Storyliving

Live a full life. Tell beautiful stories. Awaken change in others.

Reasoning and language is what got humans to the top of the food chain.

“I ate those red berries on that bush by the river. I got so sick. Diarrhea for a week. Throwing up. I almost died. Do NOT eat those berries.”

“Stephanie got bit by that snake that rattles and she died two hours later. If you hear a snake that rattles, run away.”

“We actually started burying the seeds from the berries in the ground and consistently watered them every 5 days. In 3 months we had so much fruit, nobody went hungry that year.”

Those are not stories, but they are incredibly valuable pieces of information.

You already know our brains are wired for safety. It’s the number one priority of our unconscious mind which means it’s the most valuable thing you can offer someone.

A great story will offer you a lesson that will keep you safe from pain and therefore allow you to thrive.

When you are the person responsible for saving people from pain, you become invaluable to them and they will come back to hear more of your stories.

So, if you want to tell a simple, but effective story. Try this.

Write down one tangible reward or accomplishment you have achieved then write our the lesson you learned.

It can be that simple.

If you struggle to uncover the lesson you want to share, this tips may help.

Potential Challenge #1

If the lesson you want to share is not obvious right off the bat, that’s okay. This is one of the reasons why I love storytelling so much. It’s for YOU first.

What would life be like if I didn’t reflect on life and kept eating those red berries?

Diarrhea forever? Maybe death?

Instead I’ll use my reasoning skills that has allowed us humans to evolve at such a fast rate and actually reflect. “Wow, I accomplished my goal! How did I do it? What went well? What did I do differently?”

Forget social media for a minute. You should be doing this for yourself regardless!

The more you slow down and reflect back on your life and look for the lessons (in successes and failures), the faster you will accelerate your growth AND the more time will slow down.

Or you can tell yourself you have no time to slow down and spend your life consuming more and more information and wondering why you remain stuck and why life seems to be passing you by.

So, pause… slow down… take yourself back to the moment you wrote down yesterday and immerse yourself in that experience. Focus on uncovering the lesson YOU learned and let go of trying to think of the lesson your audience wants to hear (oftentimes its something you had to relearn and that’s just as valuable).

Potential Challenge #2

You may have thought of a few lessons.

Your job for THIS story is to pick one lesson.

If you try to weave in two (or more) lessons into one story, you are going to get overwhelmed and lost in your own story. This may even be one of the reasons why you feel like you ramble on when you tell stories. You are desperately trying to tie in multiple lessons. This usually stems from a people pleasing tendency in your effort to address every issue so you don’t alienate anyone (I know it well… I still do it sometimes).

Simply put, if you’re overwhelmed, then your audience is even more overwhelmed trying to follow your story.

Instead, I hope you know that your audience—your true fans—love you. They cannot wait to hear your next story!

But if you constantly leaving people confused and overwhelmed, it may be the reason you don’t have true fans coming back for more.

If you thought of two or more lessons, that’s awesome. That means you can tell this story many times and see which version you and your audience resonate with most.

Feel free to write down a few lessons and get them out of your head and on paper. You’ve done that, be disciplined and pick one core lesson you would like to share.

To actually tell a story instead of just sharing information, you can structure your story look like this:

1. Here’s how I accomplished my tangible goal
2. I used to struggle with X
3. but then I did Y
4. which taught me this lesson

A good story shares a transformation with the audience so they can go on a journey with you. This simple outline takes your audience from point A (where they are) to point B (where they want to be).

If you want to step by step guide on writing a great story that awakens change in your audience, I just revamped by free 7-day storytelling course.

​Click here for instant access.​

Talk soon,

Matt

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