I’m baaaaack! Here’s the second installment of Telling Stories That Connect.

Step number two in the Three Step Story Process is to Connect. In this step you begin to draw parallels between what you have experienced and the lesson(s) learned.

Connect: What’s important about the list of times, places and words or phrases that you see before you? One way to jump-start the connecting process is to think about the values or ethics you learned at each stop along the way. What I learned that dark night in January of 1974 is that material things mean nothing when you have your family. I also learned to keep a pair of shoes next to my bed. Crunching through the hard-pack snow in your bare feet is no picnic!

Lessons don’t always come from happy, sad or the most significant events. A 10-second conversation with a stranger in Boston during the summer of 1981 taught me to follow my passion when it comes to my profession. The stranger was the NHL Bruin’s play-by-play man at the time, and I recall asking him what his secret to broadcasting longevity was. He pulled my Windsor-knotted tie close to his face, and breathed “You have to love what you do, unconditionally and with all the passion you can muster!” Like many twenty year-olds, I quickly forgot that lesson, and had to re-learn it the hard way in the years since.

Once you have connected moments, events and places from your past to the lessons you learned along the way, it’s time for the third and most critical phase of the Three Step Story Process. As a sales coach asked me many years ago, “Who cares?” It’s time to Apply.

Apply: I’ve written some great stories over the years, but more of them end up in the wastebasket because of Step Three. You must be able to apply the learning from your story to a present-day challenge or situation. Stories are great for helping yourself and others adapt to change. Take the house fire that forced my brother, sister, Mom, Dad and me to flee into that January night. That event didn’t happen gradually, it happened in a matter of seconds. The application of the story is that no matter how entrenched we feel in our habits, ways or thoughts, we can be moved to action instantly by crisis. Crisis can break us, or it can clarify our thinking with searing insight. Answer the Application question by asking yourself “Why does this matter to me? What can others gain from hearing this story?”

Perhaps you don’t have a house fire in your past. Frankly, that’s not a bad thing. No doubt you have a funny story about a sibling, or your first job, a crazy third-grade teacher or a boss with whom you couldn’t communicate. The important thing about your stories is to tell them. Not everyone in the business world can relate to bar graphs, spread sheets or revenue projections. Everyone can relate to a well-crafted story that comes from your authentic ability to Reflect, Connect and Apply.

Telling Stories That Connect (Part One) By Mike Faber

Think back to the most memorable lessons of your life. Perhaps you learned about the value of respect from a favorite teacher, or a grandparent. A mentor or coach may have given you a kind word of encouragement during a tough time; you then passed along that wisdom later to a child or young adult in similar straits. Sometimes we learn our values from others, and sometimes we learn our values from stories. Aesop’s Fables, the Bible, Cat in the Hat or Harry Potter all hold secrets and stories that edify and illuminate.

I used to think that stories had to be dramatic and filled with heroism to be beneficial to an audience. Hearing other professional speakers talk about rock climbing or hang gliding or other daring feats made me want to seek out a mountain-top and go on a fantastic spiritual journey to discover my own death-defying lessons. Then I’d remember the two young boys who expect Daddy to deliver macaroni and cheese on a nightly basis, or my darling wife who needs to be saved from bath-tub spiders. With expectations around the house as lofty as those, who has time to scale Everest?

Stories have a mythic hold on us from our very first moments of cognition. “Good Night Moon” lulls us to sleep when we’re very young. Heck, reading that simple tale to a child lulls the reader to sleep as well! Our connection to stories lasts a lifetime, and while children’s books may not hold much instructive value as we age, stories themselves can help us make lasting connections as adults.

So what do the non-mountain climbers and non-space explorers among us do for great stories? First, you must plumb the depths of your own experience. Follow what I’ve identified as the Three Step Story Process. There is tremendous value in what you have experienced in your lifetime, and the first step is to Reflect.

Reflect: Find a quiet spot where you can think, and bring along a notepad and a pen. Start by listing all the places you’ve ever lived and the years you lived in each one. Addresses are not nearly as important as cities, towns and countries. As you reflect on locations, start to jot down some words and phrases that you associate with those places. For instance, from September 1970 until January 1974, I lived in Brighton New York. The word I associate with that time is “fire”; a house fire at 4:00am on January 16, 1974 forced my family from our home and through the frigid night to a neighbor’s house. I can “recover” the sights, sounds and smells from that night in an instant!

Steps Two and Three come your way next week in the NSA Blog!

Mike Faber is NSA Colorado’s Marketing Director for 2009-2010, and a story-teller at heart. To learn more about Mike please visit www.mikefaber.com or call him at 720.851.5208.