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Episode Transcript
The transcript is computer generated. There may be errors.
Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live. A podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm Sharad Lal. This is episode 79.
Did you know that telling good stories? Makes our life more meaningful. That's exactly what we're diving into today with a master storyteller, best-selling author and five time moth grand slam champion, Matthew Dicks. For those who are not familiar with the moth, it's a renowned storytelling platform in New York city.
And Matthew is a legend in that world.
On top of the five grand slams. He's won 52 story slams there. Matthew is also the co-founder of Speak Up, a storytelling organizationThat helps thousands of people craft better stories through workshops and live events. Additionally, his home book for life project has inspired many to improve their storytelling and add more meaning to their lives. In our conversation today, we talked about Why stories matter? How can they bring meaning to our lives?
And of course, how do we tell good stories? If you're looking at simple ways to enrich your life through storytelling, whether it's for personal life or work, this episode is for you.But before getting there. Thank you very much for your support. We're in the top 3% of the world and are listened to in one of 40 countries. If you haven't already, please do subscribe. Now here's the incredible Matthew dicks.
Sharad Lal: hi, Matthew. Welcome to the How to Live podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Matthew Dicks: I am doing well. Thank you very much.
Sharad Lal: Congratulations, Matthew, on all the success that you've had, the incredible work that you're doing. And you're a man of stories,
Matthew Dicks: What is it that you like about stories? especially in your initial years, got you and made you excited about them?
As a kid, I think One of my struggles was that I didn't get a lot of attention. I felt like I was getting lost.
And what I discovered at some point as a kid was that if I could tell good stories, especially if I could tell stories where I was not the hero, but the failure or the shame or the embarrassment, and it made people laugh. That was the way I garnered attention. So I think as a kid, I fell in love with stories as a means of getting what I needed.
And then as I got older, I was still telling stories and I started paying attention to which stories were working with people and which weren't. When I got into high school, I started using storytelling to try to find, to get girlfriends,when I got older and I was. interviewing for a job, I inherently understood that if I told this person a story, they were more likely to like me and hire me in a position.
I think as I moved through my life, the utility of the story was very evident to me. because it was a Swiss Army knife to me, it accomplished many goals for me. I became very interested in making sure that I was telling the very best version of every story that I could tell.
Sharad Lal: As you were realising that beyond. reporting incidents, making things interesting and getting what you want. Stories tell you a lot about yourself, they give meaning to life.
And I found that interesting as you talked about in the book, Story Worthy. So if you can talk a little bit about stories and how they can actually bring meaning to life.
Matthew Dicks: Yeah, I think that storytellers are self centred in a very positive way. Meaning, we actually afford ourselves time to think about ourselves. I quite literally sit down On the couch and do nothing but think about myself and what I'm doing and how I'm living and that often yields stories but like you said it yields understanding, my favourite example of this is.
I was playing golf with my friend Steve a few years back. It was 100 degrees out, like legitimately 100 degrees, and by the sixth hole I was really suffering. It was exhausting. We had the bags on the back, because I always carry my bag, and we're going up this huge hill after the sixth hole.
Steve takes out his Gatorade and begins drinking it, and he looks behind him, and sees I don't have the Gatorade, and he says, Hey, I have an extra Gatorade, would you like one?
I'm not quite sure why, but I say no, and we move on. And when we finish the round of golf, Steve gets in his truck and drives away, but I sit in the air conditioning in my car, and I don't move. Because I'm a storyteller, and I know I've just done something odd. I refused to drink on a 100 degree day when I really needed one, and there was an extra one.
Why did I do that? And so it took me five minutes in that car to be thinking about why I made that decision before I finally came upon it. When I was a kid, I was food insecure quite often. I was hungry a lot. And as a kid, the last thing you ever want anyone to know is that you were hungry. It's a source of shame.
So as a kid, I trained myself so that when someone offered me food, even when I was hungry, I said no.
That day I was 42, but I was still 10. I was still a food insecure, 10 year old boy. refusing food from other people because I was ashamed of being hungry even though I was no longer hungry. So that becomes a story that I can tell, but it also becomes understanding.
It allows me to actually start accepting the gift of food, which I had never done in my entire life. But I think the problem is that for most people, they move past that moment. I think we do a lot of things that we don't quite understand why we're doing them.
If we don't afford ourselves the opportunity to say, hold on, let's think about what we just did and why we did it, then we don't end up coming to that understanding. there's many stories that I find that I don't ultimately tell because I don't think they're worth speaking aloud, but they're incredibly valuable for me because they changed the way that I see myself, the world, and sometimes the way I live.
Sharad Lal: That's powerful. And what struck me is as a storyteller, you're an observer to yourself. as you observe something, which is different, it's weird, why did I do that?
then over a period of time, you create a coherent story, which is linked, maybe like in this case, to your childhood and what led to it and make sense of yourself, of who you are, is that how it works?
Matthew Dicks: Yeah. And you hold onto it because you're right. Sometimes, like in that moment, it took me five minutes to figure out what was going on. I've had moments in my life where it's taken me 10 years.
But after I figured it out, I had greater self understanding. I have a story to tell. I've never told it because it literally just happened a week ago where that understanding came to me.
I may tell it someday, but again, It was an understanding about myself that I did not have before.
Sharad Lal: how important is it to tell the story to others versus understand it yourself?
Matthew Dicks: It's oddly not terribly important to tell it to other people. I always say that the most important audience for every story you tell is yourself. Although I want to tell stories to audiences all the time, and, as my friend says, I live out loud, meaning anything I do, I will eventually tell someone about.
I have no fear or embarrassment or shame.I think it's great when you can tell people, and I think it actually helps the world in some really meaningful ways when we tell our stories, especially the ones where we're not hitting home runs and, Doing great things, but maybe stumbling and failing a bit.
I want people to tell others. I want the world to be filled with better stories and more connection, but it always begins with you telling yourself something about yourself that you didn't understand a moment ago.
Sharad Lal: I remember reading that in your book and found that interesting where the stories you think that are going to hit home runs may not be the ones that are more impactful to people. And as you've participated in the month where you've done exceedingly well, you've realised that some of those stories, which you never thought were so powerful, they're not like ra ra ra that have kind of gone across.
So what has been your learning on stories that could be powerful to other people?
Matthew Dicks: I tell people that if something means something to you, it will ultimately mean something to other people if crafted properly,
I've died twice and been brought back to life by paramedics both times. I was homeless for a period in my life. I was arrested, jailed, and tortured. Put on trial for a crime I did not commit. I'm the victim of a horrific armed robbery. when I was a child, my house caught on fire while I was asleep in the house and I was rescued by firefighters.
All of these things have happened. My friends knew them and they said, go tell those stories. And that's what I thought I would do. I've told most of those stories. Not all though, I've actually never told a story about my trial yet.
And the reason I haven't told it, the reason why those stories are harder to tell is because they're more difficult to be relatable to other people. So to make that story relatable is more challenging.
I understand how to do it. But what I've discovered is. small moments like refusing a Gatorade and coming to the understanding that your childhood food insecurity is still impacting your life today. That's a small story.
Yet that story is a story that means a lot to a lot of people, because there's a lot of people in the world who grew up like me. Even if you didn't grow up food insecure, you might have grown up in a different circumstance that is still plaguing you today, or still influencing the way you live today.
So the small stories are far more relatable to people. The mistake people think is that you have to be doing something to Amazing to tell a great story when the truth is almost everything interesting that happens in a story happens in our minds. It's a series of events that lead to a moment.
It's a moment where suddenly we think differently or feel differently. And that happens often behind the wheel of a car or lying in bed at night or sitting on the couch next to your wife. These are the moments that people understand. And they tend to be the more successful stories, because they're stories that people can deeply relate to, connect to, and feel like they understand me and understand themselves better.
Sharad Lal: I love that. and you talk about even in your book,capturing those small moments and creating a story around it, which makes everyday living very meaningful. And for that, you have this project for life. So maybe we can talk a little bit about getting meaning out of the project for life. If you can describe it to people who haven't heard about it, I think it's extremely powerful.
Matthew Dicks: Sure. Yeah, it originated from my desire to find more stories to tell. I was going to New York City, and then Boston, and then all over the country telling stories. I had created a list of all the stories I could tell. That list was getting shorter, and I was getting nervous. I could retell stories, but I don't want to be that person.
So, in an effort to find stories, being an elementary school teacher, I gave myself homework, seeing that homework is a solution to a problem. I created Homework for Life, which is essentially a practice by which every day, At the end of the day, I would ask myself, what's the most story worthy moment that happened over the course of this day?
Even if nothing happened, a real prompt I used to give to myself. If someone kidnapped my family and they would not give them back, unless I told a story about something that took place over the course of this day, what would the story be? So I would have to find something to tell.
And I write that down. I don't write the whole thing down because that's journaling and I wanted something you can do in five minutes. So I use a spreadsheet. It's two columns, there's a date,
And in the B column, just the length of a computer screen, I give myself enough room to write down the moment. my goal was one new story per month, twelve new stories per year. But what I discovered over time is, our lives are just filled with stories. Things happen constantly to us that change the way we think and the way we feel, which is what we're looking for in stories.
So very quickly, I became someone who was worried about not having enough stories to tell to someone who has more stories to tell than he has time to live. And Tens of thousands of people around the world do homework for life now. they've discovered the same thing. We start to see our lives in meaningful ways.
I just did some analysis for the new book, and I think back in 2015 when I began this homework for life, I think I was finding, 1. 7 moments per day. Today I'm writing more than seven moments per day. And it's not because my life is more interesting today.
It's because I see more. I recognize that when my son says something amusing, that's worth holding onto, even though it might not be a story, maybe it'll become part of a story.
One of my favourite things to do in a workshop is, I'll say, let's think back on the year 2019. How many days from 2019 can you actually recall? And if you're really good, you might recall 25 days.
but probably mostly dentist appointments and doctor's appointments and work meetings, really not actual moments worth holding onto. It's not because you didn't live a meaningful life in 2019. It's just, you allowed yourself to forget everything, which is how we live our lives.
And that's why time flies. It doesn't actually fly. It doesn't fly for me. time flies because. We take 2019, which consists of 365 days, and we reduce it to 25 days. We throw away all the rest of the days as if they didn't mean anything. We don't remember them.
Doing homework for life, refuses the idea that years should become days. It says every single day has something to hold on to. Let's find what it is and keep a record of it. And then we can go back and look at it.
So even if you don't want to tell stories, even if you don't want to tell stories to yourself, you should be doing home for life. Because it slows down the way we live and makes every day more precious than it used to be.
Sharad Lal: And Matthew, if I remember right, the way you do it is on a day you write, like for a certain story, you write, let's say, three, four words about it. And then later on, you can construct it. How does it actually work?
Matthew Dicks: Yeah, I used to do it at the end of every evening, I'd sit down and say, Alright, what happened today? Now I recognize that even during the day we forget things. So,on my phone, I'm walking around and if something happens, I'll take a few words, the moment itself ends up being three or four sentences. And then eventually I will go back and say, all right, so last month, let me look at what happened. Then I'll pull out the moments that I might want to actually make into stories that I'm going to tell on the stage or even to my friends.
But I have the content preserved. It's now saved and I can go back to it. And quite often, oddly, I'll go back a month later and I'll look at the moments and I'll miss something. Something that will ultimately become a story won't look like a story a month later.
It will end up looking like a story six months later, because I won't realise I'm in the middle of something. Quite often we're in the middle of a story, but we don't see that we're in the middle of a story.
so having that record also allows you to start to have clarity in your life. You start to see, Oh, wow. Like a year ago, I started doing this thing and now today it's actually completed. I did not know I've been on a journey, but now I can see the journey. Now I have a story to tell. But if we don't write it down and keep track of it, sometimes we don't even realise the huge sweeping arcs of our lives.
Because we have no way of seeing them while we're experiencing them.
Sharad Lal: How does this compare versus journaling, if you've thought about that?
Matthew Dicks: journaling requires you really to find something worth writing about that day, with some degree of length and depth. Homework for Life is the idea that we really can't judge our moments in the moment, we're not looking for things that are necessarily even feeling like stories yet.
There are moments that just mean something to us. a lot of those small moments that will ultimately, you know, those little seeds that will eventually flower into something meaningful.
We don't allow those seeds to grow if we're just taking the thing from the day that felt like it meant the most. Oftentimes what happens is a journal reports on the day. They say what happened over the course of the day.
What we're trying to do in our homework for life is to plant lots and lots of seeds. And then over time, watch which ones grow into flowers, which ones ultimately become something we want to share.
You never judge what you're writing down because it costs nothing to write down something.
About 10 percent of the things that I write down actually eventually get spoken out loud by me or written on a page somewhere. So 90 percent of what I'm writing down is only for me and only stays for me.
But I would say that 90 percent of things that I'm writing down for me, at least half of it is really meaningful to me, even though I'm not going to tell anyone else about it.
So I'm going to write it down. And then eventually over time, it might become something. I discovered a truth about myself that took a decade to learn. A journalist would not have had that moment happen because they would not have known what to write 10 years ago. But because I took note of it 10 years ago and allowed it to swim around in my head like an angry shark, 10 years later, that understanding comes to me.
I remember one of the stories which may have come from Homework for Life for you. There were so many powerful stories in your book, but one story which just comes to mind right now is torchlight, lights going off, you going out in the rain, and you understanding your father. Do you remember that story?
Sharad Lal: If you can just share that, how it came about with the folks listening, so they'll get a sense of the depth you can get through this.
Matthew Dicks: my dog Kaylee wakes me up at two o'clock in the morning, which is odd. She's not one of those dogs. She sleeps through the night. So I look at her sort of in the dark and she looks at me with the look that says I have to pee, and I give her the look that says, are you kidding me?
It's two o'clock in the morning. And she gives me the look back that says, don't be a jerk. I got to pee. So I have to decide what to do. I'm wearing a pair of boxer shorts, and I live on a street that's a cul de sac.
Nobody drives on the street unless you live on it. I can just bring her out in my boxer shorts on the front lawn, let her pee, and bring her back inside, or I can go and get dressed, and I decide it'll be fine. I'll just go out in these boxer shorts,I carry her down the stairs and I put her on the lawn.
She pees. Then when I turn she pulls on the leash. She wants to walk Which is unusual. She doesn't like to walk very much now Anyway But she wants to walk and it's not going to be far.
So I say, all right, I'm in my boxer shorts. I don't even have shoes on. Nobody in my street will be awake right now.
It's fine. I'll go for a walk with you. So we go to the end of the street, And when I turn to head back, she pulls again. She wants to take a right. which is crazy. She doesn't like to walk that much anymore.
because I can't say no to my dog, I say, fine, let's just make this quick. So we're walking down Francis Avenue. It's a weird night.
There's no stars in the sky. The birds are loud. It's really weird. And so I make the right onto main street. I'm now just about as far away from my home as I can possibly be. And it's that moment where it wasn't raining a second ago. And now all the water that could possibly be falling is now falling upon me.
Now I understand why there's no stars in the sky. The clouds are probably right over my head and the birds are loud because they knew it was going to rain any minute. And maybe even Kaylee knew it was going to rain. Because there was a day when we used to run in the rain all the time. It was our favourite thing to do.
And that's what she wanted to be out here for.
because I'm doing homework for life and I have this lens for storytelling that I've developed, this lens for seeing my life clearly, I look down at Kaylee, and I realise that we're out in the rain, far away from the house, on a walk and this might be the last time we ever do this. She's 18 years old at the time.
very old for a dog. standing in the rain, it occurs to me, this might be the last time I ever go for a walk in the rain with my best friend.
So rather than picking her up and marching home, I stand in the rain in my underwear on main street in Newington, Connecticut, while cars drive by and I get water dumped on me and I enjoy that moment. But then because I'm doing homework for life, We start to crack open and stories that we've left from in the past suddenly return to us.
And for whatever reason, I suddenly began thinking about my childhood dog, measleman. When I was seven years old, my parents divorced and my mother immediately replaced me. My father was a stepfather.
So my father over the course of 48 hours, essentially, at least in my childhood mind, he left my home. He loses his wife. He loses his home. He loses the horse farm that I'm growing up on because he's a cowboy in every sense of the word.
But when he leaves the home, he loses the barn and the horses leave. He loses his kids because he really leaves my life forever. He lost his dog, too, because Measelman stayed with us.
The man who took his wife and his kids to his home also took his dog. And somehow, on that corner, in that rain, I understand the losses of my father in a way I had not understood them before. It's almost as if losing Measelman was the worst loss of all. It's the first time I see my father's life through the eyes of a man rather than the eyes of a boy.
I can see what must have happened to him. And none of that happens if I pick up Kaylee and I march home.
So a lot of things happened on the corner that night. And it ends up being the last time I walk with Kaylee in the rain. She passed away less than six months later. So the beauty of storytelling is that,
while I was telling you that story, sitting in my studio, far apart from you, For a moment, everything went away and I was back on that corner, right over there and I was back in the rain and I was back in a pair of underwear I no longer own and I was experiencing that moment with a friend who I haven't seen in a long time and who I miss and she was right back with me.
So when we tell stories about the moments in our lives, we solidify them, they become the movies that we can replay in our minds. And so often what happens is, if we don't tell the story, it gets lost. We forget it.
Sharad Lal: Because I'm going through this process and that's what I want for all people. I want them to be able to revisit an old friend in a really meaningful way and to feel that moment in a way that we once felt it. That's beautiful, Matthew. And, as you were speaking the story, I had exactly the same thoughts. I first read it when I was lying down in bed, it was raining outside at night, so I was feeling it very much. And now that you said it, I felt it as well. I love what you said. As you start creating these stories, you live the memories, both the difficult ones, as well as the ones that you cherish.
How's your feeling different as you're going through these sometimes very difficult memories, but sometimes beautiful, happy ones. What does that do to you? Do you have a different way of processing it? How do you do that?
Matthew Dicks: for the difficult moments, and I certainly have my fair share, I'm always trying to craft a story where at some point, despite the difficulty, there will be hope at the end of the story. I can't think of a story that I tell where there isn't at least a small kernel or a seed of either hope or, I have gone through a difficult experience, but I now have understanding on the other side that I did not have before, which gives value to a moment.
Quite often there are moments in my life that are very difficult for me until I tell the story.
Oftentimes I think what happens is A difficult thing happens to us and it gets framed as a difficult thing, and it's not until we return to it and try to find a way to tell other people that we suddenly see things that mean something to us.
Even if that doesn't quite happen, even if I don't find as much hope in that story, the other benefit of it is it becomes a chapter in our lives. Before I told that story, it was almost as if my homelessness infected all of my life. I just felt it all the time, even though it had been 10, 20, 30 years ago.
When I tell a story about it, it has a beginning and an end. It becomes a segment of my life, and it cuts off the infection. It stops it from bothering me anywhere beyond where it ended. then the other beauty of it is I tell that story, and every single time I tell that story, someone comes up to me and says, I lived in my car for six months and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.
Or I lived on the streets for two years, but I've never thought I should tell my friends today about my past.
But all of those people, they're existing with shame in the same way I once existed with shame about my homelessness until I decided to.
tell a story about it and stand in front of people and speak it out loud. I've been able to alleviate a lot of people of their sources of embarrassment or shame, or at the very least, let them know they're not alone in the struggle they have. we assume either people don't want to hear it or we shouldn't talk about it because they're gonna think less of us Because of it and both of those things are not true
Sharad Lal: I love that, especially the second and third points that you said. One is, of course, quite often, there's a natural reframe which goes to hope, but that need not happen. We need not put pressure on that. If it doesn't authentically happen, we can look at it as a chapter that's gone. We can also look at a way of connecting to other people who've had similar experiences and realise that even though we're alone, we're all connected in our aloneness, which itself is powerful.
So I love that. And I don't know whether you've seen sometimes The need to try and reframe everything to get a lesson from everything where you force fitting it
Matthew Dicks: I never use the word lesson because I don't think audiences want lessons What I think they want is to be entertained, and if they are entertained by my story, and over the course of my story, I describe understanding, wisdom, knowledge that I've acquired, and they take something from that on their own without me forcing it upon them, that's the best example of how a story can help other people.
Although I don't force that sort of hope or that wisdom, I think it's almost inevitable that regardless of what difficult experience you go through, if you survive it, there is going to be some strength that is garnered or some wisdom that will be found. And so I'm always asking myself what the value of that challenging moment was.
I haven't told the story of being on trial, probably because Rather than telling a story that does not have wisdom or strength or knowledge at the end, I prefer to tell the other story I have. And I'll let that trial story circle in my brain until I find wisdom that I can impart to an audience by imparting it to myself, or maybe it never gets told, and that is okay too.
Because remember, I'm a man who has more stories to tell than he has time to tell them. So if I never get to the story of my trial, as crazy as that sounds, That's okay with me,
Sharad Lal: Matthew, most people who have heard us till now would know that how important stories are. And I think the next question in their mind's how do we tell good stories? So maybe we dig into that a bit. What are some elements of a good story?
Matthew Dicks: Sure, the problem with most folks who are trying to tell stories is that they're not actually telling stories, they're reporting on their lives. They're simply giving us a chronological accounting of their day, which doesn't amount to a story. And people don't want to hear that other than your mother and maybe your spouse
A story is fundamentally about change over time. I used to be something, and now I'm a new thing, or I used to think something or feel something, and now I think or feel differently.
Most people don't think that way. we have to say to ourselves. Where in our lives do we feel those moments and experience those moments where something has changed fundamentally inside of us?
Those are stories.
understanding what a story is most important. So pay attention to the way movies play out.
You won't know the particularities. You won't understand exactly how it's going to happen, but if you meet a character at the beginning of a movie who is in love with someone, but that person doesn't love them back, by the end of the movie, that person's going to find love maybe with the person they love at the beginning in the movie.
But if not, they're going to find love at the end of the movie. Maybe that love is they're going to learn to love themselves. Or maybe they're going to find a better match. Whatever it is, it's going to be going from no love to love.
it doesn't ruin the movie. It doesn't mean you're not going to enjoy the movie anymore, but that's how it works.
We have to begin in a place and end in the opposite of that place.
Sharad Lal: now, for some of us novices, as we are starting to tell stories, one good way is of course, homework for life, what are other ways in which we can start telling good stories or start telling better stories to our spouses who have to listen to the facts being put on the table.
Matthew Dicks: I tell people that the beginnings of stories are the most important places in stories. I used to think the beginning and the end were equally important, but I've come to understand that if we think of a Story as a journey. a plane ride to a beautiful place, you know You have to land your plane in a beautiful place people want a good satisfying ending But at the beginning of the story, it's your opportunity to actually put people on the plane And I think the problem is that stories open so poorly so often that nobody gets on your plane So you end up flying a plane That's empty to a beautiful place, but no one went along with you.
They disengaged with you while you were speaking. their minds wandered. They started staring at their phones, all of these things that people can do to stop listening.
So there's lots of things we can do at the beginning of a story to guarantee attention. But the two things I tell people are: two things should open every story that you tell location and action, meaning every story should open with.
a place. I am in a place and I am doing a thing. We open with location because it activates imagination.
So rather than describing things as a storyteller, what I choose to do instead, Is I leverage the imagination of my audience by stealing the ideas that they already have in their head, stealing the images they have. So if I say I'm standing in a kitchen, you can tell me if the floor is tile, linoleum, or hardwood.
And as long as it doesn't matter to my story, I don't care which one you choose.
Then we start with action because people want stories to take off. They want things to start right away. Most people start stories by explaining stuff. Nobody ever wants you to explain. No one ever says, boy, I hope they explain the hometown before the story gets launched.
Not launch the story and then explain your hometown.
So if you simply begin a story with. I'm walking up a hill on the sixth hole at a golf course when my friend Steve says, Hey, do you want a Gatorade?
That is location and action. That's what we start with. There's also a lot of science behind it. Our brains are primed for stories. Human beings survived on oral storytelling for all except for the last one quarter of 1%. of our existence.
so when we start telling a story, our brains chemically Change almost instantaneously because our brains understand Oh, he's telling a story It might keep me alive Which is literally what stories used to do they used to keep us alive by giving us the information We needed to survive the day And so if you open with location in action people almost can't help But begin paying attention to you because the chemistry in their brain changes that says to them pay attention This might keep you alive.
Those things aren't problems for us anymore, but they might keep you alive spiritually. They might keep you alive mentally. They might keep your business alive.
What's the role of drama in storytelling?
I think that drama is something that either comes or doesn't come. I think that sometimes we experience a moment that is very dramatic and has all of the elements of a good drama and sometimes it doesn't, I don't try to force it in any way whatsoever.
if I go through the windshield when I'm 17 years old and die on the side of the road and have a paramedic pounding on my chest to bring me back to life, that's drama, and that's great.
That'll certainly help my story. There's no drama, though, in me refusing a Gatorade from my friend at a golf course and ending up in the car and realising, oh, I was food insecure as a kid. That's why I refused the Gatorade. That's not really very dramatic, but that's okay because again, we're looking for relatability and connecting to audiences and people know that lives are not dramatic every day.
Sharad Lal: When we're talking about stories and work, is there any adjustment that you make? How does that work?
Matthew Dicks: It depends on what we're doing at work. if we're telling a story in an interview, or to get people to know us, there's almost no change whatsoever. other than there's a purpose behind the story. If I'm in an interview and someone says, give me an example of a time when you were at work and things didn't work out, happily because of who I am, I have a multitude of stories to choose from.
My most challenging thing is to figure out which one is going to land best with this person. Which is why I tend to be the person who speaks last, whenever possible, and asks lots of questions.
If we're thinking about telling stories about our business or the products or services we sell, I still think that we should be looking to tell personal stories, but those personal stories absolutely have to match in some way the message we're carrying forward for our product and service.It's more strategic when we're choosing stories in business.
there's a purpose behind it.
Sharad Lal: We've spoken for so long, Matthew. As we come to the end, I have two last questions for you. One is, Bottom line, if there's one piece of advice you'd like to leave listeners with, what would that be?
Matthew Dicks: I think that doing homework for life. Paying attention to your life and being brave enough to share things with other people, I think is enormously powerful. I think I meet a lot of people, who just don't think the things in their lives are worthy of sharing.
They assume that people don't want to hear what they have to say. I want people to understand that people desperately need to hear what you have to say, and they want to hear that moment of failure that you have been hiding all your life or that moment of embarrassment that you've been keeping to yourself.
Those are the stories that unlock connection with people. The craziest things after I tell a story, oftentimes those things are completely unrelated to the story I've just told because I've been willing to stand in front of them and say something that most people are unwilling to say a simple moment of embarrassment, failure, or shame, and suddenly They see me as a receptacle of their shame.
Oh, he just talked about something that most people won't talk about. Maybe he's the safe one who I can tell my secret to. It is a signal to me that I have connected with a human being in a way that they have not connected with human beings before.
That level of connection is extraordinary. And it is achievable by all people. But I think the thing I want people to understand is, You have to Do it.
And the first time you do it, there's no way to remove the fear. It's just the way life is. Like you can know that it is safe and yet you will still be afraid the first time you do it.
You have to make that jump, make the leap and discover for yourself, something that I've discovered for all my life, which is that people need stories. They want to hear stories and they're really hoping that you tell a story that will make them laugh or make them feel a little bit better about themselves or feel a little more understood about the world.
Very powerful message. And Matthew, the last question I ask everyone, at the end of your life, how would you know you've lived a good life?
I can't ponder the end of my life because I live in a persistent existential crisis. acknowledging that there might be an end is a little too frightening for me to even consider. However, in the very unlikely event that I die someday,my goal is in the last moment of my life. There is no regret.
There was a time in my life when a gun was put to my head and a man told me he was going to shoot me on the count of three and began counting back. The extraordinary thing about that moment for me was that I wasn't afraid or angry.
The only thing I felt was regret that I had not done nearly enough with the life that I had been given. It changed my life in terrible and oddly wonderful ways. I still live with the ramifications of that moment to this day, but the darkest moment of my life, the gift I received was the understanding of how awful regret feels of how wasting a day, wasting a month, wasting a year can feel.
So if I very unlikely die someday, I am hoping that in my final moments, I don't feel that regret. I feel like I've used my time wisely, that I filled my life as much as I could have, and that all of the days of my life were lived in a meaningful way.
Thank you, Matthew. What a powerful message to end with. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom with the listeners of the How to Live podcast.
Sharad Lal: My pleasure. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Matthew, for such an enlightening conversation. For more and Matt too. I believe a link in the show notes. Now here's something all of us could try. Homework for life. It's simply nothing down. The one big story. That has happened to us today.
This need not be like a big earth shattering story, but it could be simple things that are meaningful that have shifted you a bit. Not down the elements of the story. And then construct it. Like this, if we do this every day we just look at it. Things happening in our life. We'll get to know more about ourselves and life will start becoming more meaningful. Best of luck. I hope you enjoyed this episode. The next episode will drop two weeks from now. Do join us for that till next time. Have a wonderful day ahead. Bye bye.
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#068 Connecting the dots to purpose with Marc Nicholson
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Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live. A podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm Sharad Lal. This is episode 79.
Did you know that telling good stories? Makes our life more meaningful. That's exactly what we're diving into today with a master storyteller, best-selling author and five time moth grand slam champion, Matthew Dicks. For those who are not familiar with the moth, it's a renowned storytelling platform in New York city.
And Matthew is a legend in that world.
On top of the five grand slams. He's won 52 story slams there. Matthew is also the co-founder of Speak Up, a storytelling organizationThat helps thousands of people craft better stories through workshops and live events. Additionally, his home book for life project has inspired many to improve their storytelling and add more meaning to their lives. In our conversation today, we talked about Why stories matter? How can they bring meaning to our lives?
And of course, how do we tell good stories? If you're looking at simple ways to enrich your life through storytelling, whether it's for personal life or work, this episode is for you.But before getting there. Thank you very much for your support. We're in the top 3% of the world and are listened to in one of 40 countries. If you haven't already, please do subscribe. Now here's the incredible Matthew dicks.
Sharad Lal: hi, Matthew. Welcome to the How to Live podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Matthew Dicks: I am doing well. Thank you very much.
Sharad Lal: Congratulations, Matthew, on all the success that you've had, the incredible work that you're doing. And you're a man of stories,
Matthew Dicks: What is it that you like about stories? especially in your initial years, got you and made you excited about them?
As a kid, I think One of my struggles was that I didn't get a lot of attention. I felt like I was getting lost.
And what I discovered at some point as a kid was that if I could tell good stories, especially if I could tell stories where I was not the hero, but the failure or the shame or the embarrassment, and it made people laugh. That was the way I garnered attention. So I think as a kid, I fell in love with stories as a means of getting what I needed.
And then as I got older, I was still telling stories and I started paying attention to which stories were working with people and which weren't. When I got into high school, I started using storytelling to try to find, to get girlfriends,when I got older and I was. interviewing for a job, I inherently understood that if I told this person a story, they were more likely to like me and hire me in a position.
I think as I moved through my life, the utility of the story was very evident to me. because it was a Swiss Army knife to me, it accomplished many goals for me. I became very interested in making sure that I was telling the very best version of every story that I could tell.
Sharad Lal: As you were realising that beyond. reporting incidents, making things interesting and getting what you want. Stories tell you a lot about yourself, they give meaning to life.
And I found that interesting as you talked about in the book, Story Worthy. So if you can talk a little bit about stories and how they can actually bring meaning to life.
Matthew Dicks: Yeah, I think that storytellers are self centred in a very positive way. Meaning, we actually afford ourselves time to think about ourselves. I quite literally sit down On the couch and do nothing but think about myself and what I'm doing and how I'm living and that often yields stories but like you said it yields understanding, my favourite example of this is.
I was playing golf with my friend Steve a few years back. It was 100 degrees out, like legitimately 100 degrees, and by the sixth hole I was really suffering. It was exhausting. We had the bags on the back, because I always carry my bag, and we're going up this huge hill after the sixth hole.
Steve takes out his Gatorade and begins drinking it, and he looks behind him, and sees I don't have the Gatorade, and he says, Hey, I have an extra Gatorade, would you like one?
I'm not quite sure why, but I say no, and we move on. And when we finish the round of golf, Steve gets in his truck and drives away, but I sit in the air conditioning in my car, and I don't move. Because I'm a storyteller, and I know I've just done something odd. I refused to drink on a 100 degree day when I really needed one, and there was an extra one.
Why did I do that? And so it took me five minutes in that car to be thinking about why I made that decision before I finally came upon it. When I was a kid, I was food insecure quite often. I was hungry a lot. And as a kid, the last thing you ever want anyone to know is that you were hungry. It's a source of shame.
So as a kid, I trained myself so that when someone offered me food, even when I was hungry, I said no.
That day I was 42, but I was still 10. I was still a food insecure, 10 year old boy. refusing food from other people because I was ashamed of being hungry even though I was no longer hungry. So that becomes a story that I can tell, but it also becomes understanding.
It allows me to actually start accepting the gift of food, which I had never done in my entire life. But I think the problem is that for most people, they move past that moment. I think we do a lot of things that we don't quite understand why we're doing them.
If we don't afford ourselves the opportunity to say, hold on, let's think about what we just did and why we did it, then we don't end up coming to that understanding. there's many stories that I find that I don't ultimately tell because I don't think they're worth speaking aloud, but they're incredibly valuable for me because they changed the way that I see myself, the world, and sometimes the way I live.
Sharad Lal: That's powerful. And what struck me is as a storyteller, you're an observer to yourself. as you observe something, which is different, it's weird, why did I do that?
then over a period of time, you create a coherent story, which is linked, maybe like in this case, to your childhood and what led to it and make sense of yourself, of who you are, is that how it works?
Matthew Dicks: Yeah. And you hold onto it because you're right. Sometimes, like in that moment, it took me five minutes to figure out what was going on. I've had moments in my life where it's taken me 10 years.
But after I figured it out, I had greater self understanding. I have a story to tell. I've never told it because it literally just happened a week ago where that understanding came to me.
I may tell it someday, but again, It was an understanding about myself that I did not have before.
Sharad Lal: how important is it to tell the story to others versus understand it yourself?
Matthew Dicks: It's oddly not terribly important to tell it to other people. I always say that the most important audience for every story you tell is yourself. Although I want to tell stories to audiences all the time, and, as my friend says, I live out loud, meaning anything I do, I will eventually tell someone about.
I have no fear or embarrassment or shame.I think it's great when you can tell people, and I think it actually helps the world in some really meaningful ways when we tell our stories, especially the ones where we're not hitting home runs and, Doing great things, but maybe stumbling and failing a bit.
I want people to tell others. I want the world to be filled with better stories and more connection, but it always begins with you telling yourself something about yourself that you didn't understand a moment ago.
Sharad Lal: I remember reading that in your book and found that interesting where the stories you think that are going to hit home runs may not be the ones that are more impactful to people. And as you've participated in the month where you've done exceedingly well, you've realised that some of those stories, which you never thought were so powerful, they're not like ra ra ra that have kind of gone across.
So what has been your learning on stories that could be powerful to other people?
Matthew Dicks: I tell people that if something means something to you, it will ultimately mean something to other people if crafted properly,
I've died twice and been brought back to life by paramedics both times. I was homeless for a period in my life. I was arrested, jailed, and tortured. Put on trial for a crime I did not commit. I'm the victim of a horrific armed robbery. when I was a child, my house caught on fire while I was asleep in the house and I was rescued by firefighters.
All of these things have happened. My friends knew them and they said, go tell those stories. And that's what I thought I would do. I've told most of those stories. Not all though, I've actually never told a story about my trial yet.
And the reason I haven't told it, the reason why those stories are harder to tell is because they're more difficult to be relatable to other people. So to make that story relatable is more challenging.
I understand how to do it. But what I've discovered is. small moments like refusing a Gatorade and coming to the understanding that your childhood food insecurity is still impacting your life today. That's a small story.
Yet that story is a story that means a lot to a lot of people, because there's a lot of people in the world who grew up like me. Even if you didn't grow up food insecure, you might have grown up in a different circumstance that is still plaguing you today, or still influencing the way you live today.
So the small stories are far more relatable to people. The mistake people think is that you have to be doing something to Amazing to tell a great story when the truth is almost everything interesting that happens in a story happens in our minds. It's a series of events that lead to a moment.
It's a moment where suddenly we think differently or feel differently. And that happens often behind the wheel of a car or lying in bed at night or sitting on the couch next to your wife. These are the moments that people understand. And they tend to be the more successful stories, because they're stories that people can deeply relate to, connect to, and feel like they understand me and understand themselves better.
Sharad Lal: I love that. and you talk about even in your book,capturing those small moments and creating a story around it, which makes everyday living very meaningful. And for that, you have this project for life. So maybe we can talk a little bit about getting meaning out of the project for life. If you can describe it to people who haven't heard about it, I think it's extremely powerful.
Matthew Dicks: Sure. Yeah, it originated from my desire to find more stories to tell. I was going to New York City, and then Boston, and then all over the country telling stories. I had created a list of all the stories I could tell. That list was getting shorter, and I was getting nervous. I could retell stories, but I don't want to be that person.
So, in an effort to find stories, being an elementary school teacher, I gave myself homework, seeing that homework is a solution to a problem. I created Homework for Life, which is essentially a practice by which every day, At the end of the day, I would ask myself, what's the most story worthy moment that happened over the course of this day?
Even if nothing happened, a real prompt I used to give to myself. If someone kidnapped my family and they would not give them back, unless I told a story about something that took place over the course of this day, what would the story be? So I would have to find something to tell.
And I write that down. I don't write the whole thing down because that's journaling and I wanted something you can do in five minutes. So I use a spreadsheet. It's two columns, there's a date,
And in the B column, just the length of a computer screen, I give myself enough room to write down the moment. my goal was one new story per month, twelve new stories per year. But what I discovered over time is, our lives are just filled with stories. Things happen constantly to us that change the way we think and the way we feel, which is what we're looking for in stories.
So very quickly, I became someone who was worried about not having enough stories to tell to someone who has more stories to tell than he has time to live. And Tens of thousands of people around the world do homework for life now. they've discovered the same thing. We start to see our lives in meaningful ways.
I just did some analysis for the new book, and I think back in 2015 when I began this homework for life, I think I was finding, 1. 7 moments per day. Today I'm writing more than seven moments per day. And it's not because my life is more interesting today.
It's because I see more. I recognize that when my son says something amusing, that's worth holding onto, even though it might not be a story, maybe it'll become part of a story.
One of my favourite things to do in a workshop is, I'll say, let's think back on the year 2019. How many days from 2019 can you actually recall? And if you're really good, you might recall 25 days.
but probably mostly dentist appointments and doctor's appointments and work meetings, really not actual moments worth holding onto. It's not because you didn't live a meaningful life in 2019. It's just, you allowed yourself to forget everything, which is how we live our lives.
And that's why time flies. It doesn't actually fly. It doesn't fly for me. time flies because. We take 2019, which consists of 365 days, and we reduce it to 25 days. We throw away all the rest of the days as if they didn't mean anything. We don't remember them.
Doing homework for life, refuses the idea that years should become days. It says every single day has something to hold on to. Let's find what it is and keep a record of it. And then we can go back and look at it.
So even if you don't want to tell stories, even if you don't want to tell stories to yourself, you should be doing home for life. Because it slows down the way we live and makes every day more precious than it used to be.
Sharad Lal: And Matthew, if I remember right, the way you do it is on a day you write, like for a certain story, you write, let's say, three, four words about it. And then later on, you can construct it. How does it actually work?
Matthew Dicks: Yeah, I used to do it at the end of every evening, I'd sit down and say, Alright, what happened today? Now I recognize that even during the day we forget things. So,on my phone, I'm walking around and if something happens, I'll take a few words, the moment itself ends up being three or four sentences. And then eventually I will go back and say, all right, so last month, let me look at what happened. Then I'll pull out the moments that I might want to actually make into stories that I'm going to tell on the stage or even to my friends.
But I have the content preserved. It's now saved and I can go back to it. And quite often, oddly, I'll go back a month later and I'll look at the moments and I'll miss something. Something that will ultimately become a story won't look like a story a month later.
It will end up looking like a story six months later, because I won't realise I'm in the middle of something. Quite often we're in the middle of a story, but we don't see that we're in the middle of a story.
so having that record also allows you to start to have clarity in your life. You start to see, Oh, wow. Like a year ago, I started doing this thing and now today it's actually completed. I did not know I've been on a journey, but now I can see the journey. Now I have a story to tell. But if we don't write it down and keep track of it, sometimes we don't even realise the huge sweeping arcs of our lives.
Because we have no way of seeing them while we're experiencing them.
Sharad Lal: How does this compare versus journaling, if you've thought about that?
Matthew Dicks: journaling requires you really to find something worth writing about that day, with some degree of length and depth. Homework for Life is the idea that we really can't judge our moments in the moment, we're not looking for things that are necessarily even feeling like stories yet.
There are moments that just mean something to us. a lot of those small moments that will ultimately, you know, those little seeds that will eventually flower into something meaningful.
We don't allow those seeds to grow if we're just taking the thing from the day that felt like it meant the most. Oftentimes what happens is a journal reports on the day. They say what happened over the course of the day.
What we're trying to do in our homework for life is to plant lots and lots of seeds. And then over time, watch which ones grow into flowers, which ones ultimately become something we want to share.
You never judge what you're writing down because it costs nothing to write down something.
About 10 percent of the things that I write down actually eventually get spoken out loud by me or written on a page somewhere. So 90 percent of what I'm writing down is only for me and only stays for me.
But I would say that 90 percent of things that I'm writing down for me, at least half of it is really meaningful to me, even though I'm not going to tell anyone else about it.
So I'm going to write it down. And then eventually over time, it might become something. I discovered a truth about myself that took a decade to learn. A journalist would not have had that moment happen because they would not have known what to write 10 years ago. But because I took note of it 10 years ago and allowed it to swim around in my head like an angry shark, 10 years later, that understanding comes to me.
I remember one of the stories which may have come from Homework for Life for you. There were so many powerful stories in your book, but one story which just comes to mind right now is torchlight, lights going off, you going out in the rain, and you understanding your father. Do you remember that story?
Sharad Lal: If you can just share that, how it came about with the folks listening, so they'll get a sense of the depth you can get through this.
Matthew Dicks: my dog Kaylee wakes me up at two o'clock in the morning, which is odd. She's not one of those dogs. She sleeps through the night. So I look at her sort of in the dark and she looks at me with the look that says I have to pee, and I give her the look that says, are you kidding me?
It's two o'clock in the morning. And she gives me the look back that says, don't be a jerk. I got to pee. So I have to decide what to do. I'm wearing a pair of boxer shorts, and I live on a street that's a cul de sac.
Nobody drives on the street unless you live on it. I can just bring her out in my boxer shorts on the front lawn, let her pee, and bring her back inside, or I can go and get dressed, and I decide it'll be fine. I'll just go out in these boxer shorts,I carry her down the stairs and I put her on the lawn.
She pees. Then when I turn she pulls on the leash. She wants to walk Which is unusual. She doesn't like to walk very much now Anyway But she wants to walk and it's not going to be far.
So I say, all right, I'm in my boxer shorts. I don't even have shoes on. Nobody in my street will be awake right now.
It's fine. I'll go for a walk with you. So we go to the end of the street, And when I turn to head back, she pulls again. She wants to take a right. which is crazy. She doesn't like to walk that much anymore.
because I can't say no to my dog, I say, fine, let's just make this quick. So we're walking down Francis Avenue. It's a weird night.
There's no stars in the sky. The birds are loud. It's really weird. And so I make the right onto main street. I'm now just about as far away from my home as I can possibly be. And it's that moment where it wasn't raining a second ago. And now all the water that could possibly be falling is now falling upon me.
Now I understand why there's no stars in the sky. The clouds are probably right over my head and the birds are loud because they knew it was going to rain any minute. And maybe even Kaylee knew it was going to rain. Because there was a day when we used to run in the rain all the time. It was our favourite thing to do.
And that's what she wanted to be out here for.
because I'm doing homework for life and I have this lens for storytelling that I've developed, this lens for seeing my life clearly, I look down at Kaylee, and I realise that we're out in the rain, far away from the house, on a walk and this might be the last time we ever do this. She's 18 years old at the time.
very old for a dog. standing in the rain, it occurs to me, this might be the last time I ever go for a walk in the rain with my best friend.
So rather than picking her up and marching home, I stand in the rain in my underwear on main street in Newington, Connecticut, while cars drive by and I get water dumped on me and I enjoy that moment. But then because I'm doing homework for life, We start to crack open and stories that we've left from in the past suddenly return to us.
And for whatever reason, I suddenly began thinking about my childhood dog, measleman. When I was seven years old, my parents divorced and my mother immediately replaced me. My father was a stepfather.
So my father over the course of 48 hours, essentially, at least in my childhood mind, he left my home. He loses his wife. He loses his home. He loses the horse farm that I'm growing up on because he's a cowboy in every sense of the word.
But when he leaves the home, he loses the barn and the horses leave. He loses his kids because he really leaves my life forever. He lost his dog, too, because Measelman stayed with us.
The man who took his wife and his kids to his home also took his dog. And somehow, on that corner, in that rain, I understand the losses of my father in a way I had not understood them before. It's almost as if losing Measelman was the worst loss of all. It's the first time I see my father's life through the eyes of a man rather than the eyes of a boy.
I can see what must have happened to him. And none of that happens if I pick up Kaylee and I march home.
So a lot of things happened on the corner that night. And it ends up being the last time I walk with Kaylee in the rain. She passed away less than six months later. So the beauty of storytelling is that,
while I was telling you that story, sitting in my studio, far apart from you, For a moment, everything went away and I was back on that corner, right over there and I was back in the rain and I was back in a pair of underwear I no longer own and I was experiencing that moment with a friend who I haven't seen in a long time and who I miss and she was right back with me.
So when we tell stories about the moments in our lives, we solidify them, they become the movies that we can replay in our minds. And so often what happens is, if we don't tell the story, it gets lost. We forget it.
Sharad Lal: Because I'm going through this process and that's what I want for all people. I want them to be able to revisit an old friend in a really meaningful way and to feel that moment in a way that we once felt it. That's beautiful, Matthew. And, as you were speaking the story, I had exactly the same thoughts. I first read it when I was lying down in bed, it was raining outside at night, so I was feeling it very much. And now that you said it, I felt it as well. I love what you said. As you start creating these stories, you live the memories, both the difficult ones, as well as the ones that you cherish.
How's your feeling different as you're going through these sometimes very difficult memories, but sometimes beautiful, happy ones. What does that do to you? Do you have a different way of processing it? How do you do that?
Matthew Dicks: for the difficult moments, and I certainly have my fair share, I'm always trying to craft a story where at some point, despite the difficulty, there will be hope at the end of the story. I can't think of a story that I tell where there isn't at least a small kernel or a seed of either hope or, I have gone through a difficult experience, but I now have understanding on the other side that I did not have before, which gives value to a moment.
Quite often there are moments in my life that are very difficult for me until I tell the story.
Oftentimes I think what happens is A difficult thing happens to us and it gets framed as a difficult thing, and it's not until we return to it and try to find a way to tell other people that we suddenly see things that mean something to us.
Even if that doesn't quite happen, even if I don't find as much hope in that story, the other benefit of it is it becomes a chapter in our lives. Before I told that story, it was almost as if my homelessness infected all of my life. I just felt it all the time, even though it had been 10, 20, 30 years ago.
When I tell a story about it, it has a beginning and an end. It becomes a segment of my life, and it cuts off the infection. It stops it from bothering me anywhere beyond where it ended. then the other beauty of it is I tell that story, and every single time I tell that story, someone comes up to me and says, I lived in my car for six months and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.
Or I lived on the streets for two years, but I've never thought I should tell my friends today about my past.
But all of those people, they're existing with shame in the same way I once existed with shame about my homelessness until I decided to.
tell a story about it and stand in front of people and speak it out loud. I've been able to alleviate a lot of people of their sources of embarrassment or shame, or at the very least, let them know they're not alone in the struggle they have. we assume either people don't want to hear it or we shouldn't talk about it because they're gonna think less of us Because of it and both of those things are not true
Sharad Lal: I love that, especially the second and third points that you said. One is, of course, quite often, there's a natural reframe which goes to hope, but that need not happen. We need not put pressure on that. If it doesn't authentically happen, we can look at it as a chapter that's gone. We can also look at a way of connecting to other people who've had similar experiences and realise that even though we're alone, we're all connected in our aloneness, which itself is powerful.
So I love that. And I don't know whether you've seen sometimes The need to try and reframe everything to get a lesson from everything where you force fitting it
Matthew Dicks: I never use the word lesson because I don't think audiences want lessons What I think they want is to be entertained, and if they are entertained by my story, and over the course of my story, I describe understanding, wisdom, knowledge that I've acquired, and they take something from that on their own without me forcing it upon them, that's the best example of how a story can help other people.
Although I don't force that sort of hope or that wisdom, I think it's almost inevitable that regardless of what difficult experience you go through, if you survive it, there is going to be some strength that is garnered or some wisdom that will be found. And so I'm always asking myself what the value of that challenging moment was.
I haven't told the story of being on trial, probably because Rather than telling a story that does not have wisdom or strength or knowledge at the end, I prefer to tell the other story I have. And I'll let that trial story circle in my brain until I find wisdom that I can impart to an audience by imparting it to myself, or maybe it never gets told, and that is okay too.
Because remember, I'm a man who has more stories to tell than he has time to tell them. So if I never get to the story of my trial, as crazy as that sounds, That's okay with me,
Sharad Lal: Matthew, most people who have heard us till now would know that how important stories are. And I think the next question in their mind's how do we tell good stories? So maybe we dig into that a bit. What are some elements of a good story?
Matthew Dicks: Sure, the problem with most folks who are trying to tell stories is that they're not actually telling stories, they're reporting on their lives. They're simply giving us a chronological accounting of their day, which doesn't amount to a story. And people don't want to hear that other than your mother and maybe your spouse
A story is fundamentally about change over time. I used to be something, and now I'm a new thing, or I used to think something or feel something, and now I think or feel differently.
Most people don't think that way. we have to say to ourselves. Where in our lives do we feel those moments and experience those moments where something has changed fundamentally inside of us?
Those are stories.
understanding what a story is most important. So pay attention to the way movies play out.
You won't know the particularities. You won't understand exactly how it's going to happen, but if you meet a character at the beginning of a movie who is in love with someone, but that person doesn't love them back, by the end of the movie, that person's going to find love maybe with the person they love at the beginning in the movie.
But if not, they're going to find love at the end of the movie. Maybe that love is they're going to learn to love themselves. Or maybe they're going to find a better match. Whatever it is, it's going to be going from no love to love.
it doesn't ruin the movie. It doesn't mean you're not going to enjoy the movie anymore, but that's how it works.
We have to begin in a place and end in the opposite of that place.
Sharad Lal: now, for some of us novices, as we are starting to tell stories, one good way is of course, homework for life, what are other ways in which we can start telling good stories or start telling better stories to our spouses who have to listen to the facts being put on the table.
Matthew Dicks: I tell people that the beginnings of stories are the most important places in stories. I used to think the beginning and the end were equally important, but I've come to understand that if we think of a Story as a journey. a plane ride to a beautiful place, you know You have to land your plane in a beautiful place people want a good satisfying ending But at the beginning of the story, it's your opportunity to actually put people on the plane And I think the problem is that stories open so poorly so often that nobody gets on your plane So you end up flying a plane That's empty to a beautiful place, but no one went along with you.
They disengaged with you while you were speaking. their minds wandered. They started staring at their phones, all of these things that people can do to stop listening.
So there's lots of things we can do at the beginning of a story to guarantee attention. But the two things I tell people are: two things should open every story that you tell location and action, meaning every story should open with.
a place. I am in a place and I am doing a thing. We open with location because it activates imagination.
So rather than describing things as a storyteller, what I choose to do instead, Is I leverage the imagination of my audience by stealing the ideas that they already have in their head, stealing the images they have. So if I say I'm standing in a kitchen, you can tell me if the floor is tile, linoleum, or hardwood.
And as long as it doesn't matter to my story, I don't care which one you choose.
Then we start with action because people want stories to take off. They want things to start right away. Most people start stories by explaining stuff. Nobody ever wants you to explain. No one ever says, boy, I hope they explain the hometown before the story gets launched.
Not launch the story and then explain your hometown.
So if you simply begin a story with. I'm walking up a hill on the sixth hole at a golf course when my friend Steve says, Hey, do you want a Gatorade?
That is location and action. That's what we start with. There's also a lot of science behind it. Our brains are primed for stories. Human beings survived on oral storytelling for all except for the last one quarter of 1%. of our existence.
so when we start telling a story, our brains chemically Change almost instantaneously because our brains understand Oh, he's telling a story It might keep me alive Which is literally what stories used to do they used to keep us alive by giving us the information We needed to survive the day And so if you open with location in action people almost can't help But begin paying attention to you because the chemistry in their brain changes that says to them pay attention This might keep you alive.
Those things aren't problems for us anymore, but they might keep you alive spiritually. They might keep you alive mentally. They might keep your business alive.
What's the role of drama in storytelling?
I think that drama is something that either comes or doesn't come. I think that sometimes we experience a moment that is very dramatic and has all of the elements of a good drama and sometimes it doesn't, I don't try to force it in any way whatsoever.
if I go through the windshield when I'm 17 years old and die on the side of the road and have a paramedic pounding on my chest to bring me back to life, that's drama, and that's great.
That'll certainly help my story. There's no drama, though, in me refusing a Gatorade from my friend at a golf course and ending up in the car and realising, oh, I was food insecure as a kid. That's why I refused the Gatorade. That's not really very dramatic, but that's okay because again, we're looking for relatability and connecting to audiences and people know that lives are not dramatic every day.
Sharad Lal: When we're talking about stories and work, is there any adjustment that you make? How does that work?
Matthew Dicks: It depends on what we're doing at work. if we're telling a story in an interview, or to get people to know us, there's almost no change whatsoever. other than there's a purpose behind the story. If I'm in an interview and someone says, give me an example of a time when you were at work and things didn't work out, happily because of who I am, I have a multitude of stories to choose from.
My most challenging thing is to figure out which one is going to land best with this person. Which is why I tend to be the person who speaks last, whenever possible, and asks lots of questions.
If we're thinking about telling stories about our business or the products or services we sell, I still think that we should be looking to tell personal stories, but those personal stories absolutely have to match in some way the message we're carrying forward for our product and service.It's more strategic when we're choosing stories in business.
there's a purpose behind it.
Sharad Lal: We've spoken for so long, Matthew. As we come to the end, I have two last questions for you. One is, Bottom line, if there's one piece of advice you'd like to leave listeners with, what would that be?
Matthew Dicks: I think that doing homework for life. Paying attention to your life and being brave enough to share things with other people, I think is enormously powerful. I think I meet a lot of people, who just don't think the things in their lives are worthy of sharing.
They assume that people don't want to hear what they have to say. I want people to understand that people desperately need to hear what you have to say, and they want to hear that moment of failure that you have been hiding all your life or that moment of embarrassment that you've been keeping to yourself.
Those are the stories that unlock connection with people. The craziest things after I tell a story, oftentimes those things are completely unrelated to the story I've just told because I've been willing to stand in front of them and say something that most people are unwilling to say a simple moment of embarrassment, failure, or shame, and suddenly They see me as a receptacle of their shame.
Oh, he just talked about something that most people won't talk about. Maybe he's the safe one who I can tell my secret to. It is a signal to me that I have connected with a human being in a way that they have not connected with human beings before.
That level of connection is extraordinary. And it is achievable by all people. But I think the thing I want people to understand is, You have to Do it.
And the first time you do it, there's no way to remove the fear. It's just the way life is. Like you can know that it is safe and yet you will still be afraid the first time you do it.
You have to make that jump, make the leap and discover for yourself, something that I've discovered for all my life, which is that people need stories. They want to hear stories and they're really hoping that you tell a story that will make them laugh or make them feel a little bit better about themselves or feel a little more understood about the world.
Very powerful message. And Matthew, the last question I ask everyone, at the end of your life, how would you know you've lived a good life?
I can't ponder the end of my life because I live in a persistent existential crisis. acknowledging that there might be an end is a little too frightening for me to even consider. However, in the very unlikely event that I die someday,my goal is in the last moment of my life. There is no regret.
There was a time in my life when a gun was put to my head and a man told me he was going to shoot me on the count of three and began counting back. The extraordinary thing about that moment for me was that I wasn't afraid or angry.
The only thing I felt was regret that I had not done nearly enough with the life that I had been given. It changed my life in terrible and oddly wonderful ways. I still live with the ramifications of that moment to this day, but the darkest moment of my life, the gift I received was the understanding of how awful regret feels of how wasting a day, wasting a month, wasting a year can feel.
So if I very unlikely die someday, I am hoping that in my final moments, I don't feel that regret. I feel like I've used my time wisely, that I filled my life as much as I could have, and that all of the days of my life were lived in a meaningful way.
Thank you, Matthew. What a powerful message to end with. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom with the listeners of the How to Live podcast.
Sharad Lal: My pleasure. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Matthew, for such an enlightening conversation. For more and Matt too. I believe a link in the show notes. Now here's something all of us could try. Homework for life. It's simply nothing down. The one big story. That has happened to us today.
This need not be like a big earth shattering story, but it could be simple things that are meaningful that have shifted you a bit. Not down the elements of the story. And then construct it. Like this, if we do this every day we just look at it. Things happening in our life. We'll get to know more about ourselves and life will start becoming more meaningful. Best of luck. I hope you enjoyed this episode. The next episode will drop two weeks from now. Do join us for that till next time. Have a wonderful day ahead. Bye bye.