First step in storytelling: Get out of the library
Storytelling is the communication medium that gatekeepers listen to. You’ve spent hours studying to get a great GPA, ace those AP or high level classes, and score as high as you can on standardized tests. The one thing left to do is craft a compelling, relevant and engaging story. This will require a change in your mindset because now you are the subject of your studies.
It’s time to get out of the library and get real: Indiana Jones has some good advice.
First time job seekers, college and graduate school applicants, and career climbers need to learn to storytell to achieve their desired goals. If you don’t tell your story, someone else will but not in the way you intended.
Storytelling requires self-awareness first…Stepping away from formal learning, test prep, or working for someone else. Getting real with yourself.
“I ended up building an empire out of my imagination…So be brave. Be amazing. Let them see you…You be yourself…You truly finally always be yourself,” said Shonda Rhimes during her commencement address to Dartmouth’s graduating class of 2014.
Shonda is the queen of television. Heard of Grey’s Anatomy? That’s Shonda’s. How to Get Away with Murder? Also Shonda’s. Scandal? Yep, you guessed it. Another Shonda production.
Rhimesian storytelling is rich. Characters are outspoken, driven, ambitious, and mercurial. Her story plots keep you on the edge of your seat. Dialogue is amazingly rich and characters’ soliloquies pack a one two punch of surprise that anyone would actually admit that about themselves or say that to somebody else. Her stories are relatable because they tap into our own vulnerabilities, dark sides, ambitions, needs for power without judgment, and at times fulfill fantasies of a world without justice. She’s a modern day Agatha Christie enabled by cinematic technology.
Even master storytellers struggle with their own self-awareness. Telling a story is much different than telling your own true story. Developing self-awareness will help you to uncover some things you may have been avoiding, which will then chart the course for your authentic path and story development.
By 2014, Shonda was one of the richest, most well-known and influential women in the United States. Despite her success and fame, she struggled when the world asked her to be present and share herself with them. She would turn down once-in-a-lifetime invitations, thinking she didn’t deserve them. She didn’t feel as comfortable in a room full of real people as she did in the story worlds she created for her characters. So she said “no” to life’s invitations time and time again. She thought she wasn’t good enough to say yes, even though she was a millionaire several times over.
Finally, her sister called her out on this. Thanksgiving dinner in the Rhimes household, 2014, and Delorse accused Shonda, “You never say yes to anything.” Shonda was taken aback, and realized it was true: she was saying no to amazing opportunities because of her insecurities. It was time to start saying yes. The year that followed — or her “Year of Yes” — changed her life when she confronted things she had been avoiding, leading her to developing emotional clarity and self-awareness.
Shonda’s 2015 memoir, “Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person” recounts her struggles with being herself in real life, and offers readers some tips to developing self-awareness. The first of which is to affirm your inner voice no matter how different it is. Shonda said she hid her inner voice in the character of Cristina Yang from Grey’s Anatomy and had her say all the things Shonda was afraid to say in real life. Over time, she realized she could make the world a better place by facing her fears and anxieties and by speaking up. You don’t have to be as famous as Shonda to do the same. She believes that you just need to be a person, and that no matter who you are, just believe that your experience matters. You have the power to make an impact and change another person’s life or your own for the better.
Self-awareness is the most important cornerstone of EQ and the basis for good, authentic storytelling.
You need to develop it to ground yourself in the truth of who you really are, which is what your goals are based on. Being able to identify your strengths, weaknesses, dreams, values, principles, aspirations, and goals matter a lot! You won’t be motivated to develop your core stories until you make sure your goals are your own, not somebody else’s.
Self-awareness is “the ability to see ourselves clearly — to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world around us,” explains Tasha Eurich, author of “Insight: Why We’re Not As Self-Aware As We Think”. Her book is based on the premise of how seeing ourselves clearly is the key to succeeding at work, in relationships, and in life. It requires mindfulness — being conscious of what we are doing in the moment and why we are doing it. When we lack self-awareness, we are not in touch with our emotions, thoughts, actions and motivations, as well as how others see us.
Eurich breaks down self awareness into two parts: the internal (how we see ourselves) and the external (how others see us). Due to the “Better Than Average Effect,” most people rate themselves as above average on many qualities when compared to their peers. This is statistically impossible given the properties of a standard bell curve, which is the basis of statistics. Couple this with the “Dunning-Kruger Effect,” where less competent individuals demonstrate more confidence in their abilities in many areas, Eurich constructs a premise that most people believe the falsehood that they have above average self-awareness, and that those with the least self-awareness are very confident they possess it. In fact, Eurich conducted a survey of potential readers for her book and found that 95 percent of them viewed themselves as somewhat or very self-aware, something she thinks is preposterous. Unfortunately, according to her book, self-delusion is more likely to be the norm.
“The truth is that while most of us think we know ourselves pretty well, this confidence is often unfounded,” she writes.
All of this overestimation and optimism of our self-awareness, leads to blind spots in our knowledge base, emotional areas and behavior that seriously limit our ability to see ourselves as others do. Remember when Shonda was taken aback when her sister confronted her with the perception that Shonda never said yes to anything. Instead of recoiling, she took the challenge to unearth why and began the process of self-awareness.
Just like Shonda, Eurich’s coaching client had some serious blind spots: “Steve’s knowledge blindness about his leadership expertise had given him an overconfidence that could be described as epic. His emotion blindness was leading him to make decisions based on gut feelings rather than reason. And he was completely oblivious to how his behavior was going over with his staff.”
Let’s take a look at self-awareness boot camp on external self-awareness:
The good news is that self-awareness is a developable skill that falls on a continuum that ranges from self-absorption to self-awareness. Once you spend some time listening to yourself and others about who you really are, your stories will flow naturally from the well of you. But first you need to get out of the library, get away from the books, classes, assignments and projects…Make you the central figure in your next chapter and plan to dig deep to find your story path.
I hope you enjoyed this post — if you want to connect, you can reach me here via email Kimberlya.norton@gmail.com or connect with me on social: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Also, you can find my book, STORY: the art of standing out on Amazon — here is the link to buy it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H94D3L1.
