Help Your Teal Story Ripple Out

By Edith Friesen for Enlivening Edge Magazine

To help your Teal seed story ripple out, you might wish to give readers what they want. Like all readers in all times and places, your readers want to be informed, inspired, and entertained. Plus, they want your story wrapped in a Teal-coloured package.

But don’t go there, not yet. Don’t even think about what your readers want.

Ripple, from the inside out

First, let your story pour onto the page. Pour it out of yourself, out of the spacious, timeless, and non-linear field of Awareness—as if from a bubbling spring, a rushing waterfall, a meandering river, or a deep clear pool—in keeping with your natural pouring style. Fill it with your heart, breath, and soul. With your energy and realness. Then read it back to yourself. If it gives you the shivers, makes you smile, or rings true, you’ve got the makings of a ripple effect.

If not, give it another go. This time, start your story in the place with the most energy, the most darkness, the most light. The most aliveness. It could be the end, the beginning, or the middle of your story. The place doesn’t matter. The aliveness does. Aliveness sustains the ripple.

Here’s another way in. Start your story with the detail that you are most afraid or reluctant to reveal. While this detail may get cut later, it will give your ripple the needed momentum.

Think of it as your bayechka story, your vignette with a soul.

Let your story ripple from your source, through your hands, and onto the page.

Once you’ve started, let your story go where it wants to go. Take your hands off the steering wheel and let it surprise you. Stop when the ripple stops and you feel complete. Forget about the expected word-count for now. You can always add or subtract later.

Now that the hard part is done, you can go back to inform, inspire, and entertain your reader—in a Teal-coloured way.

Inspire

If your narrative rippled from the inside out, chances are you will lift your audience without needing to do a whole lot. And if your story models even one timeless quality such as gratitude, love, joy, compassion, generosity, forgiveness, trust, or light-heartedness, that is more than enough.

Inform

Now it’s time to engage your head in the editing process. Think about how you could make your story even more useful and relevant for your audience. Imagine shining a flashlight for your reader.

Into the thickets of Teal thinking.

Into the shadows of Teal organizing.

Into the twists and turns of your Teal journey.

Into the places you’ve been and wished you had known about sooner. Let your experience illuminate a lesson or two.

Since the Teal or next-stage, or Integral mind-set is preoccupied with integration, meta-maps, and conceptual lenses like quadrants, developmental stages, etc., you might wish to finesse your story and bring these elements into sharper view. You might also wish to touch on one or all of the Teal breakthroughs of evolutionary purpose, self-management, and wholeness. Tempting as it could be, try not to use too much Teal jargon, as it stops ripples in their tracks.

And forget about knowing enough, having it all together, or being an expert. Just share enough of your experience to give your readers some food, fire, and friendship for the Teal journey. Maybe even a fresh angle on working or living in a Teal-informed way.

Now, while you are in a head-space, it’s also time to re-order, prune, flesh out, and package your narrative, and to meet the word count. Turn up your favourite music and make a game of it.

Entertain

Chances are that if your story contains twists and turns, a few gentle laughs at yourself, a couple of quirky metaphors, and a surprise or two, you will entertain your reader. When you read your story, does it entertain you? Does it make you laugh, or cry, or suck in your breath? That is the acid test.

Into the world it ripples

Your mix of inspiration, information, and entertainment will be unique to you and to your narrative. When your narrative ripples out into the world, it will carry your fragrance, your energy, your voiceprint. At the same time, it will have a life of its own.

You can help your seed story along by submitting it to Enlivening Edge Magazine. Your seed story will be considered for publication and, with your permission, be sent for republication on the Seeds Russian-English website of inspiring personal stories of future organizations alive now.

Featured image Photo by Sweet Ice Cream Photography on Unsplash

Rocks and ripples Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Teal drop Photo by zhang kaiyv on Unsplash

Sand and waves Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash