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7 Improving Speakers, Writers, Leaders EQ
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7E Lesson - Personal Stories Reference Guide
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By compiling a list of your favorite stories in the format we’ve provided in this lesson, you can review, remember, and easily retrieve them to share in speeches, writings, and social conversation.
Many of the great teachers in history used stories to share their messages. Today, the best speakers continue to inspire their audiences by telling personal stories. Listeners can identify with stories and often can imagine themselves in the place of a story's characters. Good stories contain specific characters and details to paint vivid word-pictures.
Creating an Excerpt of Life Experiences
Below you will find a categorized list of subjects compiled to help you organize personal stories you have in your memory or stories you have yet to experience. Without creating such a list, these types of stories may only come to mind when prompted by associations.
Stories should describe fun, exciting, interesting and meaningful moments. You can also add sad and frustrating stories that you think would be testimonials, something helpful to tell others about. (Be sure the stories are not gossip and that you change the names where appropriate, to protect others.) We suggest you organize your list of stories in a binder or a computer document. Note each category as a heading on separate pages. As stories come to mind over the next few weeks or however long it takes, write just enough about each one within the fitting category to prompt your memory.
Add more categories, if you have stories that don’t fit within the categories listed. You can use this listing as a reference when creating speeches, to find particular stories fitting the theme of your speech or to speak about as a topic. You can also review your brief comments about each story frequently (maybe a few a day or the whole list once a week) to enhance your ability to share them in speeches or conversation, without having to rely on this list or associations.
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Accidents
Accomplishments
Allergies
Animals
Art
Awards
Battles
Births
Boats
Businesses
Children
Clothing
Crimes
Elderly
Exercise
Families
Foods
Friends
Funerals
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Furniture
Helpful ideas
Historical events
Hobbies/Crafts
Holidays
Houses
Illnesses
Jokes
Media
Movies,
Books,
Articles,
etc.
Military
Money
Music
Plants
Politics
Restaurants
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Seasons
Spiritual/Religion
Sports
Spouses
Surgeries
Tragedies
Transportation
Airlines,
Buses,
Taxis,
Motorcycles,
etc.
Trips
Local,
Worldwide
Waterways
Weather-Storms
etc.
Weddings
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