Haritosh SrivastavFounder & Head Coach, Confident Storytelling Hub

Your personal stories aren't oversharing. They're your greatest teaching tool

29 Jan 2026 · 2 min

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1:43

In this reflective monologue, the speaker examines the practice of using personal life stories as examples in coaching sessions. Initially worried about oversharing to an audience that doesn't know them, they consider alternative sources such as metaphors, Jataka tales, and Panchatantra stories. After weighing the concerns, they conclude that sharing authentic personal narratives can be valuable during a learning phase, as it can inspire and connect with others. The speaker acknowledges the need to monitor tone—avoiding ego or excessive emotion—and resolves to experiment with different storytelling approaches in future coaching sessions.

Chapters

Every topic I am getting the story from my life. So I was thinking that I am saying too much about my life, you know. Uh, I was feeling that should I do this? But I was getting examples from— for those topics I was getting from my life only. So I was not thinking in the other ways, or as I told earlier, that using metaphors or taking stories from Jataka tales or from Panchatantra or somewhere, you know, many examples are there. But I was using that, so I was thinking that, am I saying too much about myself to the people who don't know me? But then I, I thought that, uh, I'm learning, it's a learning state, so I will not judge myself on this. And moreover, as a coach when we tell our stories, our perspective, and from where we have gotten up, that influences, that inspire people, because this person has also come out from this. So that is one thing I learned, that saying my stories from my life doesn't matter. Am I giving the right message to them? Am I being too emotional to something? That I have done, am I saying with ego or I'm saying as a story to people to understand and take an idea from there? So that is one thing I learned, that it's okay to do that. But, uh, in the coming time, definitely going to, uh, take different experiments that I thought of.