It’s the third night of a very intense survival training course with a Green Beret guy. I haven’t slept or showered. I’m muddy and exhausted and just want to go home to Santa Barbara. I tell myself I just need to make it through one more night and this will all be behind me.

When it’s time to call it a night, I am given a choice: I can either sleep in my tent or in this lean-to I’ve built. The lean-to is essentially a hole in the dirt with some twigs on it. At this moment, I’d love nothing more than to be at a resort, yet I remind myself I came to this insane training for a challenge.

So I say, “Fine. I’ll sleep in this lean-to.” I trek down the road around the bend and shimmy myself into this little hole in the dirt. I can’t even see the base camp anymore.

I can hear every sound around me as I lay there, and I realize that I’ve never been alone like this before. But hey, it’s fine! 

“I’m fine; in just hours, I can go home,” I think to myself.

Then, after slightly dozing off, I wake up to this crunching sound just off in the distance. It’s coming towards me, and I keep telling myself everything’s fine. Then the crunch gets louder and faster until, in the moonlight, I see it: the tusk of a wild boar!?!

I lie there, frozen and deciding whether or not to scream, when I remember something: animals sense fear. So I need to be strong, be still, be silent, and stick this out.

While it’s rooting around my head, something suddenly distracts it, and it runs off into the forest. And when morning arrives, I get out of the lean-to, go back to camp, and announce I survived. 

The Green Beret guy says, “Yeah. Good job Kymberlee.”

Here’s the deal: I am committed to affecting change in our world. With change comes challenges. With challenges comes fear. That means that different levels of fear are always coming up for me. What this unforgettable experience has taught me is that we must cultivate your courage. And when I think of courage, I can’t help but think of that Green Beret guy who has become a dear friend. His name is Retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann. Scott is with us today in this episode of the Storytelling School Podcast to discuss the transformative power of thematic stories of survival and courage and answer questions like:

What is the significance of storytelling leadership roles? What do personal stories that resonate with others have in common? And why is your delivery of a story as important as its content?

• How storytelling can help you cultivate courage and de-escalate fear
• What kind of questions lead to powerful stories that can bridge divisions
• What three storytelling myths cause you to avoid telling your stories

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Scott Mann is a former U.S. Army Green Beret with tours all over the world including Colombia, Peru, and multiple tours in Afghanistan. He is a warrior storyteller and the founder of Rooftop Leadership, where he shares the rapport-building and storytelling skills he learned in Special Forces to help today’s leaders make better human connections in high-stakes, low-trust engagements.

Scott is the author of the instant New York Times Best-Seller, Operation Pineapple Express, a third-person narrative detailing the harrowing stories of the veterans, volunteers, and Afghan allies who navigated the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan in August of 2021. The Gary Sinise Foundation partnered up with Scott to bring his play, Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret, to stages across the country to provide healing for our veterans and families of the fallen, as well as provide insight for our citizens on the personal cost of the longest war in our nation’s history.