Are you trying to get people's attention to listen to something important you
have to teach them? Maybe what you need to start doing is telling a story.
Stories open the mind. And now they can listen. So pay attention. Listen closely.
Let's activate the storytelling part of your life.
So, as a presenter, you know, as a teacher and as a parent ,I found that... You know,
trying to just give information to people sometimes can be a
little challenging for the other people to understand what and how this all
applies. Well, I just would like to share with you that something that's made a
difference in my presentations when I am standing up and speaking in front of
audiences is storytelling. You know, one of the what a crazy fun story that
happens at one of the classes I have, is called Master Your Influence. And this
class, what happens in this class is I'm attempting to get across to the people
that they are.. They're blind to the opportunities that they can see in their
life. Now, I could just say to the audience that they're blind to
the opportunities that they can see in their life. I could just say the sentence
and it's over and I can move on. But how many people are actually going to hear
that message and do something about it? Well, there's a good chance that 99.9%
of the people in the room will just sit there and listen and miss the
message. So, what I've learned is that when I'm teaching... And I want to get a
principle across I need to bring up a story to literally tell the same message.
So, the story that I tell in the class... My buddies and I, my friends and I. We wanted
to go and do something fun and crazy. Now, I grew up in Wyoming and this is one of
those way back out in the middle of nowhere kind of towns. And there's
not much to do. So, my friends and I jump in the car and we head out of town to go
find something to do. And we had the music turned up loud and we're leaving
town and we're going off across the Prairie literally. And as we come over
the top of a hill and we're coming down the hill, out of nowhere,
this blur... Just this thing runs across the road. And I couldn't see what it was.
I just knew that something was coming across the road because I was distracted
by my friend talking to me. And so I just slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting
whatever just ran across the road. Well, I come slamming to a you know, screeching
brakes coming to a stop and and I I look around to try to figure out what this
thing was that ran across the road. I couldn't see it anywhere. But I did see
off the side of the road, the grass moving. Like something ran across the
road and it's in the grass. We almost ran over and killed it. And so we just sat
there for a while looking off into the grass trying to figure out what was this
thing we nobody even saw? Well, after a few minutes, it worked its way out of the
grass and what it was was a skunk with its jar... With this jar stuck on its head.
And the jar was all muddy. And oh my goodness, my friends and I see this and
we're like, "What is this thing doing? A skunk with a big jar on its head and this
mud everywhere?" No wonder it just ran across the road in front of us and
almost got killed. Well, we're all laughing and joking about watching the
skunk run into everything because it can't see where it's going. And I realized I
got gloves under my seat. Yeah, I'm going to do something. So I grabbed my gloves and
my friends were like, "What are you doing? I'm going to go pull that jar off. I'm going to
go pull that thing off and help this guy out."
Well, one of my friends pulls out of camera says, "alright fine I'll take
pictures of the whole thing." And then my other friend looks in the backseat and
sees a bunch of rope. And he announces, "Hey, if you get sprayed we're going to tie
it to the top of the car and drag you all the way home that way." And so, now
they're totally in on this. Well I get out of the car and I walked down to the
skunk and I don't want to get sprayed. Those things are stinky. But above all
stinky, they're just stinky. Well I get down close and it's stuck in some grass
and some sagebrush. And I down on the ground. Reach out, grab the
jar thinking I could just pop the jar off its head.
And I can't get the jar off. And I'm yanking on this jar back and forth back
and forth trying to get this thing off its head no all come off. And I yelled at
my friends, "It's stuck. I can't get it off." And they yell, "Grab a rock, break the jar."
Well, if you've ever been around mason jars before, the neck of the jar is super
strong. And that wasn't going to break. And I might hurt the skunk. So I dropped the
rock and I realize I'm just going to yank this jar off. Well, I Pull and I pull and
I pull. And I can tell the skunk is starting to suffocate from what I'm
doing trying to help this skunk. Well, it finally just sits down, puts his hands up
on my hands and tries to help me wiggle this jar off. And he's trying to help me
and all of a sudden the jar pops off, we're literally 6 inches from each other's
face as I'm trying to help this skunk. And I'm not kidding. That skunk looked at
me .And literally said, "Thank you." In his own little skunk voice coming from his
brain. And I verbally out loud. I mean this is how real was. I verbally out loud
said back, "Your welcome" to the skunk. My friend up on the road starts laughing.
He's like, "What? You're talking to the skunk now?" This skunk takes off. You know,
he runs away. We help the skunk out. But I look in the
bottom of the jar and there was food in the bottom of the jar. And that poor
little guy, he was hungry. And his hunger got him stuck in that jar. And that jar
got stuck on his head and he could not see where he's going. Could not see where
he's going. He's just trying to take care of his hunger pains. And he couldn't see
where he's going. And he almost got ran over on the road. Now, I could
tell the story or I could tell the message to the audience. You know, I could
say, "Some of you are blind to opportunities in your life." Or I could
tell the story about how the skunk has a jar on its
head and we got to pull the jar off. And we got to help people see where they're
stuck. So when you're teaching and you're helping people and you can tell they're
not listening and you can tell the message is not getting acrossed. And you
wish people could hear you. And you could hear the messages you have to help
people with. It's time to open up and start putting things into story form. You
have experiences in your past that will support your teaching and your
principles that you have to share with people. But when you go to tell a story,
you know, something I like to do is I like to write out the whole story in all
its random details. And you never want to share all the details. That is a boring
story. When it's too much detail. Too much, too much, too much. But I write out the
whole story. And then I save that copy on my computer. Then I go through and start
taking things out of the story. Unnecessary details. Unnecessary details
that I don't need to share with people they don't need to know. But I can help
reduce this story down to something that somebody could listen to. Now, your past
experiences have lessons learned. And if you were to start thinking about all the
crazy things that have happened to your life. And all the ridiculous and
unpredictable things that have happened, they literally have lessons learned. And
your stories can be coupled with life principles. If you ever tell a story that
does not relate to what you're teaching, people will discount you because it's
like, that doesn't even connect. And boy, have I heard that happen a lot. When it
comes to teachers and presenters, stories that don't relate. And so, as you go to
search your passion find your stories and start to document just in bullet
point form, what happened in that story. And look for the lessons learned. You'll
be able to start finding where this story connects to a life principle
you're attempting to teach your children. Or you're attempting to teach a
friend or coworkers. Or maybe you are a presenter and you want
be able to capture the audience's attention. Stories is where it's at.
Stories are where heart-to-heart connections are made. And literally,
stories activate a person's mind into listening. So, if you find areas of
your life where you don't think people are listening to you, it's time to take
what you need to share with them and open it up with a story. And you don't
have to look far. Just start the process of going, "I've got stories. what are my
stories of my life that I could start to document?" And your brain will start to
search. So have a place on your phone or on a document where you can start to
list all the different things that you've experienced. And don't try to jump
in too fast to put all the details in there. Just let the stories start to
unravel in you and start to document what these are. Over the years, I've found
like over 92 different crazy, fun stories in my life that I can use in
presentations or to get my point across with my kids or friends or family or
people at work. But I'm the one who has to go search and find the stories. Then I
go back and write down some details. Then I also look for the lesson learned. And
those are all sitting there in my inventory of stories. Then when I need to
teach a principle, I can come back here to the story and find out which one of
these stories is going to help me get that principal acrossed. If you are struggling
getting your point acrossed, switch to using stories. And when there are
personal stories, they become passionate messages. Personal stories create
passionate messages. And then you can open up people's hearts with then open
up their minds. And now some good real communication can happen. So, if you like
telling stories, I think something you may want to consider is learning
presentation skills. Because boy, with presentation skills and storytelling
skills, you can move the people. Now, I have a course here in
Salt Lake City Utah called Present Yourself. And it's a 3-day course. I
think you would absolutely enjoy in knowing how to improve your presentation
abilities. So click the link here below and check out the course and hope to see
you there. I mean it can literally change your life
as you begin to move the masses. Now, something else you may want to consider
is my monthly mentoring program. If you'd like to be trained on how to upgrade
your thinking and how to manage your emotions, click the link below about my
monthly mentoring. Very, very affordable and life-changing.