Successful people are great storytellers. They see challenges, choices and outcomes as adventures with moments of hope, triumph and failure. Many great stories of success contain details of setbacks and adversities. These stories involve struggle and a life-turning incident that puts the storyteller on the path to where they are now.
How do you plan to use storytelling in your career? What stories will you tell? There are key elements to consider when developing your story. It could begin with an unexpected challenge that makes you pay attention or make a choice for which you are not prepared. The choice yields an outcome and the outcome teaches a moral. Why did you make the choice you did? How did it feel? What did it teach you? What do you want to teach us? How do you want us to feel?
Your story must include the challenge, the choice and the outcome. Once we hear your story, we, the audience become connected with you, we can 'feel' and are inspired by your values. Your story engages us in our own challenges, choices, and outcomes as we relate them to your story. As we hear your story, we create images in our own minds and since we were not present when the events happened, we relate your experience to our own. It is not the incidents themselves that makes the story impactful, but how the incidents changed your life will have a transformative impact on us (the listeners).