5 Steps To Share Your Story That Takes The Ego Out & Puts Humanity Back In

Most people don't like talking about themselves. It feels narcissistic, like you're placing a strobing spotlight on your ego, obviously desperate for external validation.

But I have a rebuttal. If you share your story in chronological order—I was born, then became the best ever, then won all these awards, and now I'm better than you—then sure, that can be seen as grasping for recognition and acceptance, and that may work against you.

I'm here to remind you that your value is not your resume. You're not just here to build credibility or litigate your accomplishments to prove your worth, because that is not a sustainable motivation.

You're here to build connections with those whom you're demanding attention from (ie your audience on social, in sales meetings, in slideshows you do). And that connection comes from sharing things about your experience that go far beyond your resume. They go into the human side of what you do, not the factual side.

The reason behind this is that facts (your bullet-point history) do not elicit emotion, they deal with the logical part of the brain. Stories and narratives, however, deal with imagination. They allow people to imagine something they probably won't ever fully experience as you did. It lets them in on the emotion, the physical sensations, and the way your mind processed things. Leaders and athletes are often afraid of sharing their story for fear of coming across as egotistical or shamelessly self-promoting. It's a real concern for anyone wanting to leverage their experience, and their story, for growth, so I get it.

Using these 5 steps will help showcase your reflection, perspective, and the context of why you think, feel, and act the way you do, and allows others to join in the journey, versus merely reacting to the events that happened to you. It builds trust, and rapport, and creates a boomerang effect where your audience is personally driven to come back for more because they know you're going to share something of value.

Step 1: Pick one moment that has an element of challenge. Describe who was there, what you felt, and what was going on.

Step 2: Describe the challenge and tension.

Step 3: Describe the thing that finally allowed you to get around that challenge. Was it tactical, strategic, a new plan, a different mindset, a mentor?

Step 4: Describe the transformation. The thing that got you around the challenge, how did it change you emotionally, physically, and psychologically?

Step 5: Share the lesson. What did you learn from that, and how have you embedded that lesson into your life, your training, your work? How does it help you avoid future challenges of the same flavor?

Using these 5 steps will give you the control of your story that you have been craving—and it will give people a reason to pay attention to you because you gave them the one thing we all want in life—connection.