Turn Your Life’s Moments Into a Cohesive, Powerful Story With These 5 Steps

The following is adapted from Story Like You Mean It.

In today’s hyper-connected world of social media posts and smartphones, it seems like the people around us are more engaged with their devices than with the world around them. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, these obstacles make it hard for many of us to find and develop real connections with other people. 

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. You don’t have to spend your life struggling to find deep, meaningful connections. There’s a powerful tool that can help you cut through the distractions and false connectedness: that tool is story. 

Human beings connect through story. It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to or what the situation is: when you have a cohesive, powerful story you can share, you have the ability to forge a connection with your audience. 

This is especially helpful if you find yourself at a new job, or just entering college for the first time. It’s helpful if you’re looking for a romantic partner, looking to bond with your colleagues, or talking to a professor. In fact, if you think about it, every single person can benefit from having a cohesive, powerful story.

The good news is you can create that story using five steps. And once you work through those, you’ll find that building deep connections is no longer an elusive, frustrating, seemingly impossible task. You’ll be able to cut through the distractions and capture your listener’s attention, and you’ll be able to connect with them on a meaningful level. Ready? Let’s get started.

#1: Sort Your Blue Dots

Your story all starts with what I call your blue dots. What are blue dots? They’re the powerful moments in your life—the formative experiences experiences that make you who you are, influence how you view the world, and inform who you want to be. 

So, the first step to creating a powerful, cohesive story is to identify those blue dots (your top nine, anyway) and then sort them. 

To do that, you need to write them down. Describe the experience, including what competency it highlights. In other words, think about what strengths or abilities were at play in your brain during that particular experience. A few examples might be leadership, adaptability, communication, or creativity. Think about the motivation as to why you acted like you did. Include all of this in your description.

When you finish, you’ll have a descriptive list of each of your chosen nine blue dots. You’ve condensed the experiences, you’ve explained why you might include them, and you’ve listed the competencies and motivations they highlight. 

#2: Consider Your Intention

So now what do you do? You’ve got all of this information that you can study, but it looks overwhelming. No cause for alarm. The key is that you’re not going to use all nine dots. 

This is the story of three dots. That’s right: all you need are a hero dot, a collaborative dot, and a virtuous dot is all it takes to anchor you in the past to show how you’ve become the person you are today and will become in the near future. And when you’ve done that, you have a powerful story that will connect you with your listener.

That’s because the listener wants to know how you came to be the person you are. You have a hero dot that anchors you by showing that you can overcome obstacles en route to working with others. And a collaborative dot that shows you’re not just this strong hero who battles obstacles all day. 

You show them you’re an obstacle overcomer whom they might want to work with because they hear that you’re collaborative. And that through your collaboration, you’re heading toward this peak in your story, which is your virtuous moment. 

The key question to help select your dots is this: What’s your intention with this story? What do you want to achieve? 

If you’re going to tell it to yourself, perhaps it’s to be clear about who you really are, to help with decisions you’re making. Pretty neat, huh? If you’re telling it to others, it might be to establish your credibility or reputation as a new leader or to reshape how people see you.

#3: Analyze Your Audience

For a powerful, engaging story, you need to decide which pieces of your chosen experiences to include and how you’ll craft your message.

The hero dot you choose to begin your story depends on whom you’re talking to, so you need to do a bit of audience analysis.

Who’s listening to your story and where? Maybe you’re at a conference with peers in the financial sector. Or is the audience a mix of leaders, middle managers, and new inductees? Will someone else introduce you? Or are you in a casual setting in the pub? Is this a real meeting or a Zoom video call? You can see the power of place and people work together.

Your intention in telling your story and your audience analysis will guide which dot you’re selecting and why, and also how much of the dot that you unveil.

#4: Adjust Your Story

As you’re considering all these things, be reverent to your blue-dot choices. You want to tell the story that best represents your narrative identity, who you’ve become through the life span arc of these three moments: hero (past), collaborative (near now or now), and virtuous (near now or likely future). 

When you have your core story, it can be adjusted or contextualized for different audiences. You can shape it into a particular environment. 

Once you’ve sorted and labeled the story elements, such as motives and competencies, consider the details to include. Write each moment down. Study them until you can say, “This is the moment. This is the competency. This is why it must be included.” 

Use plenty of details when you do this, too. You don’t need to end up with ten pages (a paragraph or two per moment will do), but you do want to make sure each moment has context and connects to the other moments.

#5: Tune Your Voice

Once you’ve got your story down, you need to tune your voice. Test it by reading it out loud, recording it, and listening to yourself.

As you’re listening, consider your intent. Do you emerge as the character that you thought you would when you started selecting your three dots? Go back and check. Was it clear? How do you know? Rewrite the parts that don’t work as well.

Make sure you can identify your core message. What’s your theme? Is it clear enough to carry through the three formative experiences (hero, collaborative, and virtuous)?

Ask yourself what you would tweak based on your audience. Do you need to be more analytical? Are you too creative? Are there details that digress or are disruptive for the listener? 

Think about your pacing. Reading your story out loud is the best way to notice and correct parts of it that you feel don’t really capture everything. People have a habit of speeding up when they lose their way. If that happens, why did you speed up? 

Finally, think about punctuation. You don’t have to drop the mic or puff your chest out and pump your arms like some crazy person in an old-school video. But do make sure that the audience knows that the story has actually ended or is ending.

You Can Do This

By following these five steps, you’ll have a solid method to break through the false connectedness of social media. You’ll be able to use this method to reach across the divide caused by our addiction to our devices. It may seem like a lot of work at first, but once you start getting into the flow of it, I think you’ll find that crafting a story that invites your audience to connect with you comes naturally.  

And the best part is, this method fits every situation. So whether you’re talking to your boss, your professor, or someone you met at a party; you’ll be able to tweak your story so that it fits. The end result? You’ll be able to shape how other people see you, demonstrate your value, and find a deep connection. You just have to find those blue dots and then weave them into your compelling story.

For more advice on developing a powerful, engaging story, you can find Story Like You Mean It on Amazon.

Dr. Dennis Rebelo is a professor, speaker, and career coach. He is the creator of the Peak Storytelling model, his research-based method for crafting the narrative of who you are and what drives you and why, utilized by former professional athletes turned nonprofit leaders as well as entrepreneurs, CEOs, guidance professionals, and advisers throughout the world.

Dr. Rebelo, former president of Alex and Ani University and co-founder of the Sports Mind Institute, recently received the 2020 Thomas J. Carroll Award for Teaching Excellence at Roger Williams University. He currently resides in Rhode Island.