My family is having dinner, and we’re discussing if it’s ok for Alice, my 9-year old, to go on a cruise through Italy with her grandparents.
“Alice, if you go on this cruise there’s a few things you just can’t do.”
“Ok.”
“First of all, no acrobatics anywhere on the ship. Last thing we need is for you fall overboard and drown.”
She laughs and says, “Ok, I won’t do that.”
“You’ve also got to remember your grandparents are very old, you can’t run off and leave them behind.”
“I know, Dad.”
“I mean it, baby. If you get lost from them in the middle of some Italian town, what are you gonna do? You haven’t got a phone, and you don’t speak Italian, so how will you ever find your way back to them?”
As soon as I say this Olivia, her sister, perks up, and says,
“I speak Italian!”
“Do you?”
“I do!”
“Ok, let’s hear it.”
She puffs up her chest, puts both hands up, fingers touching like the traditional Italian gesture, and says, in an exaggerated accent:
“Parlo Italiano!”
I wait to see if anymore is coming, but she just smiles wide and repeats, “Parlo Italiano!” while she moves her hands back and forth. We all crack up laughing.
“Ok, monster, you clearly speak Italian, but Alice doesn’t, so she needs to be more careful…”
Olivia is only 5-years old.
Life’s challenges still seem pretty simple for her.
Some days… I really envy her.
Too big to fail… or to succeed?
One of the basic mistakes when it comes to storytelling is thinking that a story needs to be “big” to be worth telling.
That’s why you get so many people sharing stories of climbing mountains, completing ultramarathons, having incredible successes in business, surviving incredible struggles and changing their life in the process. Those stories are worth sharing, of course… just not often. Or by most people. Or anywhere except very specific contexts. The problem is that they’re simply not relatable enough for whatever lessons they offer to be of much use — but these are the stories we come across all the time on social media, the media, and entertainment.
So not only they don’t work so well, but big stories also screw up the idea of “story” for most: people think that unless it’s some epic adventure or hardship, it’s not worth telling, when in fact it’s the opposite: the smaller the story, the easier it is to use it. It's also why many people think they “don't have stories”: what they really mean is they don't have “big” stories.
The smaller the better
Take the story I told above. Not only it’s super quick to craft and tell, but it’s also easy to adapt to different points. I can focus on:
How much confidence we feel when we know very little (something like the Dunning-Kruger effect)
The way children see the world
How some people will only think of the positive aspects of an experience without worrying about the obstacles (in this case Alice would need to say more about why she wants to go, I kept that out of the story)
How do you avoid or navigate an unfamiliar situation (like being lost in a foreign country)
The story is easy to understand, is fun to tell, super easy to relate to, and it opens the doors for many conversations. It doesn’t prove anything, but you don’t need it to. That’s not what you use most stories for anyway.
So pay attention to these small moments in your life where something unexpected happens. (Pay attention and write them down, or you’ll lose them!)
They are the most versatile stories you can ever tell. And, the more you tell small stories, the more used to storytelling you’ll feel. Eventually, it becomes almost like another language you speak – but your vocabulary will probably be a little larger than my daughter’s Italian ;-)
Tell your small stories, and leave the big ones for Hollywood.
I’m not sure this is true everywhere, but when it comes to storytelling…
Size really does matter 🤘
-Francisco
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