Story Thinking — How Stories Shape the Way You Create Meaning

Are humans mainly storytellers, or mainly rational beings? Scholars call this the choice between the narrative paradigm (the view that we make sense of life through stories) and the rational paradigm (the view that we make sense of life through logic and evidence).

The Center for Story Thinking explores what becomes possible when we see the narrative mind and the rational mind working together. Our rationality is based on the story’s internal consistency and connection to stories we have experienced, while also based on formal reasoning. Using a proprietary model that unites the two, we find that story is more than entertainment or communication. Story is your personal meaning-making system. This approach opens new paths for mindfulness, learning, innovation, leadership, healthcare, and AI.

Thinking Types wheel showing System 1 and System 2 across the story cycle.

Story Thinking cycle showing twelve stages of the hero’s journey.

The Center for Story Thinking

You may know the feeling. A project stalls. A creative idea never gets finished. A routine that once worked now feels empty. A rule or protocol that you were taught no longer makes sense, but you keep following it. Story Thinking offers a simple explanation. Every story moves through six phases. Feeling stuck usually means you are lingering in one phase instead of moving to the next. Once you can see which phase you are in, you can see what it would take to move forward.

Why do you feel stuck?

Feeling stuck: six lingering patterns mapped to the story cycle.

Story Halves: top-side projects and creativity versus half-pipe routines and compliance.

Stories also have two halves. The top side is where projects and creative work happen (transformational change). The bottom side, which we call the half-pipe, is where routines and compliance happen (transactional change). For creative people it is easy to get stuck in the top side thinking of endless possibilities. For other people it is easy to get stuck repeating out-of-date procedures. And organizations can hyper focus on “Research & Development” or “Operations”. Both halves matter. Trouble starts when we stay in one half and forget the other.

You are already in a story

As Carl Jung put it, “You are in a story whether you know it or not.” Neuroscience points the same way: the human brain is wired for story.

At any moment, you are in one of three states. In a questioning state, you are open and looking for something new. In a reflective state, you are thinking about what happened and what it means. In a reactive state, you are responding by habit. Each state aligns with a different situation: something that won’t work, something that could work, or something that does work. These psychological states create the six phases.

Story cycle with Questioning, Reflective, and Reactive states and Won’t/Could/Does Work.

Why do some people believe they can tell a story, but find it hard to believe they are already in a story? When our routine work stops working, we can usually recognize the problem or analyze the problem and then get right back to work. It doesn't feel like we are in a story when our work rarely requires complete transformation, where we need to theorize, design, test, and deploy a new solution.

Center for Story Thinking is a project of Explanation Age LLC.