Welcome to “step up to the mic” podcast. Number six, the focus of this podcast is stories and storytelling. You might have a favourite story that you like to share with people. And what I would suggest is that if you want to be really effective storyteller, you need to fill in the details well enough and clearly enough that your audience can almost see it, feel it, and taste it. Imagine if you're trying to talk about lemons, so you could say, well, you know, I was eating this lemon and most people would go, Ooh, because lemons are sharp. But if you were saying, for example, there was this brilliant white lemon. I picked it up. It smelled so good. I gave it a squeeze and the lemon oil was going up my nose. It was so good. I took a knife, a very sharp knife, and I gave it a cut and I bit into the lemon, Ugh, the acid in my mouth. Oh, even as I'm talking, I can taste the lemon. It hit my tongue and went down my throat and it was sharp, but it was also sweet. Ah, for hours later, I could still taste the lemon on my lips and in my throat and in my nose. Now that's so different from saying, I took a lemon, I cut it. And I been into it and it was sharp. Yes. You see directions and fulfillment and the whole smell, taste, touch, feel for people matters. When you're telling stories, stories are our number one way of communicating all the time. We tell stories to each other. We just don't realize that it is something we do all the time. It feels so natural. So let's talk about what it is. So powerful about a story you see, when you tell somebody a story, they have to use their imagination. They engaged their imagination in order to follow along with the story. When I said to you, I took a bright lemon and I cut it and I smelled it and I bid into it. I'm sure that you had physiological reactions, even though you had no lemon there, some of you might even have been able to smell a lemon. That's the point of stories. They engage at a level that facts and figures never can. If you talk about the finances of, or the structure of their facts, but facts just convey information. They don't convince, they don't involve. They don't engage people. You see, when you start talking about facts, you're engaging the front part of the brain. It's a very small, thin layer of the frontal cortex. It's one of the smallest parts. However, when you start talking about touch, taste, sound feelings, movement, actualization, you engage the whole brain. You engage the feelings in your hands, and you engage all parts of the human experience. If I say to you, I went for a walk along the beach. You could imagine some things. But if I said to you, as I walked along the beach, the wind was cool. And even though I had a jacket on, I was quite chilled, but I was still invited by the sand. And I took off my socks and shoes and I stepped onto the sand. It was cool. It was wet. It was gritty going between my toes. And as I walked towards the edge of the water, he got colder, but firmer, I could feel it. That's quite a different description than saying I went for a walk on the beach. Just the same as if I said to you, I have a dog. And his name is Tucker. Well, if I said to you, I have a dog. His name is Tucker. He's tiny. Well, he's not that small, but if you put your hand down and feel his fur, it's soft and fluffy and he's bark is sharp and hard. And he, when he bites, Ooh, and he has that lovely doggy smell, he's very affectionate. And when I'm writing or when I'm talking and doing something on the, on the microphone, he likes to sit on my feet and it's so nice because he's warm. And I know he is there, and I always feel comforted. That's so different from saying to you, I have a dog named Tucker. Well, actually I don't have a dog named Tucker. I did have a dog named Tucker. He passed away quite a number of years ago, but his smell and his taste and his weight, his feel, and his excitement is still with me. He's still deep in my heart stories. They're so important. You can make so many points with stories. Now you can have a teaching story, which you have a specific outcome you want to make in point of, I've got a couple of stories that I've collected over time. And I'd like to read you one it's um, , I'm just trying to find it. Let's see. All right. Okay. So this has to do with a, with a psychologist talking to a class and she was talking about stress, and she went away about it in a way that just, just caught me. So it goes like this. As she walked to the class and she walked up to the front of the room, she'd turned around and she had picked up a glass of water that was sitting on her desk. She held it up and they all thought, quite naturally, she's gonna tell us it's half full and half empty. I'm gonna ask us questions about it because she's a psychologist, but she surprised him. And she said, how heavy is this glass? And she got all sorts of answers about was it's eight ounces. Um, it's six or maybe it's 10 ounces. And she ...
