Great story! Except... it's not a story at all

I’m sitting on a rock cliff, overlooking the ocean, with a big goofy smile on my face. 

I’ve just finished high-school. I’ve got a girlfriend. I’m away on holiday with my friends, who are all sitting next to me. Life couldn’t be better. 

Then the first wave hits. 

We get a little splashed, everyone giggles and we can tell more waves are coming. 

One of my friends gets up, and when the next wave hits the cliff, he makes a heavy metal pose and shouts. 

We laugh, and join in. 

The waves get a little taller, and we struggle to hold our poses as the water strikes us, trying not to crack up. 

The waves get stronger and we shout louder, putting our hands up in the air or making air guitar moves, and I feel like I’m starring on my own MTV video. 

Then the next thing I know is I’m slammed onto the rock and, as the water moves back out, I go with it. 

Towards the cliff’s edge. 

I throw my arms forward and my right hand finds a nook, and I grab it. I stop sliding. 

I look around and all my friends are there, but they’re all down too. Nobody is laughing now. 

Another wave comes, I barely manage to hold on, but as it moves out it’s stronger than anything I’ve felt so far. My fingers start slipping, and I know that if I’m hit again I’m done for. 

But I’m not. The ocean settles for just a moment, and I manage to scramble up and get off the rock. We all do. 

On the way back to the house, everyone is a little quieter. 

We try to make some jokes about what just happened, but our hearts are not in it. 

We’re 17, and we just learned we’re not immortal. 

A story… or an anecdote? 

I’ve told this one many times before, and it usually sounded like this: 

“When I was 17, I was on holiday with some friends at Praia da Ferrugem, and we were on a rock cliff joking around, making some heavy metal poses when the waves hit. Then a really strong one came, I fell, and if I hadn’t managed to grab a little nook I’d have been washed out to sea. Closest I ever came to dying, it was terrifying.”

The language is more casual, it’s shorter, there’s less context, but the most important difference is this: 

There’s no point. I’m deriving no meaning from it, it’s just a thing that happened. 

That’s ok, most of the “stories” people tell are just like that, but to me those are not stories; they’re anecdotes. 

A story is… 

I’ve often said that a story is a real-life example that makes a point, but here’s another way to think about it: 

Story = anecdote + meaning 

Get something that happened, figure out what it means, and tell us at the end (or make it so obvious you don’t need to tell us). 

You can craft the language, set the context better, up the stakes, all that good stuff. But the most important thing to turn an anecdote into a story worth telling is adding some meaning to it. 

And here’s a bonus: 

Once you add meaning to it, that thing that happened to you becomes more… meaningful 😅

Now it tells you something about yourself. Something you perhaps didn’t remember - or never actually learned. 

It’s great to have a life full of anecdotes… 

But not as great as a life full of meaning 🤘

-Francisco 

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking on the Red Dot, take this Scorecard and instantly discover how likely your idea is to be accepted by a TED-style organizing committee

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

Thanks for reading! Reply any time.