Storytelling

This is Philip, Area Contest Chairman, last Saturday.

It was only a few days ago, and it seems so far away now!

But the next day, after the contest and the 25 pictures I published from it - also only from the video taken by my son, 5000 people come to visit my images on flickr that day: I can not even envision them or understand. I did publish now, the whole video of my speech in the Area contest on Dailymotion.com (Julie70).

There are many unexplained things that happen on the web, for me at least, difficult to understand.


Yesterday, Dorothea, put my picture and mentioned my name, in the LondonSpeakers blog, as one who went to the Contest event. She is everywhere representing the London Toastmasters: helpful, always there in need and so modest at the same time!

Yesterday, also, I made my "persuasive speech" which is the number 9 in the Competent Toastmasters Manual, trying to persuade those present (we were not so many as I would have hoped) that telling a Story in a Speech is very important, and in general, in our life too.

After some arguments "logical?" examples of those whom life were changed or changed life using personal story in their speech, and the impact of them, and an exemple taken from the Toastmasters Magazine, (all 10 speeches can be personal stories! or contain them) - I told, of course, a story.

A personal story, about a Turning Point in my life.

A story in a story, too about the beginning of my father career as seller, when he begun to introduce, going from "pharmacy to pharmacy" the Hudnut cosmetics into Romania, about a hundred years ago.

I was not totally understood.

Was it because I did "fumble" a few times, or because here it is called "Chemist" not "pharmacy"? I knew it, but I forgot at the moment to change from one to the other, to adapt it to British listeners. Of course, my accent is not the best either, also my voice was strong and distinct: I have the podcast and will publish it here, with all the mistakes I made while telling.

When I prepared it, I have given a best ending, but I run out of time. My story in story was too long, relative to the time I had, even so I run a but more then seven and half minutes.

My evaluator said "but I was convinced of importance of story before" so what? Some did begin to study Storrytelling because last time I recommended it, this time my speech gave more impact to it, only the time will tell how much.

The time is not important with a story.

My story was about a story my father told me when I was 14, helping me when I was 44 and in need of reinforcement. I remembered what he told me and it gave me idea and courage for what I had to do. (My first speech in French, my PhD thesis before public in Paris).

What I did not have time to explain, but I can do it here, it is that I just realised yesterday morning, while retelling my speech and recording it, before I told it in public that five years later, when I came back from America and again, was without work, then founded a company on a similar box, containing not cosmetics but micro computer adds-ons, again from America, and as I was going, like my father, from store to store to offer it, sell it, introduce it, I remembered ALL the stories my father told me one at a time, about how he did, in his beginnings.

My father has just died a few month before, and I told myself "his spirit of businessman" entered me, and so I become from Researcher Paid by others, Distributor, Business woman. Only yesterday morning, did I realise, that there were his stories, which I did not consciously remembered, that helped me, then.

Storytelling, not only can be a gift to others, it can bring better understanding of our own lives!