In this reflective coaching video, Coach Haritosh Srivastav recounts his experience attending a London Moth storytelling event themed around Pride. He describes the event format, shares an anecdote about an Asian speaker who repeatedly froze yet was supported by audience applause, and extracts three key lessons for storytellers: (1) authentic, vulnerable stories deeply engage listeners; (2) speakers should internalize the story’s structure and scenes rather than memorize word‑for‑word, which prevents panic when a slip occurs; and (3) audiences genuinely want the performer to succeed, offering encouragement that can help a speaker recover from mistakes. Haritosh concludes with a personal commitment to eventually tell his own story on the Moth stage and encourages viewers to keep learning, growing, and stepping out of their comfort zones.
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Last week I attended the Moth on London, basically a storytelling performance show, and I learned a few lessons on there. In this video, I'm going to share those lessons with you. So if you're not aware, Moth is a community nonprofit organization which does this storytelling onstage performances all over the world. It's a very famous place if you want to really go there and deliver authentic personal vulnerable storytelling. And this was something which was there in my to-do list for a really long, long time to attend and then potentially speak on the platform. You can also check out their YouTube as well as podcast where they put all these real authentic stories. It's an amazing treat to hear and watch those stories. So this was there for on my checklist for long, long time, and I went there and something happened which really helped me to reflect upon and share some lessons. So basically, when you go there, there are people who want to share the story, so they'll put their name on the slip, and there is a tote bag where they will put. And then the host of the show will randomly pick 10 people and who will be selected, and they will come on the stage and deliver a story of up to 5 minutes. It's very, very interesting. At the time that I attended, the theme was Pride. Uh, yeah, the Pride Month is going on in June, so it was related to that and so on, other things. And there was some amazing, amazing speakers, some speaker who you could see were on their journey. There was too much to learn and so much to enjoy, and we were We were really having a good time and then this incident happened. So basically there was this, I thought it was an Asian lady who came to the stage and who was trying to be very eloquent. She had very flowery language and articulate word by word, sort of memorized, and she completely froze. She was trying to say some story and after probably 30 to 45 seconds she completely froze. Just like that. And then there was this transformation. People started clapping for her during her 5 5.5-minute story, she actually froze for at least 3 to 4 times, and every single time people clapped. So when I was coming back and it was pretty late in the night, and I started reflecting upon that, okay, if I have to draw a lesson— everything happens for a reason, right? So if I have to draw a lesson, what were the 3 lessons that I learned? Number 1: people love to listen to your authentic vulnerable stories. When you go out there, when you are trying to present your personal story, a true story, people love to listen. There were so many moments in the whole show and in her story as well when she was trying to talk about about the pickles that she gets, the bully that happened, and all those kind of things that she has done, people truly were with her every single second. So when you tell your story, authentic stories, people would love you for that. People would love to learn from you. So do not shy away from sharing your personal, authentic, vulnerable story. Number 2, the second lesson, which was for me, it's more of a technical lesson but very, very important, is that if you are going to deliver a story, if you are going to deliver a speech, a talk, do not try to memorize, rather internalize. What do I mean by that is if you are going to deliver a 5-minute, 10-minute, 1-hour, 1-day long, you cannot practically remember word by word. And what happens is if you forget one word, you'll have to go back from the very first line, the very first word, and try to remember that. And in that process, you forget rest of the lines and you'll become more self-conscious, more nervous, and it can lead to the catastrophe, as they say. What should you do instead is internalize. Try to remember, okay, this was the first thing that I want to talk about, then this is the second thing I want to talk about, then this is the third thing that I want to talk about. This was the first scene, the second scene, the third scene, this is how I'm going to transition. When you put a structure, not remember the words, but remember the scenes and remember the dialogues, that helps you be more authentic and be more confident on stage. And I think that was something which was missing in her storytelling. And number 3 is the most important, the biggest aha moment that I had. Your audience wants you to succeed. As I said earlier, there were at least 3, 4, 5 moments, at least 4 to 5 moments where the lady completely froze. And every single time she froze, somebody started clapping and others joined in them. And then almost everybody was clapping and you I could actually see the nervousness slowly going away from her face, and then she was able to restart from where she left. And this happens in most of the cases. When you are on the stage, people are not looking at you, people are trying to be with you, and so they want you to succeed because in you they see a portion or reflection of themselves. And when you remember this point, you will not worry about the single spelling mistake or the single word you forgot, the single thing that you missed, because you will then remember the larger purpose, which is the impact that you want to create. So that was one quick short video I thought I will share with you, my lesson with Tending MOTS storytelling. I'm hoping to be one of the participants in coming months, so I will share what my experience was when I actually delivered a story on the MOTS platform. Until next time, as every time I say, keep learning, keep growing, and keep going out of your comfort zone. This is Coach Haritosh Srivastav. I'm gonna see you in my next video.
