Stop Telling Your Story

Stop

Medium has become one of my favorite places to begin writing my drafts. The clean interface and the ease of use are incredible, but I have noticed something about the platform that bothers me.

When you open Medium and click on “New Story”, the cursor starts blinking and you see the words:

Tell your story…

I erase this as soon as I can and here is why I think you should too.

Telling

Because for the reader of whatever story you are about to tell, your story doesn’t matter. What matters is the story that you are telling through them. It’s not really your story. It’s their story filtered through your experience.

This was driven home for me earlier today while I was playing with my five year old girl. I was trying to balance a pool noodle on my hand and I called out to let her know just how awesome I was and she said this:

I don’t care about your tricks, I care about me.

Sure, she is five, but this is the way we process almost all of the information that comes our way. We don’t care about the tricks, we care about ourselves.

Your

So if you are someone who is telling a story, a story about your life, a story about your brand, or any story at all, then you might want to remember this.

The person reading your story doesn’t care about your tricks. They care about themselves.

And if you understand this perspective and are able and willing to write in a way that conveys who you are and how your experience has shaped who you have become in such a way that it connects with who the reader is and who they want to become, then the impact of every story you tell will be exponentially more effective.

And in the same way that is it not your story, it is not the readers’ story either.

When a story is told well, it becomes our story.

Story

Tell our story…

Kirk Wheeler is the host of Discover The Road where he writes about how to question everything, make progress, and embrace the journey. For ideas about what it means to live an authentic life, join his free newsletter.