Dr. Peter J. Weiss

In my last post I wrote about learn­ing with impact — get­ting the mes­sage in the heart as well as the head.  Some­times books aren’t the best method for that.  Of course many books do con­nect with read­ers on an emo­tional level and I hope that “More Health Less Care” does for you.

Why waste your time read­ing things that aren’t going to help?  Fig­ure out what type of learn­ing best inspires and moti­vates you and do more of that.  One of the best ways to learn with impact is to seek out sto­ries.

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Every­thing Across Italy, India, and Indone­sia.

We humans seem to have a built-in recep­tiv­ity to learn­ing and con­nect­ing through sto­ries.  And we’ve been doing it since ancient times.

A good con­tem­po­rary exam­ple of the power of story is the book “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Every­thing Across Italy, India and Indone­sia” by Eliz­a­beth Gilbert which was rec­om­mended to me by a friend.

After an intense divorce, the author nar­rates her across-the-globe search for mean­ing and heal­ing in her life.  We read­ers get enthralled by the story, con­nect with her strug­gles and learn from her adven­ture.

Or not.  There are quite a few neg­a­tive reviews of this book on Ama­zon.  The com­mon theme seems to be that these review­ers couldn’t iden­tify with the author’s strug­gle.

Many judged her shal­low or self-absorbed.  In fact, almost all of the crit­i­cal reviews have some­thing neg­a­tive to say about the author.

That’s okay; every­one can form his or her own opin­ion.  My point is sim­ply this — these review­ers were not emo­tion­ally con­nected to her.  No con­nec­tion = no impact.

(If you’re won­der­ing what I think — I liked it!  And it really got me think­ing more about the power of sto­ries.)

How might you apply this con­cept to your own learn­ing?  Sim­ple — look for sto­ries.  Where?  In books, on the inter­net or directly from oth­ers.  Try­ing to quit smok­ing?  Ask for­mer smok­ers to tell you their sto­ries of how they did it.

Fac­ing a seri­ous ill­ness? Find a book like those from the “Voices of…” series from my pub­lisher, LaChance Pub­lish­ing, in which indi­vid­u­als share their sto­ries.

Or visit www.patients​likeme​.com and get the story from some­one fac­ing the same issue.  Sto­ries are pow­er­ful.

And if you have a good story, be will­ing to tell it to empower oth­ers. I am cre­at­ing a new orga­ni­za­tion — The More Health Less Care Alliance — of indi­vid­u­als and pro­fes­sion­als who are help­ing them­selves and oth­ers to well­ness.

When our web­site is up, the first thing I’m going to do is invite peo­ple to share their suc­cess sto­ries.  Your story can help some­one else.  Start get­ting it ready.