Today I am answering a question from Natalie and Natalie wrote glad your surgery went well.
Thank you. I'd love to see some videos about NLP; the one from your webinar was great and
super helpful. And so, what I want us to talk about today is another really, really awesome
NLP trick that I learned; that is how to tell stories that captivate. So I went to a seminar
recently, where I flew down to Arizona, one of those things where you don't really know
what to expect but you've heard good things. So I went down and I talked to these guys
who've been doing this for decades -- really impressive -- speakers, sales persons, NLP
conversationalists and I learned a lot of really amazing stuff, but my absolute favorite
thing is what I'm going to teach you now, it's how do you tell stories so that your
listener, whether that's one person or an entire audience, so that they'll care what
you're saying and engage; so their brain will engage. And this is something you can do that
at a subconscious level, it's really going to trigger them to tune in and it's going
to prevent that audience burnout or that listener burnout where sometimes you'll be midway through
a story, potentially, and even if it's interesting, the person just might start to zone out or
lose a little bit of attention. So this is what I learned while I was there and I think
it's phenomenal. So Natalie, hopefully you'll like this and everyone else, I think this
is really, really useful, that's why I decided to shoot the video.
So I think the best way to illustrate this is with a story, basically. The last time
I told a story was about 12 hours ago. I'm here at South by Southwest and I'm meeting
a lot of people who want to know "What do you do? Where are you from? What are you interested
in? It's like speed dating for business and friendship. It's a super cool event but it's
one of those things where you meet someone and you know you like them but don't really
know a lot about them. So I met this woman, we hit it off so we decided to get dinner
and she doesn't really know anything about me and so my question is, "How do you convey
the things about yourself where you might not have similar interests but you might have
similar values?" And so, how do you share those interests in a way that connects you
to the other person? So, I love to do that via story.
So this woman was asking all about myself, the business, this and that, but at one point
the black eye comes up and the mixed martial arts comes up. She's really surprised why
this 27-year-old entrepreneur fighting in a cage, right? So, to answer her, there's
two ways that I can do this. The first is the way most people do it and it's not bad
but it could certainly be a lot better. The second is how you tell the story in a way
that is going to make her listen to you and be interested, even if what you're talking
about isn't a hobby that she has coz in this case, she wasn't a cage fighter or anything
like that, although I do hear Ronda Rousey is in town. If you can put us in touch, I
will love you forever. But we're going, why do you do MMA and why do you like it and the
way to do it is not good would be to talk only about myself and in "I" and to that it
would look something like, "Oh, I really love mixed martial arts because it's an absolute,
incredible workout but beyond that, it's such an adrenaline rush." And I went skydiving
once and I loved it and it just got my heart thumping and when I finished, all I wanted
to do is do it again or call my friends and I just had this incredible dopamine dump and
it was amazing. And on top of that, for me, fighting is very meditative, with me enough
because I'm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you see, everything there is I, I, I, I, I. You can tell the same, exact story with
a second person/ first person mismatch that will create way more intrigue from your listener.
Let me say it in a way that will make more sense since that is kind of unnecessarily
wordy. If you alternate between "You" and "I", you and I, you and I, when you tell a
story, the other person will be sucked in more because they'll start to put themselves
in the role of protagonist. They'll start to put themselves in the role of "you" while
you're telling the story. So, instead of just saying I, I, I, I, I, that sort of look something
like this, Oh, I love mixed martial arts. I don't know if you have any weird hobbies
that don't really make sense to people but this is definitely one for me but I absolutely
love it. And I think the easiest way to say this, it's an awesome workout for sure, but
more than that, have you ever gone skydiving or have you ever done anything where afterwards
you just feel so alive? Where your heart is pounding and you just, rushing to tell all
your friends about it even though, you know, they couldn't care less, right? That to me
is mixed martial arts. As soon as I finished my first five practices, I called my dad and
you know when you just have those exciting conversations with a person who listens? They
don't really care about the topic but they're just so happy that you're happy. It's that
feeling for me all the time. And in addition to that, it's really meditative. So for somebody
who runs a business, you can get really stressed out and you can find yourself all over the
place and it's hard and it's hard for you to find a second to just be. But what I realized
is when you have somebody that's trying to take your head off, trying to choke you out
or whatever it may be, you can only focus on the moment. And so, you're so focused,
you're just there and present that it's very Zen-like and nothing else matters, with the
stresses in my relationship, or I have stresses at work. When I'm there, I'm there and I love
that and so the combination of a thrill and being present, I think it's really hard to
capture that elsewhere.
And when I said that, in that story, there's a lot of you and I, and you and I flipping
back and forth, it engages the person. It gets them listening to you and putting themselves
there and this woman was actually, when I said the meditative part, she was like, Oh
my god, that's so crazy because I feel the same way about, she does silk ropes ballet,
where you're like 10 feet in the air and you're kind of wrapping the ropes around yourself.
She say, "I know it sounds crazy, coz it's not like getting a punch in the face but that
same danger, you really have to focus and you can't screw up and so because of that
you're fully present." And so we connected on these two hobbies that have nothing to
do with each other because I put it into a framework that she could listen to and it
sounds small like flipping between first and second person, you really, really connect
with the person you're talking to and you keep their attention.
So anyway, that's just a little trick, obviously there's a ton more about storytelling. We
could talk about tonality, gesticulating, how to craft a story, things like that and
I'm happy to do more videos like that if you want but if I could just pick one thing for
storytelling to have you work on, this is it, Natalie, for sure and so that's my video
for you guys today. If you liked it, I would love if you could just click the "Like" button
below and click "Subscribe" and that way I'll know that you guys are enjoying this and I'll
keep shooting this for you. And if you want to kind of craft what kind of videos I shoot,
feel free to comment or shoot me an email because I make this for you and so, you know,
if you write in I'll answer your questions.
So, that's it. If you liked it, hit Like, hit Subscribe, blog if you share this and
hopefully you go out and you tell your stories like this and you switch between you and I
and you'll see incredible things people nodding along and you'll see people really captivated
whether it's one-on-one or a group of 10 or a thousand people from a stage.