Magnify Meaningful Moments

This week I went into a dairy as I walked home. I’d had it. I knew exactly what I wanted. I bought a packet of potato chips and a packet of chocolate biscuits. Then on impulse, I bought a lotto ticket.

It was the lowest point of my year so far.

Moments

Storytelling is all about moments. In movies, scenes are built around moments, and stories are built around scenes. The power and pacing of movies come from the power of empathy generated in scenes, which comes from how effectively they tap into the power of the moment.

In talks or pitches, your power comes from magnifying meaningful moments, charging them with emotion. Making them real and relevant.

We all experience these moments. Usually, we notice them, and occasionally we realise it was a moment after the fact. But rarely do we communicate them. Or communicate them well. This is a fundamental issue of communication. We feel what we feel because we are who we are and believe what we believe. In order to communicate something effectively, we need to let others into our world so they can share our beliefs and feelings, at least for a moment.

Share Your World

At the beginning of this piece, I shared a moment from my week, but I communicated it poorly. Let’s see if I can communicate it more effectively to illustrate my point.

Since the beginning of this year, I have been focused on improving my situation; mentally, physically and financially. I have been taking my diet seriously. I have avoided all sugar for over 6 months. I have been eating healthy foods. I have exercised four days a week. I have a routine for work and have been disciplined in my spending, and increased the visibility of my financial situation with daily routines.

The past few weeks, things have not been going to plan. Finances have gotten tight. I had to dial back my exercise, and then some significant deadlines were dropped on me, and my routine went out the door. I worked some long hours and handled things. That felt good, but I also felt drained. My tank was showing empty. So after walking in the sunshine, I ended up walking into a dairy.

Buying potato chips and chocolate biscuits made absolutely no sense. It wasn’t consistent with my goals, but I didn’t care at that moment. I was rebelling. (against myself??!) Then to push the rebellion even further, I purchased a lotto ticket. Something I only ever did when I felt things were out of my control.

At that moment, I was telling myself, “Things have gone too far. You are hitting the bottom, and it is time to swim upwards again.”

That is an example of magnifying a meaningful moment. It was a meaningful moment to me, and by explaining it with emotion and gravitas, I felt. Hopefully, I have created an echo of that meaningful moment for you.

Turning Moments into Story

A story comes from plotting at least two of these meaningful moments together, two emotional points to determine a trend or show movement. No matter how touching, a single moment is unsatisfying because it doesn’t go anywhere. As mentioned, movies are made up of a series of scenes, each created from a key moment. The point is to drive the story forward.

So you want to magnify a contrasting moment. Here’s an experience from the very next day...

I caught up with a friend for coffee, and we chatted about some interesting stuff. Then he had to leave abruptly for a meeting. I sat in Garden Place alone, in the centre of town, on a beautiful sunny autumn day. There was no cloud in the sky, and the slightest breezes stirred the glorious yellow tree.

I was enjoying just being.

Then I noticed a person standing in the shade waiting for a car. I wondered why they wouldn’t just take a few steps and stand in the sun while waiting. A simple pleasure. That’s when I noticed the dog at their side and the harness and realised this person was blind.

I am sure she would have enjoyed the sun on her face while waiting for her friend to bring the car around, but there was no way for her to know that just a couple of steps to the right would give her that gift of sensation. I felt a flood of gratitude as I realised that I was fortunate to see. Not just to see the glorious day I was enjoying but to see the opportunities and options available.

I breathed a sigh of gratitude.

Moments Require Meaning

Now you have two points of emotion and contrast. These are the elements of a story, but something needs to be added. What is needed is a little context to make it useful, memorable and compelling. Connect the points with meaning.

Over two days, I hit bottom, and I felt that things were hopeless, and then I found hope. What lesson did I learn? I learned the same lesson I have many times before, and I’ll keep learning until it becomes part of me. I learned to keep my eyes open for opportunities and options. I learned to be kind to myself when I don’t see the options because, at different times, all of us are blind to the opportunities around us. I learned that the trough of every wave soon becomes the crest, and the more we can focus on enjoying the exhilaration of the ups and downs, the easier life will seem.

Did you feel those moments? Did they make sense to you?

Perhaps you took something different from those moments than I did. Perhaps you have had similar moments, or perhaps it was a novel view. Regardless, you probably have a slightly better understanding of me as a person, what makes me tick, and how I think and feel in some situations. All because I magnified some meaningful moments and brought you along for the ride.

Why Magnify Meaningful Moments?

I hope to have given you insight into how you can magnify moments to create a compelling story. But I still need to address why this is important. Knowing this is possible is one thing. Knowing how to do it is another, but the real gold lies in knowing when and why to exercise your new skill.

I have shared a couple of arbitrary moments with you by way of example. The moments you share with your audience should be relevant to your message. If you are the founder of a startup, you may share the frustration of experiencing the problem you had and then share your eureka moment when you found the solution.

Creating moments like this builds a deeper level of rapport with your audience. When your story is told deeply and well, your audience feels what you felt. They feel that they know you as a result of that shared experience. They are more likely to identify with you and feel connected to the outcomes you strive for.

Linking a couple of these meaningful moments creates a movement or story your audience now feels part of. Subconsciously this is their story as much as it is yours. Particularly when you share why this is important and how this all makes sense together.

If you are pitching a business, an investment or a product, you need to do a number of things. You want to connect with your audience so that they know where you are coming from. Choosing and magnifying the right meaningful moment can accomplish this.

Connecting that meaningful moment to another in an exciting or intriguing direction creates a desire to be part of that journey with you, particularly when you share the context and vision around that journey. When you share these meaningful moments well, this is no longer your journey that they are witnessing. It becomes a shared journey that you are both experiencing.

And if it is compelling enough, it will be one that they want to continue with you.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Meaningful Moments. Please leave a comment by clicking the button below.

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

This week’s Snippet comes from a couple ofvideos I saw this week.

A LinkedIn video of the then Director of the University of Chicago’s Writing Program, Larry McEnerney, explains in a lecture the process that most people use to think and write does not necessarily serve them when communicating to an audience in a valuable way.

Having coached many academics for their TEDx talks, this short video was a revelation and is something I would absolutely get my TEDx speakers to watch when we first start working together.

The other video I found interesting, is quite long, and aside from the rather annoying opening where previews are cut together poorly, is well worth watching.

This video talks about the dangers of AI, but not so much what AI can do as the race to be the first with the best AI. What I found makes this video interesting is the terminology they have coined in this presentation to better enable people to access the material.

They talk about the rubber band effect on your mind where they will stretch your paradigm but when you interact with what you have always known your paradigm will snap back to where it was previously. -This is a great thing to borrow for some tech pitches I have seen.

The other interesting terminology is the acronym they created which taps into a whole meaning of it’s own. They talk about Global Large-Language Multi-Modal models, which they shorten to GOLLEM models. With the mythology of a Gollem being an automaton fashioned from clay to serve its masters… Very clever use of an acronym!

On the subject of acronyms, there was one shoehorned into The FP, a movie dedicated to the glory of 80’s film. They had the acronym for:
Never Ignorant, Getting Goals Accomplished.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

I came across this quote this week, and I admit I am partial to it because I am a huge Louis L’Amour fan. Louis was a master of the easy-read, high-adventure historical novel. I was introduced to his Western novels as a young teen and later read The Walking Drum, dealing with historical Europe while I was in Spain.

But the wisdom in the quote is no less profound for its simplicity.

You will never get anywhere until you start the journey. Once started, you will get somewhere. It may not be where you first intended to go, you may not get that far, or you may end up in a different direction. But you will be in a different place from where you started, and that is what life is all about.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

Quite a bit of writing work. I am still working on the short documentary, which is challenging me at the moment.

Recreationally:

Spent a bit of time gaming this week. Old favourites of Doom and Rocket League, and my current favourite of Demeo in VR.

What I am reading:

How to License Your Million Dollar Idea by Harvey Reese -Looking for ideas around pitching.

What I am watching:

At my friend Adam’s birthday movie marathon I saw an eclectic mix of interesting films: The FP, Censor, and the totally bonkers and very delightful French film Smoking Causes Coughing.