The way we tell our real life stories can impact how they turn out. Highlights from Lieutenant Colonel Turner's story: "A Quest To Wage Peace" illustrates this phenomena and helps the listener understand how they can advance the outcomes of their own quests by telling their stories from the perspective of a champion.

Plenary #353): A Quest To Wage Peace: How Your Story Propels You Towards A Summit or An Abyss

When the war in Iraq started brewing in 2002, Lieutenant Colonel Turner could not rest until she had done all she knew how to wage peace. At each hurdle and setback, she usually told herself and others a well-earned victim story about how people and events had defeated her. Yet she also realized that without too much effort she could reframe those same events into a miracle story by emphasizing the positive outcomes that had occurred and the wonder of her ability to contribute to them. Without denying the downside, she decided to let the champion perspective and the mind/body state it instilled become the story that mattered most and the one she would tell even when she appeared to be washed up. As it turned out, every time she thought her story was over, improbable new chapters emerged and she found herself at successively higher levels of influence. No matter what had actually happened, she began to realize that telling her story as a triumph rather than as a casualty of circumstances was at least in part responsible for enabling and enhancing the impact she was finally able to make…that is, if what appears to be the last chapter of her story actually turns out to be the final one. In hearing the highlights of "A Quest To Wage Peace," listeners will expand their awareness of the kinds of stories they are telling themselves about their own quests, discover how to transform themselves into heroes and heroines who save the day in a miracle story, and appreciate how this process fosters real life “happily ever after” endings.

The Beginning

Colleen Turner Ph.D.
P.O. Box 82
Pacific Palisades, California 90272

phone: 310 454-4510
cell: 310 740-2488

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Colleen Turner	Colleen Turner Colleen Turner, Ph.D. (Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force Reserve, Retired) is a communications consultant and trainer whose client range includes Vista Disney, The California Endowment, the U.S. Army Tank Command, and UCLA's interfaith University Religious Conference. More recently her focus has been on advancing U.S. foreign policy towards positive outcomes. She has designed terrorist defense scenarios and has been tasked to make national level recommendations for the enhancement of international communications. Her research paper entitled: Best Practices for Inspiring Pro-American Sentiment was selected for website publication by the University of Southern California's School of Public Diplomacy: http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/pdfs/turner.pdf She is the author of a small book that blends proven winning methods from a variety of arenas entitled "Communication for Transforming 'No Way' into 'Way to Go!'" Catalyst@ix.netcom.com