How Can You Quickly Find Relevant Stories To Make Your Speech More Influential?

Here’s a quick tip to help you find relevant stories the next time you have to prepare a presentation or speech…

Create a story file.

This is a folder on your phone, desktop, or (if you’re old school) a pad of paper.?

Create a list of incidents from your life. If a story is memorable and you still talk about it, there’s a reason. Here’s a partial list of the types of stories to record:

• Your earliest childhood memories
• Experiences with family members
• Incidents at school
• Sports memories
• Relationship experiences
• Work-related anecdotes
• Vacation memories

When logging one of these experiences, don’t write a lot of information. Jot down a few words that trigger your memory.

Once you have your list, you could create a second column in which you list all of the potential lessons from each experience. Every story and experience has the potential for multiple points.

Don’t use this list to create all of the details, use it as a quick reference tool.

To make the most of this list, it should become a habit. Each time a memory pops up or you experience a new event, add it to your story file.

When I was first given this idea, I put a reminder alarm on my phone and every evening, I would add stories to my file. Once I made it a habit, I now longer needed the alarm.

Develop this habit in the next time you need to put together a presentation or speech, even on short notice, you have plenty of stories to refer to make your points.

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