Haritosh Srivastav says the best stories share the speaker's inner dialogue, especially during stressful moments. He describes a botched presentation and the self-critical thoughts that ran through his head, then the manager's comment that changed everything. Narrating what you actually thought makes people feel what you felt.
The best stories are the emotional one, but the real question is, how do you make your stories more emotional? So here is a quick hack that you can apply to make your speech more emotional, and that is deliver the inner dialogue. See, all of us have 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts in a day, and when you're talking about a story, when you verbalize these inner thoughts, it can be a game changer. Let me give you an example. Let's say I had a very bad presentation, and I was worried about the consequences. So one way to do would be, oh God, I messed it up. My manager is going to do what he needs to do. The other would be, I was telling myself, oh my God, what have you done? Your manager feels you are useless. There is so much of laying off going around. Will you be on the next list? If that happens, how you are going to tackle that? How are you going to survive? These all thoughts were draining me out of my energy. I was feeling so stuck, so small, until he came and said, Haritosh Srivastav, it's okay, these things happen. Did you feel it was an emotional one? So try next time telling what is going on inside your mind. This will make your story emotional and connect better with your audience.
