Perspective is an interesting concept — it is a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.Everyone has shaped their own view of reality, and they perceive the ways that people treat them as good or bad. Even if the intention of the other person is not always to be good or bad. — Your views on the world dictate your behavior. If you assume people like you, you will start behaving more positively, likable, and friendly —…this will, in turn, MAKE people like you more.It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Assume The Other Person Likes You.

You see it the other way around as well. When you come into an interaction with the assumption that people DON’T like you or that you’re weird, awkward, or a burden on others, you will act in ways that will make people not like you as much.Honestly, you could argue that all confidence is slightly delusional. So even if you don’t feel very likable, you just need to start deluding yourself.This is really powerful advice, but I know it can be quite difficult to implement. I’ve been on the other side, so I really do get the resistance to a concept like this.

Confidence and how you ACT

I am not going to try and solve the “confidence problem” here, because I don’t think I can, and definitely not for more than one specific person, on top of that, the person who knows the most about this problem and has the best chances of solving it right now is the one reading this idea.

The Confidence problem

I do think though that you should try this method out — assume that your friends like you and your company, that you aren’t annoying them, and that they want to hang out with you more. LIE TO YOURSELF WITH INTENT, the brain is separable, it can outplay itself, understand itself, and increase the efficiency of different parts in it, it’s not only safe to ACT but its borderline genius.It would be a lot more beneficial to assume your friends all love you until proven otherwise, and not to assume that they could be pissed off at you and need them to constantly prove that they are not.

Try it

It could be expanded to all people, as well — if you assume that everyone you meet is going to like you and wait to be proven otherwise, it will improve your confidence, your social comfort, your sense of humor (critical to which is the confidence of delivery and the relationship between the joker and the audience), and your self-esteem. Why wouldn’t it? Everyone in the whole world will like you and have an awesome conversation with you if you talk to them! Share your thoughts in the comments — And follow for more :)

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Assumptions, Confidence, Acting, and your better self.

Perspective is an interesting concept — it is a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view. Everyone has shaped their own view of reality, and they perceive the ways…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

Bullies are in every area of the workplace, be it a difficult boss, a malicious coworker, or a disrespectful client. Bullying is classified are repeated and purposeful harassing, offending, excluding, or spitefully disrupting someone's tasks. It can be job-related or person-related. Early career professionals are more prone to bullying than their senior colleagues. If not addressed, bullying can damage a person's well-being and increase job turnover.

Bullies in the workplace

Bees work hard and provide value to their environment, but you risk getting stung if you try to hurt them. Find a visible way to defend yourself from bullying behaviour.<ul><li>Play by the book. It can give you a sense of security and help you stay on track when you don't yet know how things work in your organisation.</li><li>Build a strong network, including with senior employees or influential people. It helps to influence people and form alliances within your workplace.</li><li>Stay on good terms with the rest of your colleagues, regardless of their level in the chain of command.</li></ul>

Become a bee

Rather than lashing out or letting your emotions get the better of you, pause before acting. It will help to detach emotionally. If you feel safe enough to approach your colleague, respectfully initiate a candid discussion with the bully. If the bully responds, listen instead of getting defensive. You may discover that there is room for reconciliation. However, if the bullying continues, it may be good to approach HR or your manager.

Don’t let your emotions overpower your reaction

A last approach before approaching a higher authority is to “Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.” When you realize you are getting in an office battle zone, start gathering evidence to block all exits besides the one you consider fair. Instead of directly confronting a bully, present the facts and explain how these errors seriously threaten his or her employment in the long term. Then present the solution you want them to get to.

Build golden bridges

Early career professionals are more prone to bullying than their senior colleagues. Research shows that power imbalances between experienced and newer workers can create an authority gap that has the potential to generate abusive and intimidating behaviors from those who have higher status. If you’re a young professional dealing with bullying at work, how do you navigate the situation and guard yourself? Become a bee: Start by finding your sting — a visible way to defend yourself from bullying behavior. For instance, make it known that you are someone who follows rules and procedures. Playing by the book can give you a sense of security, help you stay on track, and give bullies less weaknesses to exploit. Don’t let your emotions overpower your reaction: Put aside your anger, frustration, and the urge to snap back. If you react instinctively, guided by your negative emotions, you may end up increasing the conflict, reducing mutual gain, and damaging any chances of future collaboration. Build golden bridges: As soon as you realize you are getting in an office battle zone, start gathering evidence to block all exits besides the one you consider fair. Ask yourself, “How do I make it easier for the bully to reach the decision that I want them to get to?” This can be an excellent way to inhibit workplace intimidation before following the official path.

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Career

How to Confront a Bully at Work

There may be times that you’d like to feel invisible, but for the most part, people like to feel that other people notice and care about them. If you’ve ever walked into a social gathering and waited five minutes for someone to greet you, then you know how painful it is to feel like you’re blending into the background. Alternatively, consider the agony you can suffer when you’ve sent a text to a friend, only to have it sit there “delivered,” but unanswered.

“Ugh! I Wish I Was Invisible!” 

When you stop and think about it, though, why should we care so much about whether people notice us or not? After all, the people who know us might be busy and preoccupied with other things. It shouldn’t make a difference, either, whether people who don’t know us acknowledge our presence. And, in reality, aren’t there those times when we’d be just as happy to get in and out of someplace without having to stop and talk to anyone?

“Hellooo! I’m Standing Right Here!!!”

In positive psychology, the quality of “mattering” is considered, in the words of York University’s Gordon Flett and colleagues (2022) to be “a key psychological resource.” Although we might occasionally enjoy the cloak of invisibility, Flett et al. propose that feeling chronically insignificant can become a “meta-pathology” that can interfere with the ability to obtain “optimal health and well-being.”

The Quality Of Mattering

According to Flett et al., rather than simply feeling invisible, when we suffer from what they call “anti-mattering,” we define ourselves as someone whose “personal identity is dominated by the sense of not mattering to others.” We adopt this identity as a shield for the specific reason of protecting ourselves from the stress of being ignored or regarded as irrelevant by others. The “anti” here, literally means “against” mattering, not simply being low in the feeling that we matter.

Why Does it Matter to Matter?

In the words of Flett et al., anti-mattering “should be regarded as a unique and specific vulnerability unlike any other risk factor.... [it] can become a cognitive preoccupation that is internalized and results in self-harm tendencies and an inability or unwillingness to engage in self-care.”

A Shield That Harms Instead Of Protect Us

The anti-mattering stance can come from many sources, such as facing constant rejection from potential romantic partners, employers, or even those rude people who never reply to your texts. However, Flett et al. propose that its most likely source can be traced to early childhood experiences of neglect by distracted and unresponsive parents. The hard shell around our need to matter eventually forms so that even the worst experiences of rejection will fail to penetrate.

A Shell That We Get Into Instead Of Out Of

Unfortunately, the more resistant the shell becomes to rejection or dismissive treatment, the harder it is for others to get through to us. Rewarding relationships become that much more difficult to attain as others learn that it's easier just to stay away from you.

Hurdles Are Both The Obstacles And The Race

To tap into the unique qualities of anti-mattering, Flett et al. set about to develop a new 5-item Anti-Mattering Scale (AMS). Across a series of studies using young adult and adolescent samples, Flett et al. first built and then compared their AMS to an existing "General Mattering Scale" (GMS) in its relationship to measures of depression, loneliness, and anxiety. You can best get a sense of what's at the heart of anti-mattering by testing yourself on these five items (rate yourself from 1=not at all, to 4=a lot).

The Anti-Mattering Scale (AMS)

<ol><li>How much do you feel like you don’t matter? </li><li>How often have you been treated in a way that makes you feel like you are insignificant? </li><li>To what extent have you been made to feel like you are invisible? </li><li>How much do you feel like you will never matter to certain people? </li><li>How often have you been made to feel by someone that they don’t care what you think or what you have to say? </li> </ol>Most of the participants in the undergraduate sample scored between 7 and 15 on this scale, with an average at just about 11.

The “Anti-Mattering” Test

Key to the idea of the AMS is that it's not just feeling unimportant (or low in mattering). These five items from the GMS (General Mattering Scale) show this nuanced difference. Rate yourself with the same scale as the AMS:<ol><li>How important are you to others?</li><li>How much do others pay attention to you?</li><li>How much would you be missed if you went away?</li><li>How interested are others in what you have to say?</li><li>How much do other people depend upon you?</li></ol>

The “General Mattering” Test

Participants tended to receive higher scores on the GMS than the AMS, with the average at 16 and the majority scoring between 13 and 18.From these averages alone, you can see that it is more common for people to feel that they have a valuable role in the life of others than to feel that they are not worth anyone's attention.

“I Am The Touching And The Untouchable.”

Now that you’ve tested yourself on AMS and seen how it differs from GMS, it’s time to turn to the psychological consequences of turning away from others as a self-protective mechanism. As shown in the Flett et al. findings, the patterns of scores on key indicators of mental health, including depression, loneliness, and anxiety, showed that anti-mattering wasn't simply the opposite of mattering.

Does Being High on Anti-Mattering Matter?

Most importantly, the findings across the young adult and adolescent samples confirmed the predicted relationship between anti-mattering and loneliness as well as the incremental effect on depression of high AMS vs. low GMS scores. This pattern reflects, in the words of the authors, “ties between low mattering and a maladaptive early schema reflecting disconnection and alienation from others.” Combined, high AMS and high loneliness scores produce what Flett et al. refer to as the “double jeopardy of feeling alone and insignificant.”

The Double Jeopardy

To sum up, feeling that we matter is clearly a contributor to positive mental health. Anti-mattering can become part of a larger identity in which we feel that we lack value to others, even contributing to a sense of marginalization. Although the York University findings established the negative consequences of anti-mattering among young adults and teens, this basic need appears to be one that can form an important cornerstone of healthy development throughout life.

A Serious Matter

If anything matters, then everything matters.

Everything matters. Nothing’s important.

On mattering, not mattering, but, more importantly, anti mattering. Would we (still) wear the Invisibility Cloak if we knew we could never take it off again?

New research shows the downside of feeling invisible on mental health.

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Mindfulness

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Mental Health

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Love & Relationships

Why Mattering Is So Important to Our Mental Health

"an aggregated measure of self- and social-awareness, evolved social beliefs and attitudes, and a capacity and appetite to manage complex social change."

About Social Intelligence

"the ability to understand and manage men and women and boys and girls, to act wisely in human relations

"competence to optimally understand one's environment and react appropriately for socially successful conduct"

"It leans more toward Jean Piaget's theory that intelligence is not a fixed attribute, but a complex hierarchy of information-processing skills underlying an adaptive equilibrium between the individual and the environment."

Not A Fixed Attribute 

"More recently, popular science writer Daniel Goleman has drawn on social neuroscience research to propose that social intelligence is made up of social awareness (including empathy, attunement, empathic accuracy, and social cognition) and social facility (including synchrony, self-presentation, influence, and concern)."

Made Of Social Awareness And Social Facility

I took the The Four Factor Test of Social Intelligence in a random app I wanted to know a litle bit more about this type of intelligence. 

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Problem Solving

teamwork

Teamwork

Social intelligence - Wikipedia

<ul><li>It is better to say something rather than nothing and to express empathy instead of sympathy</li><li>Most people enduring the tiring and lonely experience of grief benefit from expressions that are more empathetic than sympathetic</li><li>Generally, people prefer to be understood rather than pitied</li><li>What is needed in these situations is less about what is said and more about being there to help hold space for the grief.</li></ul>

Say something rather than nothing

<ul><li>"I know what you're going through." We can never know exactly.</li><li>"Did the doctors try everything to save him/her?" Some things in life cannot be saved and fixed, no matter how we try. </li><li>Cliched like: "Everything happens for a reason." "God has a plan." "Time will heal." "They’re in a much better place."</li><li> "Let me know if you need anything." This puts the burden on the caregiver or the bereaved person when he or she already is preoccupied with too many things, both big and small. Try instead to offer something very concrete and very specific that you know you can do.</li></ul>

Some things to avoid saying and doing

<ul><li>Don't worry about bringing up this loss unless for some reason the person has already indicated they don't want to talk about it at all. </li><li>Don't be afraid to share a fun or funny memory you have. </li><li>It is best to let the person be the guide as to how much or how little they want to share, answer, vent, switch topics, etc.</li><li>Acknowledge that words seem to fail, that you are aware this really sucks and feels empty, sad, lonely, hard, stressful, etc.</li><li>Offer to simply sit with the person, even in stillness and silence, or to just be in the other room as a familiar presence. </li></ul>

Some things that might be helpful to say and do

Some do's and don'ts for what to say and do.

How Do I Comfort A Friend Who Lost a Loved One?

They will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Be Wary of Friends

<ul><li>Though you think friends are trustworthy, you do not know your friends nearly as well as you imagine.</li><li>A friend will often tell you a sweet lie because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.</li><li>Sometimes they mean their words, sometimes they don’t.</li><li>Your goal is to get things done, the better choice is to work with those who are most competent rather than just hiring friends – this is ideal both for your enterprise and your personal development.</li></ul>

Keep Friends for Friendship, But Work With The Skilled 

<ul><li>People do not like owing a debt to someone else.</li><li>When you help someone in a major way, they feel burden of debt in their soul, and they subconsciously resent you for it.</li><li>They want to feel that they deserve their good fortune.</li><li>When they know that they were chosen because of friendship, not necessarily because they were more deserving, they feel resentful</li><li>You will see this resentment slowly: flashes of envy here and there, and before you know it, you’d have lost your friend.</li><li>Show some gratitude before friendship goes to astray.</li></ul>

Ingratitude Will Kill You

You destroy your enemies once you befriend them.﻿

Hire your enemies once you befriend them.

<ul><li>Your former enemies don’t expect much from you and will be more loyal to you because they have more to prove.</li><li>A man who has something to prove will move mountains for you.</li></ul>

Hire Your Enemies Once You Befriend Them.

<ul><li>Without competition, it’s harder to grow stronger because without competition, you lack that extrinsic motivation – the desire to be better than others.</li><li>You will be more alert, productive, and industrious when you have a few declared enemies – you can’t afford to take it too easy.</li></ul>

Keep Some Enemies Around to Keep You Sharp

<ul><li>Without enemies around us, we grow lazy.</li><li>An enemy at out heels sharpens our wits, keeping us focused and alert</li><li>It is sometimes better then, to use enemies as enemies rather than transforming them into friends or allies.</li></ul>

Opportunities o Test Yourself

Be wary of friends – they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

People want to feel they deserve their good fortune. Favors lead to resentment: they feel they've been chosen out of friendship, not because they are deserving. Hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies | 48 Laws of Power

"The only limits you have are the limits you believe."

"Success is really nothing more than the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. This means that any person who knows what they are doing and where they are going is a success ."

"You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside."

"Clarity is Power"

55 Questions to Ask Yourself Book PDF Download best book  55 Questions to Ask Yourself is written by Manoj Chenthamarakshan Free Read Online

55 Questions to Ask Yourself

<ul><li>Don’t fall into the trap of trying to cover everything in a single talk. Instead, convey one big idea that leverages your personal experience.</li><li>A big idea can take an audience on a journey that alters the way they view the world. You should be able to define your idea as a throughline that is 15 words or fewer. Essentially, what is the core point of your talk?</li><li>Think about the audience, their context, and why your problem matters to them. As a tip, choose one person that you like and assume you are presenting the talk to them.</li></ul>

Convey One Big Idea

Script the opening minute and the closing lines. These are the most important parts of the talk. Use good images and stories to ignite curiosity and reflection. How people remember something is largely influenced by how it ends.

Open and Close Strong

Avoid sales pitches or talks that focus on what your organization does.For the visuals, No slides = better than bad slides. For each slide, convey just one idea and remember that less is more. For photos, have them take up the entire slide. Use only one typeface and 3 fonts throughout the presentation. Avoid bullets, italics, and underlines.

Bad Talk And Bad Visuals

Rehearsals help shape the talk. Ask for advice on clarity, tone, variety, and examples.Structure: One potential structure for your talk: introduction, context, main concepts, practical applications, conclusion.

The Shape Of The Talk

<ul><li>When you build trust and connection with your audience, your idea will resonate. To do so, consider the following tactics.</li><li>Make eye contact as you walk confidently onto the stage.</li><li>Show vulnerability.</li><li>Drop the ego – consider being self-deprecating.</li></ul>

Build Trust and Connection

Our minds co-evolved with storytelling, a byproduct of fire; elders were often the best storytellers that helped us imagine, dream, and understand the minds of others. Stories are easy to follow, and they give us the ability to understand complex ideas and understand imagined realities. Adding stories to your public speaking toolkit will enhance your effectiveness.

Tell Stories

<ul><li>With whatever you set out to explain, you need to incite curiosity. Make the audience care. You also should be incremental with new concepts. </li><li>Don’t confuse everyone with too many concepts. Use metaphors to help people understand. </li><li>Finally, show people drafts of your talk to avoid the curse of knowledge – assuming that other people have the same context as you.</li></ul>

Explanation

Enhance your persuasion by offering a counterintuitive idea that convinces the audience that their worldview isn’t exactly right. If you can effectively prime people, add humour, and leverage anecdotes, you will increase your chances of success.

Persuasion

While there are many time-tested principles of public speaking, don’t be afraid to do things differently. Show your unique style and character. Challenge the norms. At the very least, be interesting. It also helps to believe in what you are talking about.

Do Things Differently

You have three options: write out a full script, write out a structure, or go unscripted.With a script, it’s sometimes difficult to translate written words into a talk. You also don’t want to sound too rehearsed, so if you go with a script, you need to fully master your memory of the talk so that you can add your character back in.Whereas scripts can make every word count, unscripted talks can be half-baked and rambling if they don’t have sufficient preparation. With unscripted talks, it can be helpful to have transition steps or a clear map of the journey that you can follow.

Script Vs Unscripted Vs Loosely Scripted

Have a mantra to keep you focused on why your talk counts, “This idea matters.” Five minutes before your talk, breathe, do push-ups, and drink water. Remember the power of vulnerability. If you screw up, say, “Oops, sorry, a little nervous here.” Look at the audience for sympathetic and encouraging faces. And finally, remember that it’s not about you, it’s about your idea.

It's Just Your Idea, Not You Personally

Wear something that makes you feel good, and rehearse your talk in that clothing. Ensure it is comfortable and you feel confident wearing it.

What To Wear

Zoom out to the vision of your talk. Show the possibilities that your idea unlocks. Have a clear call to action to help people engage with your idea or pay it forward. Paint a vision of what the world looks like when the idea spreads.

Ending Your Ted Talk

Tips on how you can become a master public speaker

books

Books

videos

Videos

Master Public Speaking

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A must-read insider’s guide to creating unforgettable speeches and changing people's minds. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview; it can be more powerful than anything in written form. This “invaluable guide” (Publishers Weekly) explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula, but there are tools that can empower any speaker. Since taking over TED in 2001, Chris Anderson has worked with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Salman Khan, Monica Lewinsky, and more— everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A must-read insider’s guide to creating unforgettable speeches and changing people's minds. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview; it can be more powerful than anything in written form. This “invaluable guide” (Publishers Weekly) explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula, but there are tools that can empower any speaker. Since taking over TED in 2001, Chris Anderson has worked with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Salman Khan, Monica Lewinsky, and more— everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage.

Chris Anderson

Ted Talks

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

The decisions that we make are rarely impartial. Most of us already know that we prefer to take advice from people that we like. We also tend to more easily agree with opinions formed by people we like. The tendency to judge in favour of people and symbols we like is called the bias from liking or loving.We are more likely to ignore faults and comply with the wishes of our friends or lovers rather than random strangers. We favour people, products, and actions associated with our favourite celebrities. Sometimes we even distort facts to facilitate love.

The Bias Of Love

<ul><li>Most of us already know that we prefer to take advice from people that we like.</li><li>We also tend to more easily agree with opinions formed by people we like.</li><li>The tendency to judge in favour of people and symbols we like is called the bias from liking or loving.</li><li>Besides the liking tendency, there are several other factors at play: commitment/consistency bias, a bias from stress, an influence from an authority, a reciprocation effect, and some direct incentives and disincentives.</li></ul>

All Are Decisions Are Biased In Some Way

The Halo Effect occurs when a specific, positive characteristic determines the way a person is viewed by others on other, unrelated traits.In the case of beauty, we automatically assign favourable yet unrelated traits such as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence, to those we find physically attractive. For the most part, this attribution happens unnoticed.

Appearance and the Halo Effect

<ul><li>We like people who resemble us.</li><li>Whether it's appearance, opinions, lifestyle or background, we tend to favour people who in some dimension are most similar to ourselves.</li><li>Similarity bias extends to even such ambiguous traits as interests and background.</li><li>Even if the similarities are superficial, we still may end up liking the other person more than we should.</li></ul>

Similarity

<ul><li>We love to be loved and, consequently, we love those that love us.</li><li>Joe Girard, the world's "greatest car salesman", prints "I like you" and his name on every holiday card he sends out.</li><li>Our reaction can be so automatic, that we develop liking even when the attempt to win our favour is an obvious one.</li></ul>

Praise and Compliments Affect Us

<ul><li>Repeated exposure can be a powerful tool in establishing liking.</li><li>Take a picture of yourself and create a mirror image in one of the editing tools. Choose which one you like better</li><li>Show the two pictures to a friend and ask her to choose the better one as well. Your friend will prefer the true print, whereas you will think you look better in the mirror image</li></ul>

Familiarity

<ul><li>Charisma or attraction are not prerequisites for liking - a mere association with someone you like or trust can be enough</li><li>The bias from an association shows itself in many other domains and is especially strong when we associate with the person we like the most - ourselves</li><li>For example, a sports fan and his local team can be highly personal even though the association is often based only on shared location</li><li>Even a trivial association with success may reap benefits and breed confidence</li></ul>

Loving by Association and Referral

<ul><li>Someone who is conditioned to like the right people and pick their idols carefully can greatly benefit from these biases.</li><li>The time to call out the defence is when we feel ourselves liking the practitioner more than we should under the circumstances under which we feel manipulated.</li><li>Focus on our feelings rather than the other person's actions.</li><li>Ask yourself how much of what you feel is due to liking versus the actual facts of the situation.</li></ul>

How To Curb The Liking

The tendency to judge in favor of people and symbols we like is called the bias from liking or loving and it affects how we make decisions. Let's explore...

Bias from Liking/Loving: Why We Comply With Those We Love - Farnam Street

<ul><li>Our lives are filled with storytelling, from the stories we tell our friends over dinner, to the ones we tell at eulogies, during toasts, at job interviews and on dates.</li><li>Stories help us relate to each other and build community.</li><li>Leveling up our storytelling game can lead to more meaningful connections.</li></ul>Here's their step-by-step guide on how to tell a story, from an idea to delivery.

The Art Of Storytelling

Does the story you want to tell have a beginning, a middle and an end? Does it have tension? Does it show some sort of transformation? These are the basic elements that make an anecdote blossom into a full-bodied story.When you're telling a story, you aren't just describing what happened when you walked into the coffee shop and saw your ex on a date. You're telling us how that moment felt emotionally, how you were affected, how you reacted and how you're a different person after having endured that moment.

Understand that A Story Is More than A Scene or An Anecdote

Each of us has hundreds of stories we could tell. How do we know which one to pursue? Think back to moments in your life that really shifted you in some way.Big decisions are a good place to find stories; so are embarrassing moments and mistakes. Think of a time you did something but it didn't go as planned. Within these kinds of prompts, you can begin to explore moments of vulnerability.

Select a Meaningful Story

Once you find the story you want to tell, put it under a magnifying glass to blow it up big. Where were you (physically, mentally, emotionally) at that moment? How did it impact your life? What were the results?Remember that in any great story you're not just sharing events that happened, you're also sharing the thoughts and feelings running through you during those events.

Develop Your Story

A good rule of thumb is to start in the action of the story – this will draw people in. From there, ask yourself if you'll tell your story in chronological order, if you'll start at the end and find your way back to the beginning, or if you want, tell it in a series of flashbacks instead of a linear structure.Don't worry about getting too fancy with the structure – often, telling a story chronologically is the best way to go.

Figure out The Structure

<ul><li>By this point, you know the moment your story is centered on, what the stakes or tensions are and how you want to tell the story. Writing the ending can be the hardest part.</li><li>You just have to end the story in a different place than where you began.</li><li>The key to a good ending is showing the audience your transformation over the course of the story, even if it's a slight transformation.</li></ul>

Understand how You've Changed by The End

If you're considering telling a story rooted in vulnerability or trauma, it's important to consider whether you're emotionally ready to share that story.Here are some signs you might not be ready to tell a story publicly:<ul><li>if you get stuck on one scene and aren't able to come out of it because you're reliving it – this can happen with traumatic events and could be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder. </li><li>if it's tough to find an ending to a story, it may mean that you're still living it. You might need to "press pause" and return to the story when you've had more time to process it.</li></ul>

Ask Yourself if You're Ready to Share the Story

It's natural to feel nervous before sharing a story aloud. Become very familiar with your story. Practice enough to be comfortable telling it from memory, but the Moth team recommends that you don't memorize it word for word. If you memorize it verbatim, your delivery can sound stiff and you might go blank.A good strategy is to really learn the words you want to use for the beginning and end of your story, but keep your notes in between as bullet points. That way you can naturally fill the gaps, but you have your most important elements well-rehearsed.

Don't Memorize Stories. They Are Meant To Be Alive

Keep it short and tight. If you're telling a story in a more interactive environment, like over dinner, remember that the purpose of storytelling is to engage with others. It's not about taking the spotlight for the entire time you're with someone. You want to offer a jumping-off point for someone else to share their own story, too.

Remember that Storytelling Is Not About the Storyteller – It's About Connection

Storytelling creates connections and builds community. In this episode of Life Kit, storytelling coaches from The Moth give a step-by-step guide to telling good stories.

How to tell a captivating story — from a wedding toast to a job interview : Life Kit

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