As the campaign wore on, once Hillary moved Mark Penn from foreground to background, she began to share more of herself, but she never really did delve deep into her heart to find the personal stories that defined her. When I originally wrote the article, Hillary supporters suggested that I was proposing that she talk about her experience of the Monica time in her life. I hadn't necessarily been thinking of that, but if she HAD discussed it, her shock, pain and how she'd coped. she would have absolutely reached people's hearts instead of their heads. Showing her vulnerability and the strength with which she faced such painful moments might have been a lot to expose, but it would have been incredibly powerful. But even without going "there," she could have disclosed some of the private, personal stories in her life that truly showed who she was. Unfortunately, she kept them untold.
Before there were words, there were hand signals and grunts to tell the story of the successful hunt or escape. Human language is composed of syllables, words, phrases and stories. Stories have moved armies, started wars, established religions and, even today, the story business, including lawyers, ministers, marketers, publishers, movie studios and politicians is one of the biggest enterprises and perhaps the most important one in the world. If ever oil and technology disappear, there will always be stories.
Obama is an oratory genius, but it wouldn't hurt him to spend a few hours nailing some life stories to weave into his stump speeches and debates. These stories are ALL about touching, connecting with and finding a place in people's hearts. Reaching a person's heart and establighing a heart connection trumps expertise on issues, the use of fear, the use of cold, prickly negative campaigning. Story is the most powerful force humanity has ever invented. Mark Penn and the rest of Hillary's consultants failed to tap it. Hillary thought she knew all she needed to know to come up with her own stories. The proof is now before us. She had it to lose and her failure to grasp that she held, within herself, the power to reach and capture voters' hearts was what cost her the election. And let's hope Obama doesn't think he's too smart to do without those life stories.
Those who tell the stories rule society.
Plato
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Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
