If you’re feeling blocked about which story to tell, I've got you. Learn why the "most dramatic" story isn't always the best one to tell, and discover how to pick the stories that matter to YOU. Plus, I'll share how one of my very first storytelling performances taught me a lesson about being “myself.”
If you’re feeling blocked about which story to tell, I've got you. Learn why the "most dramatic" story isn't always the best one to tell, and discover how to pick the stories that matter to YOU. Plus, I'll share how one of my very first storytelling performances taught me a lesson about being “myself.”
WATCH “MOVING” – My Moth story about Laszlo and The Wolf (you can watch me discover I love storytelling IN REAL TIME, before your very eyes)
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You are back! I'm so glad you're back. If you regret not going to Coachella because you think you'd have a story about it, if you wish you'd become a neurosurgeon because you think you'd be more interesting at parties, if you just feel like nothing you've done is worth telling a story about, this episode is for you. I'm Micaela Blei and welcome to The Story Letter, the podcast about telling better stories. I'm so glad you're here. We are starting at the beginning: how to choose which story to share when you want to share one. Now, maybe you're thinking nothing interesting has happened to me that I could share in a job interview or I'm not ready to talk about the big thing in my life to my new friends and who wants to hear about the small stuff on a Substack. All kinds of ways that we doubt ourselves and we doubt that what we have to tell is worth telling, but choosing a story doesn't have to be hard, and it also doesn't have to be super vulnerable.
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You do not have to choose the hardest, biggest, most tragic story of your life to be telling a story worth telling. There's a ton of ways to brainstorm a story from your life that you'd like to tell, but I'm going to share just two ideas with you for now that I find really helpful and actually kind of reassuring. The first one is: start with what matters to you, not what you think people want to hear. This is very tough for those of us who have grown up our whole lives thinking we have to be entertaining to be allowed in a room. That's a real thing. We think that we have to sort of earn people's attention, but you don't have to. You really don't. You can make a map or a list of stuff in your life that you like talking about that you would want to talk about even that you're curious to try talking about.
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That list can change all the time, and that list can be the start of the stories that you want to tell, and that way you're not starting with what is interesting enough about me. You're starting with: what do I want to share about myself? It's a really small but very essential shift, and I want to say those ideas might not feel like full fledged stories yet. You might be thinking, yes, I did go on a senior singles cruise with my grandmother 10 years ago, but who wants to hear about it, right? I didn't, by the way, that's one of my big regrets in life, which is a story for another time, but you might be thinking that, and that is okay because we've got this whole season to take your experience from idea to story. But I will give you a quick idea. Now, if you have something you'd like to talk about and you're not sure how it would work as a story, like a capital S story, just ask yourself, how did things change for me because of what happened in this experience?
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If you can answer that question, you are already halfway to a story. So the second thing, so there's that. There's “find what matters to you and start from there.” And then the second thing is: once you've got some idea of what you want to talk about and what you don't want to talk about, which is just as important, there's something that a researcher, Kristen Langellier called Situated Stories. This is the idea in sociolinguistics that whenever you tell a story, you're telling a specific version of that story to these people in this context for some reason of your own. We don't always do this consciously, but if you think about it, you're telling a different story of the same thing that happened. You're telling a different version if you teach second grade and you're talking to your class, versus when you're at a party with your old college friends, you are just telling a different version and there's a different reason that you're telling it.
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So this is not always conscious, but you can make it conscious. You can think about it with a little more intention. You can think about: who am I going to talk to? And why do I want to tell this story? Now, this can do a few really helpful things, even in this process of thinking of a story to tell, because number one, thinking about your audience and your purpose can literally help you think of what story you want to tell. You can think about what would they relate to, what do you want them to understand about you that can help you find a story that could work for this particular moment, right? Number two, it can reassure you that there is no objectively perfect story because there can't be, there can only be the right story for right now. This is exactly like choosing a snack at Trader Joe's.
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Three, I think your brilliant brain is doing a lot of this work for you, so you might want to tell a certain story and you don't know why, and it isn't until afterwards you realize what you were working out or trying to do. We choose the stories we tell for so many different reasons. Side note, this was actually a big part of my PhD dissertation research. My research was all about narrative identity, which is the idea that we don't just express our identities with the stories we tell. We make sense of our world through the stories we tell. So we shape our identities by telling stories. We sometimes unconsciously choose stories to tell, to share, that will help us navigate those identities better. I love this idea because I see myself doing it. I see the people I love doing it all the time. So here's what that means for you right now.
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When you're brainstorming, you can map out: who do I want to tell this story to? And this is the really important part. What would I like to do with this story? Do I want to try to make sense of something confusing? Do I want to feel entertaining? Do I want to reassure some kids? Do I want to let my dad know I love him? What's my purpose in sharing this story? And you don't have to know that purpose right now. You can just ask yourself those questions. That's also totally fine. But if you're aware of your purpose and your context first, you might be less likely to feel blank or blocked to think of a story because you're not waiting for that perfect, perfect story idea to present itself. I want to look at a couple examples of this idea that we use stories consciously or not to help ourselves navigate life and to connect to the people who are listening.
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Maybe with these examples also, you'll land on a story you might want to tell or you might feel better about the story you're thinking of. So let's say you're in the middle of a giant scary work transition. You just got a promotion that you don't know you're ready for. You might find yourself telling your friends about a time you were terrified to ask out a girl, but you did it. And she said yes. Those might not seem connected, right? Because partly it's just a fun story. Also though, that story might be reminding you that yes, you can do brave things. You've done them before and you can do them again. So are you telling a work story to your friends? No. But are you reminding yourself what you are capable of? Absolutely, yes. Or another example, maybe you're in the middle of some very stressful relationship stuff and you find yourself reminding your partner of a story about something really sweet they did, or maybe something really sweet you did.
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You're kind of reminding both of you that yes, you have a wonderful life together, even when it's hard, you can remember what you're fighting for or the opposite. Maybe you're about to break up, you're scared to be single again, and you find yourself remembering things with this person. Maybe you're telling friends or just telling yourself about that when they happen, you said they weren't a big deal, you didn't really think about it, and now you're realizing there were maybe some flags you missed. That means this breakup is the right thing, right? We tell a story for a reason. My last example is actually my story for the week. I'm going to tell you a very short version of a story I first told 14 years ago, one of the first times I ever got on stage to share a personal story. And then I'm going to share a little behind the scenes of how I ended up telling it that first time, and why I think, without knowing it, I chose this particular story to tell.
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My first year of teaching third grade, I had no ability or frankly desire to keep the kids quiet and still, I really liked everyone running around. I really liked doing stuff that involved us moving, but I did have to keep people still sometimes. And there was this kid, Laszlo, who just could not sit still. He was brilliant. He was hilarious. We got along so well, but he was always just kind of vibrating in his seat. And that year, that year that I was teaching him, we had a wolf assembly, like a real wolf was coming to school and it was just for the middle school, but I got special permission to get my third grade class to come see the wolf because they loved animals. And my class was so excited, but I told them, we have to be really well behaved for this assembly since it's a real wolf.
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And of course, I'm thinking about Laszlo specifically, sort of shaking in his seat. And we get down there and we're the youngest so we go in the very front, and Laszlo is sitting next to me and he's so tense and he's trying to be still, and I realize he's actually really scared. The other kids are psyched, but he is terrified. And the principal says, okay, boys and girls, here's the wolf. And this wolf comes out on a leash with her trainer, and she's huge, and she's all white. She's so beautiful, honestly, just very calm and very massive. She feels like she fills the room. All the kids sort of go completely quiet, and their necks kind of get longer when she walks in. So she's an educational wolf. That's what it's called. Her name is Atka, she comes from this preserve. And the whole point of this assembly, I guess, is wolves don't eat children.
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They're not fairytale villains. They're real animals. That's okay. That's the point. And the trainer says, so if everyone can stay really quiet and calm, I'm going to take Atka off the leash because she's going to sniff around and make sure that this space is safe for her. She's really safe, but she needs to feel safe too. I'm thinking, this is a terrible idea. This is a whole wolf. I haven't totally internalized this idea that wolves are not dangerous to us yet, but she lets her off the leash and Atka starts pacing the gym. We're all holding our breath, and Atka is pausing at students and just looking at them. And she stopped at a couple of kids, and then she gets to our row and she gets to Laszlo, and she stops and just looks at him, and he looks at her and he's completely still, and he just very slowly takes my hand and they're just staring at each other, and I think to myself, maybe I should be a wolf.
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And afterwards I asked Laszlo, how was the assembly? Was it better than you thought it would be? And he says, I think at first Atka was really afraid, but then I don't think she was afraid anymore. So that's what happened in the story. But here's what was happening before this story got on stage. We're talking about how we choose the stories we tell, right? It had been six months since I taught third grade, and I missed teaching so much. I'd been such a goofy teacher, and I missed being Ms. Blei. And all my grad classes, those were fine, but they were so serious. There was this one class, this very intense performance class where the professor made us do all kinds of fairly strange performance exercises, which if it's a clown class, that's really fun. But this class was very earnest once we were doing karaoke performances, because of course we were.
(11:43):
And I got up to sing finally, something a little silly, and my professor gave me the direction to get on my hands and knees and howl and be a wolf, but it wasn't a goofy direction. She clearly wanted me to be more angry, and I didn't want to be a wolf. I just wanted to be a Muppet. She wanted me to access some animal part of myself, and I just wanted to wear striped socks and sing Bob Dylan. Basically, I really missed third grade. But the experience, that karaoke experience, reminded me of this wolf assembly and of Laszlo, who I specifically missed a lot. I loved that kid. So when I got on stage at a storytelling show, while I was in that serious performance class, what was driving me was I wanted to relive my glory days and remind myself I could be goofy and recreate that feeling of having third graders in my life. So was that Wolf Assembly moment the most important moment in my life? No. But telling the story felt really important at that time. It was so satisfying. It helped me make the transition from elementary school teacher to whatever I am now, and it got me hooked on storytelling in general.
(13:03):
So let's recap. When you're finding a story to share with people, you do not have to tell the most tragic or amazing thing that ever happened to you. Yes, we hear sensational stories in the media all the time. So we're conditioned to think the worst thing that ever happened to us is the most interesting thing about us. But I'd rather you start with something you care about that means something to you, not even means the most to you. And tell us about that, because like we said at the start, stories aren't just themselves in a vacuum. They are where we tell them and to whom and why. And even just the act of telling a story can do something for us that we never expected. So here's your prompt for this week. Here's what I want you to think about when you're sifting through your stories to see what you might like to tell. First, yes, start with things that matter to you, not just the things you think people would find interesting.
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Then think about who you might tell your story to, where you're going to be and what you'd like to do with your story. So here's examples of what you might want to do. Do you want to make your listeners feel closer to you? Do you want to sell an idea? Do you want to feel heard, illustrate a specific point, make sense of a memory that you don't understand yet? Just get it out there and see who else might relate? There are so many options. So with all that in mind, see what experiences or memories or stories are coming to you, and most importantly, think about what would be fun to tell. Next week, we're going to talk about revisiting old stories with new frames. So no matter where you are on that stuck scale or wondering scale, you might have some old stories you can revisit and repurpose in some new ways and find new life for them. I hope you'll come back and join us! At this point, you know whether you want to be on this ride with me or not. So subscribe to The Story Letter, and if you want to sound more interesting at parties, my recommendation is, bring up The Story Letter during an awkward pause. It really keeps the conversation flowing.
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This episode was written and hosted by me, Micaela Blei. It was produced by Laura Boach, and theme music was the Duke of New York by Adrian D. Walther. I'm Micaela Blei, and this has been The Story Letter Podcast. I'm so glad we're doing this.
OUTTAKES:
How do you feel about me swearing? I'm sorry. I have to pause because my producer is laughing too hard at my hilarious joke. I'll give her a moment to get herself together. I have a new show for you to watch! Rivals. Have you heard of it? It is so fun. Set in 1986 in the Cotswolds of England against the backdrop of cutthroat cable television in England. And it's two men who fucking hate each other, and it's based on, and it's like family drama, but lots of romance drama. And it's based on a blockbuster novel from 1987. So it's all super campy and super dramatic.