How To Actually Tell Better Stories

Today I am answering a question from Natalie. Natalie wrote, glad your surgery went well. Thank you. I'd love to see some videos about nlp. The one from your webinar was great and super helpful. And so what I want to talk about today is another really, really awesome NLP trick that I learned that is how to tell stories that captivate. So I went to a seminar recently where I flew down to Arizona, and one of those things where you don't really know what to expect, but you've heard good things. So I went down and I talked to this guy who's been doing this for decades. Really impressive speaker, salesperson, NLP conversationalist. And I learned a lot, a lot of really amazing stuff. But my absolute favorite, my favorite thing is what I'm going to teach you now. It's how do you tell stories so that your listener, whether that's one person or an entire audience, so that they'll care what you're saying and engage so that their brain will engage. And this is something you can do that at a subconscious level. It's really going to trigger them to tune in, and it's going to prevent that audience burnout or that listener burnout, where sometimes you'll be midway through a story, potentially, and even if it's interesting, the person just might start to zone out or lose a little bit of attention. So this is what I learned while I was there, and I think it's phenomenal. So, Natalie, hopefully you'll like this and everyone else. I think this is really, really useful. That's why I decided to shoot the video. So I think the best way to illustrate this is with a story, basically. And so the last time I told a story was about 12 hours ago. I'm here at south by Southwest, and I'm meeting with a lot of people who want to know, what do you do? Where are you from? What are you interested in? It's like speed dating for business and friendship. It's a super cool event, but it's one of those things where you meet someone and you know you like them, but you don't really know a lot about them. So I met this woman, we hit it off, so we decided to get dinner. And she doesn't really know anything about me. And so my question is, how do you convey the things about yourself where you might not have similar interests, but you might have similar values? And so how do you share those interests in a way that connects you to the other person? So I love to do that via story. So this woman was asking Me, all about myself, the business, this and that. But at one point the black eye comes up and mixed martial arts comes up and she's really surprised. Why is this 27 year old entrepreneur fighting in a cage, Right? So to answer her, there's two ways that I can do this. The first is the way most people do it, and it's not bad, but it could certainly be a lot better. The second is how you tell this story in a way that is going to make her listen to you and be interested, even if what you're talking about isn't a hobby that she has. Because in this case she wasn't a cage fighter or anything like that. Although I do hear Ronda Rousey is in town in Austin, which if you can put us in touch, I will love you forever. But we're going, why do you do mma? Why do you like it? And the way to do it that's not good would be to talk only about myself and in I. And so that would look something like, oh, I really love mixed martial arts because it's an absolute incredible workout. But beyond that, it's such an adrenaline rush. And I went skydiving once and I loved it and it just got my heart thumping and when I finished, all I wanted to do was do it again or call my friends and I just had this incredible dopamine dump and it was amazing. And on top of that, for me, fighting is very meditative, weirdly enough, because and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you see everything there is I, I, I, I, I, I. You can tell the same exact story with a second person, first person mismatch that will create way more intrigue from your listener. Let me say that in a way that makes more sense, since that was kind of unnecessarily wordy. If you alternate between you and I, you and I, you and I, when you tell a story, the other person will be sucked in more because they'll start to put themselves in the role of protagonist, they'll start to put themselves in the role of you while you're telling the story. So instead of just saying I, I, I, I, I, that story would look something like this would be, oh, I love mixed martial arts. I don't know if you have any weird hobbies that don't really make sense to people, but this is definitely one for me. But I absolutely love it. And I think the easiest way to say it is, it's an awesome workout for sure. But more than that, have you ever gone skydiving or have you ever Done anything where afterwards you just feel so alive, where your heart is pounding and you're just in a rush, and you want to tell all your friends about it, even though they couldn't care less. Right? That, to me, is mixed martial arts. Like, as soon as I finished my first fight practice, I called my dad. And you know when you just have those exciting conversations where the person listens and they don't really care about the topic, but they're just so happy that you're happy? It's that feeling for me all the time. And in addition to that, it's really meditative. So for somebody who runs a business, you can get really stressed out and you can find yourself all over the place, and it's hard for you to find a second to just be. But what I realize is when you have somebody that is trying to take your head off, trying to choke you out or whatever it may be, you can only focus on the moment. And so you're so focused, you're just there and present that it's very Zen like, and nothing else matters. Whether I have stresses in my relationships or. Or I have stresses at work, when I'm there, I'm there, and I love that. And so the combination of just the thrill and being present, I think it's really hard to capture that elsewhere. And when I said that in that story, there's a lot of you and I and you and I flipping back and forth. It engages the person, and it gets them listening to you and putting themselves there. And this one was actually, when I said the meditative part, she was like, oh, my God, that's so crazy, because I feel the same way about. She does silk ropes ballet, where you're like 10ft in the air and you're kind of wrapping the ropes around yourself. She's like, I know that sounds crazy because it's not like getting punched in the face, but that same danger, you really have to focus, and you can't screw up. And so because of that, you're fully present. And so we connected on these two hobbies that had nothing to do with each other, because I put it into a framework that she could listen to. And it sounds small, but by flipping between first and second person, you really, really connect with the person you're talking to, and you keep their attention. So anyway, that's just a little trick. Obviously, there's a ton more about storytelling. We could talk about tonality, gesticulating, how to craft a story, things like that. I'm happy to do more videos like that if you want. But if I could just pick one thing for storytelling to have you work on. This is it now, like for sure. And so that's my video for you guys today. If you liked it, I would love if you could just click the like button below and click subscribe. And that way I know that you guys are enjoying this and I'll keep shooting this for you. And if you want to kind of craft what kind of videos I shoot, feel free to comment or shoot me an email because I make these for you and so if you write in, I'll answer your questions. So that's it. If you liked it, hit like hit subscribe. I'd love if you share this and hopefully you go out and you tell your stories like this and you switch between you and I and you'll see incredible things. You'll see people nodding along and you'll see people really captivated, whether it's one on one or a group of ten or a thousand people from a stage.