditation: learning one’s mind, observing both the stories and the ways they were created, developing the tools to change them.

Obviously, we can process outside as well. What determines the ability of a story to be heard and incorporated into one’s personal story-fabric? 1st example: how did I eventually stopped smoking? Allen Cars easy way to stop smoking - a blend of un-brainwashing (as he is calling it). The technique is quite interesting, and I will explain it in the context of my story-fabric analogy. Simply speaking it is a two-step process. These are not ordered time steps, but two things that are happening during the whole book simultaneously. First one is the zooming in on the story threads that make up a fabric of smoking story, looking at all of them individually and explaining away faulty information. Second step, I would argue is the most important one, is weaving a new, fresh piece of fabric of smoking story. Since this step was happening throughout the whole book and involved a lot of repetition of: " You are a happy non-smoker!" (I am simplifying a ton to illustrate a point), it was the most annoying one.

Repetition, internal or external, is not the only way to accomplish this story modification. Skilled storytellers are able to sense the thread that is a carrying beam of a harmful, destructive story, pull on it, unravel the knot and leave the previously tangled fabric reveal an unexpected, and fresh pattern of a perspective. Just like Moira Rose did in this treat-of-a-scene in the 14th episode of 4th season of "Schitts Creek": > Before going on stage to perform as main character in Cabaret, Stevie is talking about the fact that she is very happy for David, she just wishes that she wouldn’t be watching happiness from behind the desk. To which Mrs. Rose answered: > - Oh, I could so effortlessly conjure up perfect words to bedazzle your spirits. That’s one of my gifts. But no. No, you need to be exactly where you are. > - Ok, are you talking about me, or Sally?? > - Why, Sally. of course! You, I am not worried about. What the hell is you secret, Stevie? You just stand your solid ground, refusing to be anything but you. Never though id say this about anyone in this town, but you... you are very, very cool. Now, why don’t we take out Sally by the hand, and we go out there and show those people everything that she can be. If she were only more like you.

Right there the perspective in a personal story narration was masterfully changed from "I’m the one that looks up to people that got their happiness" to "I’m the strength and perseverance role model".

Yet, another way of changing narration is hypnosis. I’m not going to pretend that I’m nearly an expert on the subject, I’m going to try to locate it in the box of my fabric metaphor, nevertheless. while the process of hypnosis isn’t not nearly understood the main technique involves giving up the main control of a story narration to the hypnotist. While this is happening, to look at the situation through my hand-made prism of fabric metaphor, the treads that are usually held together by the glue that is the automation of our behavior become loose and can be pulled out, replaced or connected without any resistance from the subject. Picture: worn out, callused fabric being transformed into a soft, fresh, loose, easily rearrangeable one. Derren Brown is a master storyteller who uses a lot of hypnosis alongside of the most powerful story telling medium: life. His stories are only short of being dangerous, whoever the heroes of the stories are being screen in advance in order to ensure they are good subjects and will be able to handle the story. The ultimate story-fabric modification tool: magic mushrooms. Going along with the analogy - shrooms are not only going to wash of the glue, zoom in on the threads, rearrange them, cut out a harmful patch of fabric and/or create a new piece of story. They will take apart the whole god-damn thing into threads, separate them, wash them, iron them, make an alien 32-million-dimentional guitar out of them, play Bach's Toccata and fugue on it and only then put it back together in the softest piece of textile one has ever seen. There are caveats, as anything this powerful is also dangerous.

Meditation is a popular topic these days, both in the society and academia alike. We hear more and more about the power of wellness and the first step in maintaining or improving one’s mental health (or mb it’s just me hearing about it, since I am always on the quest of self-growth). I personally practice meditation and find it to be very helpful while dealing with a lot of mental issues. Hypnosis is not as popular of a topic, yet both it and meditation have a lot of things in common. However, keeping in mind this meta "storyteller"-"story listener" powered up by the fabric analogy gave me an additional power to separate from my story (clothes are not my skin), step back (hang it) or zoom in (see separate threads) and, as a consequence, to change it. And even though science claims to be the objective being, it is a story nevertheless, because a story is all we will ever know. Science is just the name for a story about which the majority of people agree.