The Future Storyteller of Our World Is You Life itself is such an incredible adventure. Those who live it successfully can inspire others to do the same by sharing their story.
By Brook Zimmatore Edited by Joseph Shults
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Think back to your childhood and make a list of the life experiences that stand out in your memory. I guarantee you'll find a story worth telling — that year of drama with your parents or when your cousin set fire to your porch, the story of the one who got away, or that moment of pure pleasure when you just sat and watched the sunset on the glimmering water. As you start examining one forgotten memory, suddenly, you'll start defining more. Take in the bigger picture and identify patterns, laws, or axioms that you learned about life in the process. Each one has a story behind it.
Maybe you overcame a bully in high school or spent high school hiding from one; you can write a whole article about how you took that into your adulthood. Perhaps you even competed in regional sports or were suddenly uprooted from your home to relocate. These events happen every day, but storytellers find a lesson even in the mundane.
There's a reason why you're doing OK today — you've navigated life and come out on top. The decisions you made along the way are stories worth sharing for their educational value.
For any leader in their professional field who can hone their skills as a writer, the moment is now – the future storyteller of our world is you.
Related: Storytelling Can Dramatically Change Your Business
You are the expert
Along with the emotional, actionable, or educational effect that people want from content these days, they now also want it to be directly from the source. People are looking to experts in any given field for guidance and knowledge. Your life stories make you an expert, and your career gives you a unique perspective through which to apply this knowledge.
Everyone has a lifetime of stories to share. Use these stories to extract lessons, reflect on mistakes, or improve the quality of your life and that of others. People want to hear about the journeys, mountains, and valleys of your life and learn from them.
Applying life lessons to your career is another great way to improve your skills in the workplace and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. If you learned how to stand up to a bully in middle school, you are now probably quite confident in speaking up and sharing your opinions at work. How have your stories, from any time in your life, taught you to work hard and get to the position you now hold?
People are hungry for information from the most credible and direct source. We no longer need stories to be filtered through four or five sources, diluting the point and blocking out some of the details that are essential to the story. We want stories that come directly from the experts and to learn from people in the field we're reading about.
Related: Why Storytelling Is a Skill that Every Entrepreneur Should Practice
Ripe for disruption
The future news reporters will be whoever can harness technology to curate the best group of experts to tell their stories, which means more platforms will emerge to connect those storytellers with the public even more easily. With the right technology, anyone can pull together the right authoritative voices to become the next best source for trusted news. Instead of an office full of reporters looking to the world for information, those who have lived life and experience the verticals of news, business journalism, and thought leadership can bring the news to the world.
The ultimate source of information is an individual who has lived, breathed, and fought the wars, and this storyteller could be you. The old-school journalism buffs who bet on the failure of the internet may also resist this storyteller takeover of journalism, but like a VHS cassette, soon they'll be outdated, and they'll have no choice but to embrace the changes. People want to learn from the experiences of those advancing their field, and thought leaders are responding by assuming their position as journalists. All you have to do to assume yours is to share your story.
Related: A Quick Guide to Better Storytelling
