Which Stories?

AMID and USER Stories

Story means many things. Some stories describe what happened, or what we believe will happen, and some stories are created to stimulate our wonder and emotions. These stories are often less about what animates us, and more of an accounting of events.

Other stories are more central to how we experience the world, stories that guide our decisions and behavior. They’re the stories we carry within us that structure our beliefs and wants. These stories are the subject of Story Resolution. So how might we identify them?

When we wish to Resolve Problems, recalling that problems begin with how people feel, hearing and distilling the following aspects of our stories is a fruitful path.

AMID Stories (What stories): Aspirations, Motivations, Intentions and Desires. In an acronym these can be called AMID stories. AMID is convenient since we’re interested in the stories from which we live, stories we’re amid, the stories that animate our actions. AMID stories express what we want.

Playing with our new acronym: From AMID stories we form our preferences. When caught blindly AMID stories we’re condemned within our preferences, our preferences become shoulds.

USE Stories (How stories): USE Stories are our Understanding, Strategy, and Expectation stories. We use our USE stories to guide us in how we attempt to get what we want, the process we choose to achieve our AMID stories. USE stories express our Understanding and beliefs about the world, our specific Strategies to get what we want, and our Expectations about what will or should happen.

Relationship Stories: Relationship stories are particularly influential in our experiences. These are stories that express our sense of relationship with others, with our selves, with the world, and with our stories and beliefs. They often express how we feel in relationship with what we experience.

For the sake of a memory aid, we can combine USE stories and Relationship stories to get USER stories.

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