Stories are how we learn,” Bill Mooney and David Holt wrote in The Story Teller’s Guide. Everybody loves stories told by interesting, fun, together people. “People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being,” Studs Terkel said. Do you agree?

NPR recognized a lively market for personal stories and invited their listeners to share their best beliefs in a story to submit anecdotes for airtime.

Story tellers draw from their intrapersonal intelligence, much like coffee draws aroma and taste from fresh roasted beans. And one way to draw on more intelligence is to write stories, and to write with you in mind. Start by writing a yarn just for you. Here’s one idea that worked well in writing classes I’ve taught.

Walk back through time, and give one piece of advice from your teenage self to the current you. Call the teenager by your middle name and write a story about what you’ll do with your teenager advice. How might that advice help you out in some way or another with a problem you face at the moment? Are you off and running yet? And what happens during the process of writing personal stories, anyway?

It depends on why you write and what you want from the process. Dr. Julie Connelly, Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, publishes stories that reflect her interest in medicine and humanities. Her stories take readers inside patients’ relationships with their doctor. Can you see why her stories spark interest for curious readers?

“At times the surface of the situation is explored as the specific details of a particular situation, the context including the “characters,” and the point-of-view of the observer are all taken into account.” It’s as if Dr. Connelly is writing her way into insider eye-openers about patient doctor relations. Can you see intrapersonal growth in this process?

“At other times, writing may expose the depths of a situation.” As a writer, the doctor’s writing process and stories help her to see more truth of medical situations she needs to solve, without interruptions from the stressful aspects of her work.

Stories come in far lighter fare too. Just read BBC’s advice for how to write the perfect lonely heart, and you’ll see how personal writing adds a sense of relief, renewal and adventure. A tale can develop a personal unfolding of emotional responses to tough situations we face. It holds problems of loneliness, anger, or anxiety, up to the rainbow to take another look. In a narrative you can rework old habits as a way to speed up a better position for yourself. Or at you can risk a new approach and predict its winning ways.

Whatever your purpose, story writing, unlike conversations with others, for instance, gives you a full-sized mirror to become and reflect more of who you’d like others to see in you. That’s because narrative shows meanings inside hidden secrets, and allows you to work out complex incidents through fictitious names, well disguised settings, and characters that help you improve self-knowledge.

Share a personal story and you tie delightful bonds to the larger world of your personal and professional self. Some people like my aunt Grace, who mails hundreds of lively slices from her life yearly, and writer Shirley Ann Parker, share their best stories through letters.

Since writing is a creative process, you’ll be surprised where your writing takes you, and at times you’ll even be shocked by the lively stirs that unexpected creativity brings. At times I share written stories with colleagues, friends and other leaders, and I am often surprised by how they see scenes that I describe.

At times your story and the process of writing it, will hand you the comfort of exchanging universal experiences. At other times, stories illumine the uniqueness of living and caring about or questioning details that differ from others you know. What’s your best story?