Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - How to Tell Travel Stories that Actually Interest People: Advice from 5-Time Moth GrandSLAM Champion Matthew Dicks

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

Have you ever returned from a trip and a friend says, “How was it? Tell me everything!” And then you start saying things like, “The food was great. Nice people. Incredible sunset.” Pretty soon you’re both bored and move on.    But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are storytelling techniques that we can all learn to better connect with people, not just about our travels, of course, but about everything.    In this episode, Matthew Dicks — a five-time Moth GrandSLAM storytelling winner and the author of Storyworthy — coaches us on the craft of storytelling. And at the end of the show, he weaves all of the advice he shares into a travel story of his own. I’ve summarized his top tips on postcardacademy.co for your reference.    I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. Ready to travel? Sign up for my newsletter and get your free guide to cheap airfare.    Thank you so much for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcard   This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co/insuranceDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

People think that these stories should be about the places that you go to and the foods that you eat and the things that you see. But no one's ever really going to be able to connect to the beautiful church you saw. So all of the things that people are inclined to talk about are the things we absolutely don't want to hear about. Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel. Have you ever returned home from a trip and a friend says, how was it? Tell me everything. And you have so much to share about this experience that may have changed your life.

But then we start saying things like, oh, the food was great. Nice people, incredible sunset. And pretty soon we are both bored and moving on. But it doesn't have to be that way. There are storytelling techniques that we can all learn to better connect with people. And not just about our travels, of course, but about everything. A good story can determine whether you get that second date or whether your employees listen to you. In this episode, Matthew Dix, a five-time Moth Grand Slamm storytelling winner and the author of Storyworthy,

coaches us on the craft of storytelling. And at the end of the show, he leaves all of his advice he shares with us into a travel story of his own. I've summarized his top tips on postcardacadmy.com for your reference. You can also do an even deeper dive if you had to Audible, where you can find Matthew's book, Storyworthy, Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change, and Change, your life through the power of storytelling. Sign up for Audible, using my affiliate link, audibletrial.com slash postcard to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial. I definitely recommend Matthew's book and I think you are going to love today's interview. Now into my

conversation with Matthew. Welcome Matthew. Thank you so much for joining me here today. Thank you. I'm honored to be here. So you're a five-time Moth Grand Slam storytelling winner. First off, could you just touch on what the moth is and how you got involved in it? Sure. The moth is an international storytelling organization, sort of the big daddy of all the storytelling folks in the world. It's true stories told live on stage without notes. They're just wonderful. It's a remarkable organization. And I got started with them in 2011. My friends were listening to the podcast that the moth puts out weekly. and then their radio hour that's on NPR. And everyone thought I should go to the moth in New York and tell a story.

They told me I've had the worst life of anyone they know, so I should go and tell stories in New York, which is not a nice thing to say to your friends. But I said yes to those friends and said, sure, someday I'll go to New York and tell a story. Without really having any intention of doing so, I was sort of terrified of the prospect. But I sort of stewed in my shame for about a year or two.

just telling people I was going to do something with no intention of actually doing it. And that's really not my style. So eventually I told my wife we needed to go New York and I said I'll tell one story, one and never again. And I went to New York to open mic story slam. You drop your name in a hat and you hope your name gets picked, although that night I was not hoping my name would get picked. And remarkably, my name got picked 10th.

And I took the stage and told my first story. And, you know, I hated every minute of that night until I got on that stage and began speaking. And the moment I started speaking, I knew I had found a place that I belonged. And so that's sort of how I got my start. I started going back and forth to New York and eventually to Boston when I started doing shows there. I sort of live equidistant to the two cities. And I've been telling stories for the moth and then for other organizations, including my own ever since. How did you prepare for it that night? Because I mean, I'm sure that's a lot of people's worst nightmare

and have to get onto a stage and riff about their own personal life. So how did, I'm just like struck by that once you got on stage, you felt at ease. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it had to do with my, my upbringing and things that had happened before I ever took that stage. I didn't realize that at the time. My wife often explains my life to me. And, uh, she, pointed out that the fact I've been an elementary school teacher for 20 years means I stand in front of the worst audience that there ever was, you know, it's 10 year old kids, and I have to hold their attention for seven hours a day. I've been a wedding DJ for the last 20 years as well. So that means every weekend for a long time, I was standing in front of 200 strangers trying

to get them to, you know, all do the same thing I needed them to do while they were all slightly inebriated. So that gave me the ability to speak extemporaneously to large groups of people. And I'm a novelist. I've been publishing novels since 2009, I guess. Yeah, 2009. And so just working with story for a really long time gave me an understanding of story that I didn't realize that I would possess that others didn't. I just thought it came natural. And my wife had to point out to me that if you're writing stories for 25 years, you know, perhaps you learn a few things along the way. I love your wife. She co-hosts your podcast with you, which everyone should listen to. Thank you. So you've touched on, you know, you've had one of the most intense lives I've ever heard of. Could you speak a little bit more about your background and how that's, you know, contributed to your storytelling? Sure. I mean, my friends, you know, they said I've had the worst life of anyone they know. And I always say that's not true. I work with kids and some of them have really challenged.

situations, but I've just had one of those lives where weird things happened to me. So twice in my life, I have died. I've stopped breathing and my heart has stopped beating and paramedics have brought me back through CPR both of those times. I was arrested and ultimately tried for a crime I didn't commit. I spent time in jail. I was homeless for a period in my life. I was the victim of a sort of horrific armed robbery. And that's really honestly just the tip of the iceberg of nonsense that has been my life. So, you know, my friends would say, go to the moth and tell the story of, you know, the time that when I was 12, I was awakened by a firefighter in my bedroom because the house I was in was burning. And, you know, they pulled me out of my burning home, which is, you know,

another crazy thing that's happened to me. And again, I said yes without the plan of actually doing it. But what I've discovered over time is that those stories, the ones that I thought were going to make me a great storyteller, they're not actually the stories people love the most because they're really tricky stories to tell. It's hard to connect on a dying and coming back to life level because it's just not something many people do. And I'm always looking to sort of bridge the gap between my audience and to find a space of connection and vulnerability. and it's just really hard to do that while talking about events that people can't relate to. So what I've discovered over time is that the little stories are the ones that people love the most because they are the most relatable. They're the ones that people can understand and perhaps have experienced themselves.

And because of that, those are the stories I prefer to tell whenever it's possible. Yeah. In your book story where you mentioned that those stories that you just mentioned are all huge And you really, it's about making these big events small and relatable to other people. And that's what really resonates with them. And you talk about your story. This is going to suck quite a bit. Could you speak to that one a little bit?

So that's a story about when I was 17 years old. I was in a car accident two days before Christmas, a head-on collision. And I wasn't wearing my seatbelt at the time. So I went through the windshield. and I ultimately stopped breathing and my heart stopped beating in the back of an ambulance. And I was awakened by paramedics who were pounding on my chest and forcing a tube down my throat. They brought me back to life. And the story really isn't about that moment though, because again, it's not a moment that people can really relate to.

So what happens is they bring me to the emergency room. And while doctors and nurses are frantically working on me trying to keep me alive, my, there's a nurse who calls my parents to, you know, alert them to what has happened. And my parents don't come to the hospital initially. The nurse says that I'm in stable condition by that time. So my stepfather decides that they're going to go check on the car before they check on me. And so I end up in an emergency room really badly hurt two days before Christmas, feeling as alone as I've ever felt in my life, wondering why there's no one there for me.

But it turns out that I'm not alone because that nurse who called my parents, she also called McDonald's, the place that I worked at the time. I was a manager at a McDonald's restaurant. And I had told that nurse to call McDonald's too because I needed them to know I wasn't going to be at work that day because I'm a crazy person. And she called. And at McDonald's, the manager told my friends what had happened, my friends who were working. And an old-fashioned phone tree began. and my friends calling friends, calling friends. And before I knew it, I could hear them.

They were in that waiting room just outside the emergency room because they're teenage kids, you know, and they're making a lot of noise. And the first person to arrive that day is my best friend, Benji. And it just fills up with my friends, that emergency room, waiting room. And when the nurses realize that my parents aren't going to make it to the emergency room before I'm rolled into surgery that day, they roll me to the other side of the emergency room and they prop open the double doors and they let

my friends stand in the doorway and you know the boys say incredibly inappropriate things to make me laugh and the girls tell me they love me and they chant my name as I'm rolled down into surgery that day and so that story becomes not about something that happened in a car or in the back of an ambulance instead it happens in an emergency room and it's about the idea that's about the idea that our parents or our loved ones sometimes let us down, but our friends often can be the people who pick us up, the ones who can save us. Because that is something people can understand. It's odd because the story, the car accident and my death is sort of just a vehicle, pardon the pun, to get me into the emergency room. You know, it's almost irrelevant. And when I tell the story,

the funny thing is people weep when they discover that my friends have arrived. And I actually become really emotional when I tell that story, even though I've told it hundreds of times now because I use it in all my workshops because it has so many good teaching points, I still get choked up. And people really cry at the end of that story, but they never cry when I die. And I always point that out to them. You know, they just blink at me while I describe this horrific car accident and my death. And there's not a tear shed because no one can ever really relate to that. But they can absolutely relate to low. loneliness and being abandoned and feeling like no one loves you, those are things they understand.

And that's why they cry at that moment. Yeah. It's a very powerful story. I mean, I got chills just having you and tell it again right now in a really quick way. But yes, you have a very cinematic way of telling a story. And I would just love for you to talk a little bit more about your craft. And I guess what are some of the big mistakes people make when they're telling a story? story. And since, you know, this is usually a travel podcast, if you could maybe explain why we so

often fail telling a travel story after having this really incredible experience and we want to share it with our friends. But then it's usually like, oh, the food was good. It was beautiful. And pretty soon everyone's bored. But it doesn't have to be that way. I don't think. No, it doesn't. But you're right. That is really what these stories tend to be. I often really sort of make fun of them in workshops all the time because they're the stories people love to tell, but they're often the worst told stories. I think the mistake people make is people believe that stories are, stories are essentially stuff that happened to us told chronologically. They believe that that is what a story is. And that is just really an accounting of your time. You know,

it's sort of like the attempt to relive your vacation at the expense of your friends. And no one really wants that. And what happens in especially vacation stories or lots of sort of like your wedding story would be similar. People love to tell the story of their wedding. And again, it ends up being just an accounting of the weekend. What happens is people think that these stories should be about the places that you go to and the foods that you eat and the things that you see. But much like my car accident, no one's ever really going to be. able to connect to the beautiful church you saw. You're going to use lots of adjectives to describe it, but it's just never going to look as amazing as it did to you. And as you describe the food that

you ate and you talk about how delicious it was, we never get to taste it. So we're never going to connect to the food either. So all of the things that people are inclined to talk about are the things we absolutely don't want to hear about. Instead, what a story really is, it's about a moment in a human being's life. It's what I call a five-second moment. It's what I call a five-second moment. because I believe that these moments we're looking for take place over the course of five seconds or less. It's a moment of realization or transformation. It's either I've suddenly discovered something about the world or myself or my travel date or the universe in general. I've suddenly realized something I didn't realize before or it's I've changed in some way.

I've transformed. I used to be this person, but now I'm this person. and those moments of realization and transformation, they tend to take place really almost instantaneously. You know, they're the culmination of events, but sort of it's a switch. I was once one thing and now I'm another. It happens pretty quick. And those are the stories people want to hear. They want to hear stories about you, not the things you saw and the things you ate and the places you went, but how did those things impact you as a human being?

How did you change over the course of your trip? How did you discover something or what did you discover over the course of your trip that made you fundamentally different or to see the world in a different way? Those are the stories we want to hear. The ones about you, not about the churches and the beaches and the food and the mountains because those things are just ultimately unrelatable in an auditory form at least. So we've got our five second moment and then the rest of the story hangs around that. Yes, exactly. it's the rest of the story is essentially the pathway to that final moment. You know, it's, I always say that the beginning of your story should be the opposite of the

end of your story or an approximate opposite. So, you know, at the beginning of, for example, that story about my car accident, I'm with my friend Pat on the, on the sidewalk outside of a record store that day. And I've been buying secret Christmas presents for all my friends because I've had rotten Christmases and I've decided to sort of buy myself the best Christmas I've ever had. And on that sidewalk, Pat tells me that friends don't get friends Christmas presents. You know, he's like a 14 year old boy at the time, but he thinks he knows everything. And he kind of does, actually. But he says, you know, we just don't buy presents for each other, you lose, you know, especially guys. Guys don't buy each other surprise Christmas presents,

even though I had just bought Pat a surprise Christmas present like 10 minutes before. And so the beginning of the story is the idea that Pat telling me that friends don't get each other surprised Christmas presents. And at the end of my story, it turns out Pat is there in the waiting room with Benji and all my other friends. They give me the best gift I've ever been given. You know, they give me the gift of family. Yeah. And so you can you see how the beginning and the end are sort of opposites of each other or what I like to say is they're speaking to each other. Yeah. Beginning in the end of the story. And the story itself is just the pathway to get to that end so that I can bring my audience into a moment with as much clarity as possible. Yeah. And that's another, you know, just for my

me of the movies, because they do the exact same thing, right, where if it's a comedy, it's going to start out kind of tragic and the reverse. Exactly. Well, stories I always say are nothing more than movies that we create in the minds of our listeners. And so the best storytellers in the world will create a movie in your mind so much so that you'll kind of forget where you are a little bit. And you may even forget that there's a person telling you the story, that you can get lost in the words of the storyteller. And so everything I do with storytelling, I think about cinematically. I think about how this would be on a movie screen because that's what I'm working with. I'm just working on a movie screen inside everyone's mind. And I'm trying to activate imagination and

dictate it at all times to the direction that I needed to be dictated to. And how do you put people in the moment right away? What are your techniques for that? So I believe in starting stories in a very particular way. And I always say I give lots of rules on storytelling, but those rules should all be broken, but only if you know why you're breaking them. Don't break them just for the sake of breaking them. But what I would tell people is the best way to start a story is to actually start the story, which is to say start it with some forward motion, have something happening in your story right away. Start as close to the end as possible. That's a Kurt Vonnegut rule for short stories that I think applies to the stories we tell out loud as well.

So most often people feel that to begin a story, they have to sort of provide lots of information before the story can get moving. You know, they'll often tell you things about the characters in the story or where they are, you know, how old they are and, you know, what point of their life are they, how they're feeling. And I say, no, no, don't do any of that. Start the story. like get that thing rolling and then as the story is rolling, drip in the information that we need.

And the same way, a movie would. You know, you don't start a movie like Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks stepping on the stage and saying, hi, before we begin this movie, I need you to know about what Captain Jim Lovell is like. And I need you to understand how space travel works in the 1960s so that this movie will make sense to you, right? None of that is true. Instead, what they do is they get the movie rolling. And then through the course of the movie, you learn who the character is, you learn about space travel. But they don't front load this story because that would be awful.

But that's how people tell stories. They often frontload their stories with a bunch of information that causes us to wonder things like, where is this going? You know, why is he telling me this? These are like questions we always have in our heads when people tell us stories, and we don't want those stories in people's heads. Instead we want, or those questions in people's heads. Instead, we want to get the story launched off the ground right away. Right. So within like the opening moments, people need to know where this is headed so they don't feel lost. Exactly. Yeah. You want to put something sort of in the beginning of your story that is a signal to the audience of what kind of story they're involved in. Even if it's a travel story, if I was to tell you, you know, a story about a place I went, I sort of have to let you know very early on in the story within the first 30 seconds, whether we're in the kind of story where a tragedy is going to take place, whether this is hardship.

whether this is humor, you know, whether this is a drama or a comedy, you sort of want to know right away what you're getting into. And because our stories, the ones we tell, they're not like movies because they don't have trailers. You know, you often don't walk into a movie theater and have no clue about what is what is going to happen. You have an idea. You say, oh, we're going to go see the horror movie tonight. We're going to go see the romantic comedy tonight. You know, but it doesn't work that way in storytelling. When I start to tell a story, you don't know if you're in a horror movie or a romantic comedy. So I have to signal that to my audience very quickly so that they understand sort of what the landscape of the story is going to be. So they understand

what to wonder about and what not to wonder about. So that beginning is really important. It's your opportunity to grab the audience's attention. And I just think people miss that so often. Yeah. So grabbing them and then also putting them in the physical place. Yes. Well, that's really, really important. You know, fundamentally, if we're going to continue to activate imagination and create pictures in the minds of our audience, the audience needs to be able to picture you, the storyteller, in a physical space at all times. You know, you don't have a movie where the movie stops and someone says, you know, before the movie moves along, I need to let you know it doesn't happen that way. You always know where the actors are in a movie. The same thing in my stories. I always

provide a physical location at every moment. And if that's happening, now I know the film is running. The movie is continuing in the minds of the audience. And it's a simple trick. It's just make sure everyone knows where you are at all times. But it's something people just don't naturally do. They don't think cinematically. Is there a way that we can train ourselves to do this? Well, I mean, part of it is practice. Yeah. So, but I don't believe you should be sort of practicing every story you ever tell. You know, you don't want to you don't want to have to prep your cocktail party, you know, like, oh, what am I going to tell? So, you know, being attuned to moments of meaning are really, that's the most important part. I would rather hear the right story told poorly than the wrong story told well. So,

if we're telling good stories, like good stuff, moments of realization and transformation, you can almost get away with being a bad storyteller because you're going to be, you're going be vulnerable and you're going to be authentic and that really means a lot. But, you know, the other things you can start practicing is just thinking about where you're going to start your story. You know, so if something happens to me over the course of the day and I come home and have dinner with my wife and I want to tell her that story, I just inherently think to myself, almost instantaneously, where's the opposite of the end of my story? And it's very easy to find most of the time. And I say, well, I'll start there. And then I'm always going to start with some forward movement.

and I'm going to start as close to the end as possible. I'm going to make sure I'm always speaking in scenes. So these are things we can really practice, whether the story you're telling is 30 seconds or 10 minutes long. All of these rules sort of apply and will allow you to activate imagination and keep them movie flowing in people's minds. Could you give us an example of one of those shorter stories? Because I'm sure people are listening and thinking,

well, Matthew, your life is so interesting. I'm sure that I don't have a five-second moment every day or even every day. week. Well, I don't have them every day, but I have them a lot. I got to be honest with you. The list of stories that I have not crafted or planned in any way, but sort of I found these moments to tell someday, that list is 400 items long right now. And I haven't even looked at sort of the last year of the recording that I've been doing of these moments. So I've got a lot of moments. And you do too. I'm not, I'm not special in any way. If my wife was on the mic, she would tell you that I'm not special in any way.

You know, the one that I haven't crafted yet that I talk about a lot is just a tiny little moment I had with my daughter probably about a year ago now. My daughter's name is Clara. And at the time, she was nine years old. And it was early in the morning. It was about six o'clock. She was awake. And my son was awake, Charlie, and I was awake where early risers. I remember it was the summer because the sun was just filtering in the room perfectly.

it set the scene lovely. And Charlie's tiny. He's at the time he was five, but he's in the one percentile of height and weight. So he's like a peanut. And so he asks me to pick him up. And picking him up is like picking up a feather. So I've got him and I'm picking him up and I'm swinging him around. And, you know, we're just having fun.

And then eventually I put him down and he scurries away. And my daughter stands up and she says, upy, which is the old way she used to ask to get picked up. and Clara is in the 95th percentile of height. You know, she's this long, lanky thing that's really awkward to hold now because she's so tall. Like she just sort of, she just hangs on you. And so when she says, upy, I say, all right, and I pick her up. And I'm holding her and I've got a torn ligament in my foot, I think. Okay.

It's somewhere in one of my legs, I've got a torn legament. Yeah, it's in my foot. And so as soon as I pick her up, my foot starts to throb, and she's just awkward and heavy. And so I go to put her down and she grabs hold of my neck and she pushes her face sort of into the crook of my neck and shoulder. And she whispers to me, she says, Daddy, it's just so nice to be held like this. And I realize that I'm the last person who's going to hold her like this. She's gotten too big for my wife. You know, my wife can barely pick her up anymore.

And when she can, she can't hold her for more than a few seconds. And the grandparents can't hold her anymore. I'm the last human being who will ever hold her like a little girl. And because of that, I don't put her down. I hold her until she finally asks to be put down. And my arms are killing me and my foot is throbbing. And I'm dying by the time she says, okay, you can put me down. But it's a moment that's really powerful for me.

It's the recognition that my daughter's getting older. and I get to be the last one to hold her like the little girl she is. You know, which is right. And literally tonight we had another moment like that. It will probably work into the story. She was setting the table and she grabbed one of these little spoons that, little forks that we have in our cupboard that, you know, they used when they were tiny kids.

And we still have them because Charlie's six and he's little. And he still uses these little forks. And she grabbed one for herself. And my wife said, you know, you should probably start using the big forks now because you're a big girl. And Clara started to cry because she realized that transferring from the little kid fork

to the big fork meant that she was becoming something she wasn't ready to be. And that just happened tonight. And so that's another one of those moments that I had. And those two things might fuse together as a story or they might remain separate as a story.

But I feel like both of them are going to be stories that are going to be great to tell someday. But those moments happen all the time. I mean, I just had that one happen today. So they're not hard to find. They happen all the time. So you mentioned that you have this list of hundreds of moments like this. And I believe this is part of your homework for life, which is an idea

that I really love. So can you talk to us about that? Yes. So homework for life is a, it's a process or I guess a homework assignment. I gave to myself about five years ago now. I had been telling stories for maybe four or five years at that point and I was starting to run out of ideas. I saw my list shrinking and I was worried because I like to be on stage and I didn't want to be one of these storytellers who rolled out the old chestnut every time he was up there. You know, I know those guys, the ones who, oh, here comes the story. I've heard four times before and I just don't want to be that guy, you know, I always want something new. So I gave myself this homework assignment sort of in desperation. I said to myself at the end of every day, I'm going to sit down.

and I'm going to ask myself what the most storyworthy moment of my day was. What's the moment that if I was forced to tell a story about something that happened today, what would that moment be? Even if the thing I ultimately decide upon is not truly storyworthy, even if it's not something I would even tell my wife. And then I write it down. I don't write the whole thing down because then I'd be a journaler. And journalers are, you know, precious creatures.

They're like uniforms in the world. They're often really good at journaling immediately after a breakup, but tend not to journal very much while they are currently in love. You know, I didn't want to do that. I also believe in small, repeatable strategies that can become habits. And so what I use is Excel. I took an Excel spreadsheet. It's two columns. The left column is the date.

And then that second column, I stretch all the way across the page. And so in that one column that I have, essentially about the length of a computer screen, that's where I write my moment of the day. And that's all I give myself permission to write in. And that makes it short and easily repeatable. My goal was, at the end of every month, maybe I will find one new story to tell. But what happens instead is over the course of time, I developed this lens for storytelling that I didn't know existed. I suddenly start to see stories everywhere. And I realize that we all have these stories in our lives.

And what happens is either we don't recognize them as stories, like the moment I had tonight with Clara, which is going to end up being in my homework for life, the fact that she cried over the idea she had to upgrade to an adult fork, right? I either don't see it because I'm not doing homework for life. I just see it as a thing that happened. Or maybe I do see it and I recognize it as an important moment, but because I don't see it. Because I never write it down, I will forget it in a week. That's just the truth of life.

We just, we have these powerful and remarkable and unique moments with human beings or with ourselves or, you know, these moments of realization or transformation, but then we throw them away like they're trash. You know, we'll bend over on a street and pick up a quarter off a sidewalk. But a beautiful moment that you have with your child, you make no effort to record it, effort to preserve that memory. And so I discovered over the course of time by recording these moments that my life was filled with these moments. And also the other thing that happens is that you start to develop this lens for storytelling and seeing stories in your life, you sort of crack

open and memories will spill out of you, memories of the past that you can't believe you have forgotten, like truly profound and amazing and hilarious things that happened to you that you have discarded, thrown away like trash, they will come back to you as you start to develop this lens for storytelling. And so I gave that homework assignment to myself, and then I started giving it in workshops, and I mentioned in my book, and I did a TED talk on it. And literally now, thousands of people around the world do it. And I'm not exaggerating to say that every single day, I receive at least two or three emails

from people who are writing to me about their homework for life. I tell people if you get to 100 days, let me know you've done 100 consecutive days of homework for life and I send you something in return some cute little thing through the internet. And it's my way of sort of recording how often people are getting their homework for life done. And it's truly remarkable how many people are now doing it and discovering that it changes your life. Even if you don't plan on ever telling a story, even to another human being, if you're a hermit who lives in the woods and doesn't speak to people, what happens is if you do this homework for life, time slows down for you. The world gets really leisurely in its pace because if I was to ask you sort of what did you do last Thursday, you would be really hard pressed to think of anything you did last Thursday.

But I know exactly what I did last Thursday. I at least know one important thing that happened on that day. And truthfully, now my homework for life, it's typically three or four or five moments from my day because I just see so many of them. And so my days get recorded and they get sort of solidified in my mind. And as you notice these moments and you discover your life is full of them, the days don't feel like it's just another day anymore. Every day feels a little more precious. And so even if you're not telling stories, you should be doing this homework for life.

I love this. And I have started to do homework for life. I'm so glad. Yes. I love it because, yeah, one, I love the time slowing down part of it. But yeah, life just flies by. You blink and, you know, a year goes by. And like you said, people are like, oh, what have you been up to?

And like literally the next day, you're like, I can't even remember what I did yesterday. Right. And then also, like, when it comes to travel, I think a lot of people have the intention of, like, doing a travel journal of all the things. But we do it for one day and then we stop doing it because it just feels like it's just too much work. But what I love about homework for life is you're not. writing every single detail. It's just, you know, the most storyworthy thing of the day. Yes. Now, if I'm traveling, again, I tend to have more than one moment in a day. But again, I'm only recording, you know, a few sentences about each one of those moments. So it's not asking

for a lot. You know, I tell people to do it at the end of the day. But truthfully, I'm just doing it during the day now. When a moment happens, I just open my phone and in Evernote, I write down a few sentences and then at the end of the day I'll transfer it into my spreadsheet. But it takes seconds to capture these moments that really means something to you. Yeah. And I love what you said about it just bringing back memories and helping you see connections in your life. And you mentioned you know, your daughter, the story of you holding her and then the fork at dinner. Well, these are like beautiful anecdotes that will maybe add up to a bigger story. later on when you make those connections. Right, exactly. Yeah, you notice patterns in your life

sometimes through homework for life. Things don't realize you're doing or, you know, things don't realize you're being done to you until you start to see these patterns. Yeah, it's great. It's just wonderful. You and your wife founded Speak Up in Hartford, which is a storytelling organization. Can you tell me more about that? Sure. I guess we started it because I was traveling to New York and Boston a lot to tell stories and then eventually around the country. And there was nothing here in Hartford where we live. And so I finally one day, it was a snow day actually in February of 2011, I looked up from my computer across the table and I said, you know, we should do storytelling here in Connecticut. It's crazy that there's nothing here. And she said, yeah, you should do that.

And so just with the idea of we're going to do storytelling in Connecticut, I called art and theater space here in Hartford, who someone had told me, you know, might be interested in having, you know, storytelling or some kind of an event like that at their venue. And within three hours, I had a partner venue and I had a date for my first show. That's all I had. You know, the guy who ran the place, his name was Will. He said, you should probably get some storytellers. and I thought that was a good idea.

He said, you get a name for your organization, and I thought that's a good idea too. What we thought we would end up with was a couple times a year, we'd get 30 to 40 friends together, and 10 of us would share stories. And truly, if that's all that happened, we would have been happy. But our first show, we had 170 people show up, and we were just sort of off and running.

And so about once a month now, we produce a show in the Hartford area to audiences of somewhere between 200 to 500 people. And on those stages, we have seven storytellers. I'm always one of them, and I'm joined by six other people. I bring in sort of professionals from New York and Boston, and we always have brand new people who have never told a story before on stage. And my wife hosts every show.

And we tell true stories about our lives based upon a theme that my wife determines. And people love it. And it's become this wonderful community of audience members, storytellers and oftentimes audience members eventually become storytellers as they've watched enough shows and learned enough. And then spinning off that, I started teaching workshops. Sort of the same way I started telling stories. I told people that I didn't want to do a workshop. I don't like adults, I told them. I teach children. But eventually I agreed to do one workshop. I said one and done, just like that first story I told. And after doing that first workshop with eight people in a library

over the course of five weeks, I realized how much I enjoyed listening to other people's stories and helping them craft them so that they could be more effective. So today, I run workshops here in Hartford, but I work everywhere. You can't believe the people

who come to me looking for storytelling help. I work with priests and ministers and rabbis and major corporations and nonprofits and entertainers. I was in Canada. last year teaching storytelling to Mohawk Indians on their reservation. You know, I spent a weekend recently in the woods with 13 rabbis who had all been deemed boring by their congregation.

Oh, my God. You can imagine how thrilled they were to spend time with me, at least initially. But I travel around the country and around the world now, teaching storytelling to just about every kind of person you can imagine. because people are just starting to realize that no matter what your job is or no matter what your personal or professional goal is, the ability to actually tell an effective story about your life or your company's mission or your purpose is just critical. And so many people have such a hard time doing it. So that's all the things we do now with Speak Up.

It's really wonderful. It's become a big part of our lives. And now we do our podcast too, Speak Up Storytelling, where we air a story from our arched. archive once a week and then do a critique on that story as well. Yes, I love that format. Just going back to the workshops for a second. So I know that guys have come to you to these workshops to improve their dating skills. What are you teaching them? I'm teaching mostly the right stories to tell. So often people feel like it's always guys, you're right. Someday I'm sure a woman will come and ask for help or maybe they come but don't want to admit to it. But so often these guys will tell me that the stories

they believe are highly effective on a first date are the ones where they basically say, I'm an amazing person, I did an amazing thing, and everything turned out amazing. And I explained to them that that's really just a recipe for a douchebag. That's a person nobody wants to spend any time with. So I try to teach them that the idea that being vulnerable is a signal of strength. And I just think that that's sort of like an idea that is fading in today's world. You know, it's become very popular amongst a certain set of people to speak proudly and about yourself and to exaggerate and to refuse to apologize and to constantly speak of your accomplishments and speak of things you didn't actually do, but say you did them.

And the truth is, is that the people who speak about their flaws and their failures, and their shames. Those are the people who really are demonstrating strength. And I believe that, you know, human beings notice this. And so on these dates, I tell these guys, you have to talk about the things you're doing that are not so good, you know? So I had a guy recently in one of my workshops, you know, he came because of dating and he said, I can get a first date, but I can't get a second date.

And I asked him about the last date he had. And he talked about, like, closing this big deal for his companies, he's an attorney. and how awesome it was that he managed to do this. And I said, boy, I wouldn't want to have dinner with you either if that's what you were coming to dinner to talk about. It just sounded terrible. So I said, tell me about the most embarrassing moment you've recently had. And he talked about how when he was in the restroom at work one day, he somehow accidentally sort of peed all over himself. Like he just sort of lost track of what he was doing.

And all of a sudden he had pee all over his pants. And then he had this awkward moment where he was trying to like get the hand dryer to dry off the pants. He was like leaning up into the hand dryer. And then someone would walk in and he had to pretend to be washing his hands. And he couldn't sort of get himself clean. So he took his sports jacket off and he tied it around his waist and ran to his office and closed the door and skipped lunch. And he said the office kind of smelled like pee all day. And then at the end of the day, he just kept this suit jacket around his waist and ran home and

shame. And I said, that is the story you should have told on your first date, because that would have signaled to the woman who you were with that you are funny, that you're willing to share your flaws, and that you're strong enough to share your flaws. And I really believe that had he told that story, I would have wanted to spend more time with him. That's the kind of story people want to hear. And so that's what I teach in the dating workshops a lot is just tell the right kinds of stories. And then we can talk about the best way to tell a story and the length of a story and how to listen. Because God, no one knows how to listen these days. I see all the time. I'm sure you do as well. Like couples, especially when they're on vacation, are just sitting at the dinner table and they're

not talking and they don't look happy at all. They're just staring at their phones. And like, I get it. Sometimes when you're with somebody 24-7, you need a little bit of a break. But I think, like, there's a lot of people who want to connect with the personal. the table, but they don't know how or they feel like they've already shared all their stories and what can we possibly be talking about? Like, do you have any advice for them? One of the things we do every night is we say, what was the best part of your day? For example, we had dinner tonight, my wife and my kids and I. And so everyone has to think about the best moment from their day and everyone tells that story. And so everyone always has something to share that nobody knows about

yet. So, you know, each one of us shared our best part of our day. And then quite often, someone might say, let me tell you my worst part of my day. And we'll hear that from any one of the four of us. And then my wife and I are both teachers. We both teach elementary schools. So the kids will ask us sort of which kid annoyed you the most today. And that becomes a story. And which kid was the best in your class today? And that becomes a story. So those kinds of questions will often generate great stories, even from, you know, someone you've been with for a long time. My wife and I have been together for 12 years, but just the idea of rather than saying what happened today or tell me about your day, because really at that point, you're just

asking people to tell you an accounting of their time again, which you really don't want to hear, you know, instead be a little more particular about what you're asking and say what was the best part of your day or, you know, what was the worst thing your boss did to you today, you know, or what was the most surprising moment from your day. Those will often solicit more interesting stories than just sort of the waiting to hear the minute-by-minute accounting of what happened while you were apart. So I think that helps a lot.

I think the idea of being specific in what you ask and then being willing to listen, to really to probe and to ask questions. I mean, even after 12 years, my wife told me a story last night on the couch about something that happened to her. you know, a woman who she worked with criticized her for not wearing a bra. She had sort of a camisole on instead of a bra one day.

Okay. And the woman said to her, you're not wearing a bra and I'm not comfortable with that. And I thought, my God, it took you 12 years to tell me that because I want to, I want to kill that woman on your behalf, you know? And I kept saying like, tell me more about it. Where were you when this happened? Like, what did you think? you know, and we just went on for 30 minutes.

I had to hear every bit of this story. We've been together 12 years and these things still come out all the time. Yeah. You know, so I think that's part of it. You know, we just, I happen to be a storyteller. You know, when someone once asked my wife, she said, when did you first fall in love with Matt? And thankfully, I was there to hear the answer. It was great.

I thought, like, God, what's she going to say? And I was hoping she was going to say, like, I took one look at him, you know, but that was not the case. You know, she said it's never been what she looked like, honey. But it was a night that I took her to Chili's. We were both teaching in the same school as where we met. And we were waiting for a talent show at school to begin. And we had it about an hour and a half to kill. So we went to Chili's for dinner.

And it was the first time we ever had dinner together. And she asked me questions about my life. And I told stories. And she said, that was the night I fell in love with him because he, she said, he told stories in a way that I loved. And I knew I would want to hear him speak forever. and she said, I also learned things about him that made him different than everyone else in the world. And I think that's only because I'm always willing to be vulnerable with people.

I'm always willing to share, you know, the most open, honest things with people, no matter how hard they may be to say. So storytelling got me the best wife in the world. And I've been telling her stories ever since. But I think that's sort of the clue. Not the clue, but that's sort of the trick to liven up those conversations at a dinner table to really. to really just ask each other interesting questions. And you'll get stories from it. Yeah.

And you mentioned in your book, just that like the first last, best, worst, which is a fun game to play with new people for, you know, any sort of situation, you know, first trip abroad and all that type of stuff.

Right. Or even simpler things, you know, and you can play with anyone. Like, you know, I would play with that, I would play that game with my wife in a heartbeat

if she would put it up with me. But if I said, you know, look like, looking at my table right now, there's a hat on the table. And so I would say first hat, last hat, best hat and worst hat. And just saying that to you, I already have a worst hat story. It just popped into my head. It's a story I've never thought about telling before. It's a moment I sort of had forgotten in my life. But I could tell my worst hat story now to my wife of 12 years. She doesn't know the

story. I've never told anyone the story, really, because it just came to me. So it doesn't have to be like trip abroad. In fact, I would say that's too big of an idea. I would love. I would look for smaller moments. You know, I would look to see, do I have a best hat? Do I have a first hat, you know, or the first hat that I remember? You'd just be shocked at the stories that can come from this first, last, best, worst idea by taking simple objects and playing the game that way. That's so funny. Yeah. I take no credit for that game. That is Catherine Burns from the Moth who taught me that game. It's her idea. I never would have thought to play a game like that with hats and just you saying that I had a flashback to like high school and a trip to Orlando

and the most ridiculous hat in the world. So right. Yeah. And even if it's a 30 second story, you know, that's still great. A 30 second story is a lovely little thing. So, you know, telling my wife later on tonight about my worst hat ever is going to be a lot of fun. I'll tell her, you know, it'll make her laugh or cringe. It'll be one or the other. And it's going to be great. Do you want to share your worst hat story? My worst hat story was I got a tour of ESPN back in the early 90s. And I was really into SportsCenter, you know, and the people who were doing SportsCenter and all of that business. And I got a hat at the gift shop as I left.

It was a purple sports center hat. And I thought that this hat was going to make me so cool because I was going to be able to tell everyone that I went to ESPN and got a tour, which you couldn't get at the time. I just happened to know a graphic, you know, a guy who was doing graphics there at the time. So I got this really remarkable opportunity. And I walked around with this horrible purple hat for like three months,

just waiting for someone to ask me where I got the hat from. And then finally one of my friends, actually Benji, said, why are you wearing that hat everywhere? And I had to, I said, I'm just waiting for people to ask me about why I'm wearing it so I can talk about the tour.

And I took. said, just talk about it, but don't wear the hat. The hat's the worst thing in the world. And, you know, that's what it was. For three months, I wore a horrible hat in hopes of having people ask me about it. That is really funny. Yeah. Well, Matthew, I have really enjoyed this conversation. Before we go, do you have a travel story you want to share? Yes, I do. I have a bunch. I was thinking about this earlier. Yeah, I'll share a travel story. What kind of, what length of the story do you want? I can tell you like the five minute version, the three minute version, the one minute version, what are you looking for? Five.

Five. Okay. All right. You want the whole thing, huh? The whole shebang. When I'm, I get kicked out of my house right after high school. My parents un-invite me from the home. It's just sort of the expectation that they have.

Actually, prior to getting kicked out of the house, they don't really tell me to leave. They send signals instead, indicating I must leave. When I'm 17 for my birthday, I get baths. towels and flatware as my gift. And when I'm 18, I get a microwave and a vacuum. And I remember Christmas, actually Christmas the year that I was in the hospital following that accident that we talked about earlier, that Christmas, while I was in the hospital bed, my parents came in with gifts for me. And I remember they gave me pots and pans and plates and cups. And sort of all of those gifts indicated to me it was time to leave after high school. And no

had ever said the word college to me, so that wasn't an option for me. So I ended up moving in with my best friend, Benji. He was going to college at the time, and he didn't want to live on campus anymore, so we got an apartment off campus. And our view of what the house should look like was very different. I thought we were going to have like a real house with furniture and art on the walls and cleanliness and hand soap. I just thought we were becoming adults. And Benji instead plastered the walls with like obscure 80s metal band posters and posters are Bart Simpson. And he bought all of these hamsters and these habitrails. And he connected room to room, but with the tubes and sort of like the steampunk hamsterville.

So wherever you were in the apartment, there was like a hamster over your head running through a tube. It was just crazy. It was not what I wanted. And we really clashed over it, the idea that he wanted this crazy house and I wanted this adult house. In retrospect, I think what I was doing was I grew up in a dysfunctional home and I was trying to create a functional home for myself. But through the process, I was like 18 years old going on 48. And I was becoming an old man at the ripe old age of 18. And we fought about it for a long time until one day I came home from work and I opened the door and sitting on top of my kitchen table

was a girl named Jen. And she was tossing popcorn into the air and trying to catch it. in her mouth. And my first thought when I saw her was, that's not appropriate. You should not sit on a dining room table. And my second thought was I saw all the popcorn on the floor and I thought, I'm going to be the one I has to pick up all that popcorn. But my third thought finally kicked in and I thought, wow, that girl is beautiful. And she was. She was a beautiful girl and she was beautiful in spirit too. She was amazing. And we quickly got together and became boyfriend and girlfriend. friend. And she was one of these girls who, she was like a manic pixie dream girl. She was the kind of girl who never had a job but always had money. She was the girl who had no plans for the future.

And yet we knew her future would be bright no matter what happened. You know, she was the girl who never seemed to stop for gas anywhere, but always had enough gas at her gas tank. That kind of like carefree spirit, which was really the opposite of me at the time. And yet we really, we fell in love. And so there was a day when she came over our apartment, and she walked in and she came up to me and she said, I heard that there's a two-headed cow at the Virginia State Fair, and I want to go see it. And I said, okay, when is that happening? And she said, we need to leave now because the fair closes tomorrow. And I couldn't go. I was working. I was a manager at McDonald's. I was the kind of guy who had never missed a day of work with the exception of my car accident. And I was just not the kind of person who would ever call out sick. I was just truly a super responsible adult at the age of 18. And so I told Jen, I can't go. I got to be at work tomorrow.

And she said, fine, I'll find someone else. And I knew because of who she was, what she meant was she'll just pick up a hitchhiker or she'll, like, go to 7-Eleven and get one of those guys that leans up against the wall drinking slurpee. She just grab anybody. That's just who she was. She was so carefree that she would just find someone to go with her. And I realized I can't let that happen.

I can't let her pick somebody up and go to Virginia. And so for the first time in my life, I called out of work. I claimed to be sick. And I got in the back of her big black pickup truck. And we headed to Virginia with no maps, which was crazy. You know, I was the kind of person who I was a AAA member at the age of 18. I used to get triptics for wherever I was going. And she said, we'll just drive south and figure it out.

And we did. It took 14 hours to make a seven-hour trip because we didn't have any maps. But she loved every minute of it. And we got to the Virginia State Fair. I paid my $5 to get in. And we went to the tent with the two-headed cow. And I expected it would be a plastic replica of some weird thing, but it was an actual two-headed cow. Or more appropriately, it was an amalgamation of two cows.

It was some monstrosity that had been born, which was. two cows squished in to one. But Jen was totally fascinated by it. She would eventually become a veterinarian in the army. But we stayed in that tent for 45 minutes and looked at this monstrosity of a creature, this awful, poor, two-headed cow. And then when we were done, it was getting late in the day. And we didn't want to drive back overnight. So we decided we would park somewhere and sleep in the back of the truck because we didn't have any money for hotel. And it was like 100 degrees in Virginia. It was the summer. And I was just kind of annoyed. I realized I had just driven 14 hours to see this horrific thing. And now I was going to have to

drive another seven to 14 hours back north until we found our way back home. And I was just feeling like I should have listened to my, you know, my inner responsible self who told, who said, don't do this. This is a waste of time. This is stupid. And so we drove down a dirt road. and we sort of drove into the woods a little bit, and we parked the car, the truck, and we slept in the back because it was so hot. We just, we put blankets out on the back, and we laid down, and we went to sleep. And I remember going to sleep just being so angry about how stupid I was and how foolish I had been and sort of deciding I was never going to be this dumb in the future. I was always going to be more careful and planned and precise. And then in the middle of the night, I woke up because something was licking my foot.

And I opened my eyes and I looked down and my feet were sort of hanging right at the edge of the bed of the truck. And in the moonlight, I could see that there was a deer licking my foot. Now it was like 100 degrees out and my foot was sweaty and it was probably like a salt lick to the deer. But it was this beautiful little deer licking my feet. licking my foot in the moonlight. I couldn't believe it. And so I watched it for a minute. And then I turned to wake up Jen so she could see it too.

But in the moment I turned, it just disappeared. Like it was so fast that it was there one second and gone the next. But right now I can see that deer in my mind's eye as clear as I saw it that night in the moonlight. This beautiful, amazing. thing. And so lying in the bed of the truck, I didn't wake up Jen, you know, because the deer was gone. But lying in the bed that night, I said to myself, like, God, if I hadn't come and seen the monstrosity of the two-headed cow, I wouldn't have seen this beautiful deer in the moonlight, this experience that I can still remember perfectly to this day. And I think, thank God I can.

It was just this amazing moment for me. And so it was sort of the moment that I realized that it's okay to be a little crazy in life. It's okay to be spontaneous and to make what seems to be a really terrible decision at times. Because sometimes when you manage to do that, when you manage to be brave enough to just sort of throw caution to the wind and do the thing that seems crazy, sometimes you get a deer in the moonlight. You get a moment that you'll never forget.

And that singular, you know, 10 seconds that I spent with that deer, it was worth all of the driving and even the awfulness of the cow. Every little bit of that trip was worth that deer in the moonlight. I loved that. And it took me so, it took everything I had to sit back and not speak and just to listen. And so. Well, in real storytelling, you get to actually interrupt and ask questions. And that's fine, too. You know.

I was pretending I was at the moth. Yeah, right. The interesting thing about that story is when I first told it or when I was preparing to tell it, the truth is when I go down to Virginia, we went for two reasons. One was there was a Christian rock band called Petra that Jen wanted to see who was also playing at the Virginia State Fair. And in the original version of that story, it contained both the rock band and the cow and then the deer. And the story was just too long for the moth, and I couldn't figure out how to shorten it. And, you know, I was getting ready to leave for the moth. I happened to be in New York that day visiting my sister-in-law.

And I was going to walk 30 blocks down to the moth. And my wife, Alicia, said, what are you going to do about the story? It's like 12 minutes long. It needs to be six. And I said, I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I have 30 blocks to figure it out. And I remember I was about 20 blocks into my walk when I realized, oh, I'll just leave the concert out of the story this time. You know, there's a funny moment that happens at the concert where when Petra is playing their music, everyone stands up and holds their hands to the sky and starts praising Jesus. And I'm just not that person.

You know, I don't have the faith that is required to do that. Yeah. But I sat very respectfully, you know, and listened to the music and Jen was standing up and praising Jesus. But one of the men in front of me noticed that I wasn't standing and praising Jesus and got really angry with me and started. and started shouting at me to praise Jesus. And I kept thinking like, this is not what Jesus wants from you. Like, Jesus doesn't want you berating me at this concert. And we got in this big fight.

And that was part of the story. And, you know, 20 blocks into my walk, I realized, oh, that's a different story. Like, that's a different moment of transformation and realization. And so I've never told the Petra side of that story. But someday I might. Someday I'll tell the story about how I went to Virginia with a girl to see a Christian rock band and got berated by, you know, a Jesus praising man who felt I was a terrible person for not praising Jesus hard enough. But I, you know, that's the trick of telling those travel stories is

don't tell us everything. You know, the point of my story really is I want to tell you that I saw a deer in the moonlight and thank God I did something that was sort of against my nature at the time in order to be able to do it. And, you know, it's a moment of transformation for me. It truly is. That's the moment I start to become a lot more carefree. It's the moment I embrace the Homer Simpson posters in my apartment and I fall in love with the hamsters. I get home and think, God, this is great. What was I thinking? Why did I want hand soap?

Benzie had a stack of Playboys in a basket in the bathroom. And I thought, yes, playboys, not hand soap. What am I thinking? It changes my whole disposition that beautiful deer in the moonlight. And you can feel how Petra doesn't really fit in that story. You know, the rock band can't be part of that story. It doesn't get me to the deer. So all the decisions I make in that story are to get me to the deer.

And when we're telling travel stories, that's the point of telling a good story is don't tell us about your whole travel. Just find a moment of realization and transformation and center your story on that and not on all the other stuff that happened along the way. Yeah. And another thing just going along with that that you talk about in your book is, you know, you don't have, you can like, selectively edit. So if you've got five people with you, you don't need to tell everybody's story that's in there. Just don't talk about that. Just talk about you. Yes, I say that. I never add anything into a story that didn't actually happen. But I do take out a ton of things that did happen that don't actually serve the story, that don't help me get to the end with the clarity that I'm

looking for. You know, I'm always looking to serve the story. And sometimes by taking things out of stories, we make the things that we want to be important shine brighter in the story. And that's really the goal. And just one last thing before we wrap up that you did in this story. And I know you've mentioned before is don't try to like describe people as celebrities. Describe who, what their characters are, you know, like describe their characteristics. Exactly. You know, it's funny you say that because when I told this story at the moth the first time, I described Jen as the girl who Zoe de Chanel plays in movies. And the moment I said that line at the moth, I knew it was terrible because half the audience laughed in recognition of that, you know, that descriptor.

And half the audience looked at me like I was crazy. They had no idea who Zoe de Chanel was or what movie she was in. And that was the moment I decided I'm never doing that again. I'm never going to compare a person to a celebrity. Plus, if you describe someone as being like Zoe Deschanel, that person will just become Zoe Deichannel. That person will just become Zoe Deichannel. in the story and suddenly I'm dating Zoe de Cheneau, which makes no sense. Right? I had a woman, a woman at the moth once said, my father looks a little bit like Ronald Reagan. And it's impossible to imagine what Ronald Reagan kind of looks like.

He just became Ronald Reagan in my mind. And that meant that her father was Ronald Reagan, which was weird. It just made the story weird the whole way through. That's all you're thinking of it. Right. Exactly. So, you know, it's funny you say that because that was the one story where I used a celebrity. and it was the moment I realized that it's a terrible mistake to do that. And it's lazy. It's much more

interesting to describe Jen with the ways I just described her to you than just, you know, describing her as a movie character that you may or may not have seen. So yeah, so, yeah, rely on your own words. Well, thank you so much, Matthew. Where can we find your book and learn more about you? So if you go to Matthewdicks.com, you can find links to all of my books there. You can find our podcast, Speak Up Storytelling. wherever you get podcasts. And you can find my book, Storyworthy, hopefully wherever you get books.

It's in most of the bookstores. But if you can't find it there, it's certainly available on Amazon. And you're also on Audible. Yes. All of my novels are, all my books are on Audible. Story Worthy is the only book

that I actually narrated myself. So you can get that in the sort of, it's been described to me as listening to my book is like taking a very, very long workshop with me from people who have taken my workshops. it was an arduous process to record that book. You have no idea how difficult it is to actually record a book when it's not your profession and you're not trained to do it. So I worked really hard. Thank you. I don't listen. I've never listened to it because I'm afraid

to hear the mistakes that I don't like. Oh, I wish I had said it a little differently. So I can't bear to, I can't bear to bring myself to listen. I can confirm you did a great job. Thank you. I've heard good things about it. So I appreciate that. Okay. Well, thank you again for making the time, Matthew. My pleasure. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Matthew gave us so much great advice in this episode, but if you had to choose just one thing to try this week, I would recommend Homework for Life. I actually would like to get better at writing a journal. I think I've mentioned that before, but I find that Homework for Life is something that I actually commit to. I even have a little calendar alert pop up at 10 p.m. reminding me to write down my

most story-worthy moment of the day. If you visit postcardacademy.co, you will find a video of Matthew performing that this is going to suck, and that is the 10-minute version of the story of his car accident. If you liked this episode, please make sure you're subscribed to this show and tell a friend about it. That is the best way to grow this podcast. That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot?

I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.