Speaker 1: A tourist is backpacking through the highlands of Scotland, and he stops at a pub to get a drink. And the only people in there is a bartender and an old man nursing a beer. And he orders a pint, and they sit in silence for a while, and suddenly the old man turns to him and goes, you see this bar? I built this bar with my bare hands, found the finest wood in the county, gave it more love and care than my own child, but do they call me McGregor the bar builder? No, points out the window. You see that stone wall out there? I built that stone wall with my bare hands, found every stone, placed them just so through the rain and the cold, but do they call me McGregor the stone wall builder? No, points out the other window. You see that pier on the lake out there? I built that pier with my bare hands, drove the pilings against the tide of the sand, plank by plank, but do they call me McGregor the pier builder? No. But you f**k one goat. Storytelling is joke telling. It's knowing your punchline, your ending, knowing that everything you're saying from the first sentence to the last is leading to a singular goal, and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings. We all love stories, we're born for them. Stories affirm who we are. We all want affirmations that our lives have meaning, and nothing does a greater affirmation than when we connect through stories. It can cross the barriers of time, past, present, and future, and allow us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined. The children's television host, Mr. Rogers, always carried in his wallet a quote from a social worker that said, frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story. And the way I like to interpret that is probably the most greatest story commandment, which is, make me care. Please, emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically, just make me care. We all know what it's like to not care. You've gone through hundreds of TV channels, just switching after channel after channel, and then suddenly you actually stop on one, it's already halfway over, but something's caught you, and you're drawn in, and you care. That's not by chance, that's by design.

Speaker 2: Andrew Stanton is one of the most famous storytellers in Hollywood. His movies, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E, to name but a few, have become blockbusters and have probably revolutionized the way we view and perceive animated character films. Their incredible narrative is not based on luck, nor was it a momentary inspiration. Andrew Stanton, while writing these stories, knew exactly where to focus on and how to make them successful. In his own words, he actually knew how to care. Like Andrew Stanton, I did not decide to start this video with a recount of his story by chance. I wanted to actually find a concrete way to introduce you to the power of storytelling. For I hold the conviction that storytelling is a skill every single one of us ought to

Speaker 3: understand and, eventually, to cultivate.

Speaker 2: I will try to illuminate the essence of a great story by narrating a modified excerpt from the short story Scheherazade by the great novelist Haruki Murakami. When I was young, I loved listening to my grandfather tell me stories. I didn't know whether his stories were true, invented, or partly true and partly invented. I had no way of knowing. Reality and supposition, observation and pure fancy seemed jumbled together in his narratives. I therefore enjoyed them as a child might without even asking too many questionings. What possible difference could it make to me after all if they were lies or truth, or a complicated patchwork of the two? Whatever the case, my grandfather had a gift for storytelling that touched me in my heart. No matter what sort of story it was, he managed to make it special. His voice, his timing, and his pacing were all flawless. Enthralled, I was able to forget the reality that surrounded me, if only for a moment. Like a blackboard wiped with a damp cloth, my worries were erased, as were unpleasant memories. At this point in my life, this kind of forgetting was what I desired more than anything else. The essence of a great story is its ability not only to make you care, as Andrew Stanton stated, but also to make you forget. Forget your worries, your problems, even your pain. The story helps you enter a new, magical world that is extremely appealing. The person who helps you achieve such a thing automatically becomes extremely appealing too. So, why is this actually happening? What kind of process occurs in our brains that can help us experience all of the feelings evoked by a great story? Let's say you are in a meeting room and you have to attend a PowerPoint presentation by one of your colleagues. During this process, two parts of your brain, the Broca's area and the Wernicke's area, are activated. These are the language processing areas which help us decode words and determine meaning. Other than that, they don't do anything. Therefore, when this process takes place alone, it is almost impossible for our brains to feel engaged with the speaker, and we consequently lose interest. When we are being told the story, however, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but so is any other area of our brain that we would use to experience the events of the story. In essence, you are not just listening to a story, you are making yourself part of it. Uri Hasson, Associate Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, in one of his papers states, When we narrate stories that have had a huge impact on our lives, we can pass the feeling we have experienced to other people too. During a research study, when the narrator spoke English, the volunteers understood her story and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, which is an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs. By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains. So anything you have experienced, you can help others experience the same thing, or at least, activate the same brain areas in them that were activated during your experience.

Speaker 3: Storytelling is an essential part of communication.

Speaker 2: It is the most effective way to learn, digest information, become energized, be influenced and get carried away. Although it seems quite challenging to master the art of storytelling, when you manage to understand the main principles of a great story, you are in a position to deconstruct them and build a system off of them. My storytelling system is called SeeU, and it is inspired by Andrew Stanton's TED Talk as well as countless interesting stories I have heard and read. The main pillars of the system are as follows. Stick to a central theme, evoke wonder, embrace change, use personal experience. As Andrew Stanton states, all well-drawn characters within a story have a spine. This is their inner motor, a dominant, unconscious goal that they are striving towards, a niche that they cannot scratch. Michael Corleone, for instance, in The Godfather, was driven by a constant underlying theme, which was to please his father. It consumed his entire life, and it was visible throughout the movie. When you are telling a story, whether you want to draw on details from your personal experiences or from somewhere else, try to be congruent with your theme. Is your story about existential angst? Is your story about the struggle of being human? Is it about the depth of your emotional or intellectual world? Whatever your theme and its emotional underpinning, make sure that it prevails throughout the story. This is what keeps people engaged and helps them resonate with your emotional world.

Speaker 1: And that's what I think the magic ingredient is, the secret sauce, is can you invoke wonder? Wonder is honest. It's completely innocent. It can't be artificially evoked. For me, there's no greater ability than the gift of another human being giving you that feeling, to hold them still just for a brief moment in their day and have them surrender to wonder. When it's tapped, the affirmation of being alive reaches you almost to a cellular level When it's tapped, the affirmation of being alive reaches you almost to a cellular level And when an artist does that to another artist, it's like you're compelled to pass it on. It's like a dormant command that's suddenly activated in you, like a call to devil's tower. Do unto others what's been done to you. The best stories infuse wonder.

Speaker 2: Let me repeat his words so you can realize the profanity of what he just said. Managing to hold your audience still for just a brief moment in their day and have them surrender to wonder is a skill that, when performed correctly, can reach you to an almost cellular level. A great example of a person who manages to evoke wonder in his speeches is Dr. Jordan Peterson. Here is a small clip that signifies that.

Speaker 4: Beauty is so valuable and we're so afraid of it. And I think we're afraid of it because it's a pathway. It's not the only pathway to the divine. I mean, there's pathways to the divine. Love is one of them, I suppose. But beauty, especially for people who have an affinity for beauty, it's like music. It's one of those things that you can't argue against, right? You can't even understand. It just hits you. And it does, it shows you, well, it shows you the ideal. That's one way of thinking about it. But it also shows you, I think, it's like a vision of the potential future. It's something like that as well. That if we just got our act together and beautified things, that that's the place that we can inhabit and that would ennoble us. And that's why this Jerusalem, the heavenly city, is paved with gemstones. They're crystalline. They emit light. Yeah, it's the proper dwelling place for an enlightened consciousness. Beauty is the proper dwelling place for an enlightened consciousness. And we ignore it at our spiritual and economic peril. It's obvious that beauty, there's almost nothing more valuable than beauty.

Speaker 2: He has this incredible ability to talk about big ideas and attempt to answer life-defining questions just by choosing topics that can speak to our unconscious mind and help us feel immediately engaged. Wonder is strongly associated with themes that are not commonly experienced in our everyday lives or with situations that flirt with the idea of the extraordinary and are difficult to achieve. Whenever you want to spice up your story with wonder, try to think of events where the protagonist exceeded the expectations of his or her surroundings and accomplished something beautiful and extraordinary.

Speaker 1: So we're all learning all the time. And that's why change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die, because life is never static. In 1998, I had finished writing Toy Story and A Bug's Life, and I was completely hooked on screenwriting, so I wanted to become much better at it and learn anything I could. So I researched everything I possibly could, and I finally came across this fantastic quote by a British playwright, William Archer. Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty. It's an incredibly insightful definition. When you're telling a story, have you constructed anticipation? In the short term, have you made me want to know what will happen next? But more importantly, have you made me want to know how it will all conclude in the long term? Have you constructed honest conflicts with truth that creates doubt in what the outcome might be? An example would be in Finding Nemo. In the short tension, you were always worried, would Dory's short-term memory forget whatever she was being told by Marlin? But under that was this global tension of will we ever find Nemo in this huge, vast ocean?

Speaker 2: Change and anticipation is what makes us crave for more. Andrew Stanton knows that pretty well, and at some point he makes this excellent comment. Make the audience work for their meal. Give them just enough so that they want to find out more. Humans are born problem solvers. We are compelled to deduce and to deduct because this is what real life actually looks like. It is this well-organized absence of information that will draw us in. Give your audience a 2 plus 2 in a story. Never give them a 4. The elements you provide and the order you place them in is crucial to whether you will succeed or fail in engaging with your audience.

Speaker 1: Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesn't always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing. Expressing values you personally feel deep down to your core.

Speaker 2: Personal stories help us to speak from our hearts. Once we do so, the listener immediately identifies value in our story and can easily relate to it. As discussed earlier, people want you to make them care or sometimes even forget. That is why personal experiences are important. They are the most effective way to make yourself relatable and help others become lost in your narrative. The best storytellers look for their own memories and life experiences for ways to illustrate their message. What events in your life make you believe in the idea that you are sharing?

Speaker 3: The whole world is built on stories.

Speaker 2: Religions, political parties, companies and various social groups are using storytelling to promote their ideas. As Yuval Noah Harari wrote in Sapiens, humans think in stories and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories. I don't know which stories are the best, but there is one thing I know for sure. If you are not capable of writing your own story, other people will write it for you.

Speaker 5: Thank you for watching.