Storytelling with Impact | Blog posts on crafting stories

What grief and soy sauce taught me about life after loss – Charlene Lam at TEDxLisboa

August 31, 2025/in Family, Grief, Life Lessons, Relationships, TEDx, Trauma/by Mark Lovett

I’m constantly reminded of the simple fact that each of us lives a unique life — as no two life journeys are identical — and yet our experiences share common threads and themes. So it is with loss, as it’s a constant throughout life. We lose loved ones, or move on from one job to the next. During a natural disaster we may lose physical objects, possibly our entire home.

When loss happens, grief soon follows, and quite often we’re not sure how to react. Dealing with grief is not something we learn in school. At best, we learn from watching how others handle it. In her talk at TEDxLisboa, Charlene Lam shares her experience dealing with grief after her mother died unexpectedly from a stroke.

Charlene also brings the wisdom she’s gained over the years as the founder of The Grief Gallery , and author of Curating Grief. You might say Charlene is no stranger to grief.

Loss is a fundamental part of being human. Grief is universal. We will all experience it.

Charlene begins her talk with a simple, relatable image: a bottle of soy sauce in her mother’s kitchen. Growing up, this soy sauce evoked pleasant memories of home cooking and family dim sum. But after her mother passed, that everyday object took on a new, heavier meaning.

It symbolized the arduous task of clearing out her mother’s home, of letting go of personal possessions imbued with heartfelt memory and connection. This opening anecdote perfectly illustrates how tangible items become vessels of immense emotional weight after loss.

Grief taught me how to hold lightly. I invite you to hold lightly and to live fully in full color.

Her initial reaction was to “hold on tight” to every single item her mother owned, fearing that letting go of these objects meant letting go of her mother’s memory. This is contrasted with her husband’s suggestion to “just throw it away,” which represents detachment.

These extremes bring in a sense of tension into Charlene’s narrative, and at the same time, serves as a reminder that society often presents us with such binary messages. That it’s all or nothing. At this point, I’m sure many in the audience are reflecting on their own experiences with loss and grief. Reviewing how they may have reacted.

At this point Charlene proposes a different approach: “holding lightly.” Holding lightly, she explains, is about appreciating the beauty and joy of life while also acknowledging the reality of impermanence.

What I find brilliant in how Charlene tells this story is how the narrative weaves in her personal experience with grief, explores the topic more deeply in order to shift the focus away from her and engage the audience. In this way, she’s able to illustrate the fact that grief is a natural part of life that everyone must deal with at some point. What’s unique is also universal.

In the end, we’re invited to examine our own perspective on the matter, and to consider a new way to approach the issue, by holding lightly, and living life fully.

Transcript

When I say soy sauce, what do you think of?

Maybe you think of eating dumplings, soy sauce with sushi. When I think of soy sauce, I think of my mother.

In particular, I think of the bottle of soy sauce in my mother’s kitchen. And how that bottle of soy sauce took on a whole new meaning after she died.

Before my mother died suddenly in 2013, soy sauce reminded me of good food, home cooking, eating dim sum with my family in New York City.

After she died, soy sauce represented my connection to my mother, and it represented the terrible task that I had of trying to clear out her house and trying to let go of the thousands of objects in her home.

Have you experienced something similar? Can you think of a simple object that takes on a whole new meaning for you? Maybe it seems insignificant to other people. And maybe you’ve experienced the exact phenomenon that I did, where an object suddenly becomes precious after a loved one dies.

For you, it might be your grandmother’s ring, your father’s watch, or a family photo. These are the things that are precious to us. These are the things that we hold close to our hearts. These are the things that we would save in a fire. And it hurts when we lose them.

Loss is a fundamental part of being human. Grief is universal. We will all experience it. For some of us, loss will come in the form of a natural disaster: fire, flood, earthquake. Or an unnatural disaster: war breaks out in our country.

[Or a personal disaster. My mother dies of a stroke. Your marriage ends. You lose the job you love. You get a medical diagnosis that changes your life.

In Portuguese, we have this beautiful word, Saudade. I am still learning the depth of the meaning of this untranslatable word. But my understanding is that Saudade means longing for, missing something that we’ve lost, or that we may lose. We know that loss will come.

I talk about and I exhibit soy sauce a lot in my creative work. It represents my connection to my mother, but it also represents this key challenge that we have as humans. Intellectually, we know that we will die. We know that everything we love will someday die. How do we still live full, joyful, beautiful lives, knowing this will happen?

How do we love and feel attached to people, places, pets, and things, knowing that someday we may need to say goodbye?

There are several ways to approach this. When my mother died, I wanted to keep everything. I wanted to hold on to all her clothes, all the furniture, even the ugly furniture.

I wanted to hold on tight because it felt like I needed them to survive. Not everyone understands this. My husband, he said, “It’s just stuff. Just throw it away.”

Yes, I considered divorce. He did not understand that throwing away my mother’s belongings felt like throwing her memory away. It felt like throwing her away.

That’s the thing about grief. We can all have a wide variety of reactions to loss. I’m thinking of a father who threw away all of his wife’s clothing after she died immediately because it was too painful for him to see her dresses, her shoes, her jewelry. His daughters did not understand.

[These are all natural reactions. I wanted to keep everything, and someone else might say, “If it hurts so much to lose, if loss is going to come, I don’t want to hold on to anything.” That’s an option too, for all of us. We could give away our belongings, we could move to a distant land, we can say goodbye to our family and friends, and we can all live like monks.

It’s an option. It feels a little black or white. Hold on to everything or hold on to nothing.

When we’re grieving, it can feel like we only have those two options because of a major misunderstanding about grief. When we’re grieving, we get messages like, “You need to move on. You need to let go. You need to live your own life.” The implication is that if you hold on, you are staying stuck in the past. Black or white.

Move on, let go, or stay stuck.

What if it doesn’t have to be black or white? What if I want to hold on to a connection with my mother without having to hold on to a half-empty bottle of soy sauce forever? And I want to live my own beautiful life. What if we want to have full, joyous lives, knowing that loss will come? My suggestion is to hold lightly.

What do I mean by hold lightly? Earlier I mentioned how I wanted to hold on to everything that my mother owned. Hold on tight as if my life depended on it. Using your hand, can you show me what it might look like to hold tight? What does it look like to hold on tight to something?

Yes, as if you need it to survive. Yes. Some of you are making a fist, right? Some of you have a claw kind of shape. There is tension in your hand, there’s effort and energy in your arm. There might even be tension in your face. Now, what might it look like to hold lightly?

Yes. Some of you used both hands, forming like a cup or a bowl. Your hand is open. Some of you used one hand, palm up, fingers relaxed. This is how we hold lightly. We hold lightly and we can have things. We can hold them close to our hearts, knowing. Knowing that that bird might fly away.

Knowing that beauty will fade, knowing that life will change. Now, why is it important to hold lightly? I believe that when we hold lightly, we give ourselves the opportunity to live life in full color.

Not just black or white, but to live experiencing the full range of colors, all the shades, all the hues. To live with all the textures, all the flavors, tasting the bitter and the sweet. Maybe Saudade, like soy sauce, makes life more delicious.

Maybe grief can make life more beautiful. I find that when I hold lightly, I experience the world and I move through life in a different way. I look into my husband’s eyes and I fall in love with all the little details, trying to memorize them, knowing that someday I may lose him.

When you step out into the world today, no matter where you are, see if the idea of holding lightly helps you to experience the world differently. Maybe we admire a sunset, knowing that those colors will fade. Maybe we enjoy the smell of freshly baked Pastel de Nata, knowing that that fragrance will disappear.

Maybe we hear a song or experience music differently, delighting in that moment. Maybe we even experience soy sauce differently. Maybe now soy sauce tastes like the love of a mother, or soy sauce tastes like a love of life and living.

Grief taught me how to hold lightly. I invite you to hold lightly and to live fully in full color.

Thank you.

Back to you…

As Charlene notes, loss is inevitable, as is the grief we experience afterwards. How have you dealt with grief in your life? Did you embrace the all-or-nothing approach? The idea of holding lightly is one way that we can savor what we’ve lost, to remember the past while fully living in the present.

Even if your story involves a completely different topic, examine how Charlene structured her narrative in a way that engaged the audience, made the subject relatable, and presented her lessons learned as an option for dealing with the issue. It’s a universal structure that’s worth considering.

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Why some of us don’t have one true calling – Emilie Wapnick at TEDxBend 2015

August 9, 2025/in Career, Entrepreneurs, Life Lessons, TEDx/by Mark Lovett

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This seemingly innocent question, posed to us from childhood — typically by the age of five — often evolves into a source of nagging anxiety for many adults. For those of you who have ever felt as though your diverse set of interests make you act scattered, indecisive, or even “wrong,” then Emilie Wapnick’s TEDxBend Talk offers a refreshing and empowering perspective.

Her personal journey, which may be similar to yours, was a cycle of diving deep into a new passion, excelling, and then, inevitably, getting bored and moving on. This pattern led to feelings of inadequacy and a fear of never finding her “thing.”

But what if having many interests isn’t a flaw, but a superpower? Wapnick uses the term “multipotentialite” for someone who has many interests and creative pursuits. It isn’t about being afraid of commitment; it’s about being wired for breadth, not just depth, and seeking variety, instead of consistency.

Let’s take a look at how Emilie structure her talk for impact:

The Hook (Relatable Problem): Emilie identifies a shared experience — the “what do you want to be” question and the anxiety it often causes. A great personal story often begins by establishing common ground, making the audience feel seen and understood. In this case, it’s by asking a question. Alternatively, this effect can be achieved by making a direct statement.
The Journey (Personal Narrative): She then delves into her own struggle, detailing the cyclical nature of her interests. Her vulnerability and honesty builds connection with the audience. For your story, it could mean sharing your own patterns, or questions that arose from your unique experiences.
The Turning Point (Reframing the Narrative): Mentioning “multipotentialite” becomes an “aha!” moment, changing a perceived weakness into a strength. In your personal narrative, this is where you pivot from problem to potential. What new insight or understanding transformed your perspective based on the diversity of your experiences?
The Superpowers (Illustrating Your Unique Strengths): Emilie outlines 3 important “superpowers” of multipotentialites, using people who embody them as examples:
- Idea Synthesis: The ability to combine seemingly disparate fields to create something new. For your story, think about how your varied interests intersect. How has your experience in one area uniquely informed your approach in another? This synthesis creates original perspectives that captivate.
- Rapid Learning: The knack for grasping new subjects. This translates to your storytelling ability to quickly learn new skills or adapt to different narrative styles. It means you’re rarely starting from scratch because your past learnings are always transferable.
- Adaptability: The capacity to morph into whatever is needed in a given situation. Your story isn’t static; it evolves and adapts. This superpower allows you to navigate challenges in your life and in your storytelling, ensuring your narrative remains relevant and dynamic.
The Call to Action (Empowering Conclusion): Emilie concludes her talk with a suggestion to embrace your inner wiring. Your multitude of passions isn’t a deficit; it’s precisely what the world needs.

Transcript

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Now, if you had to guess, how old would you say you were when you were first asked this question? You can just hold up fingers.

Okay.

Now, raise your hand if the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has ever caused you any anxiety.

Any anxiety at all?

I’m someone who’s never been able to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” See, the problem wasn’t that I didn’t have any interests, it’s that I had too many. In high school, I liked English, and math, and art, and I built websites, and I played guitar in a punk band called Frustrated Telephone Operator. Maybe, maybe you’ve heard of us.

This continued after high school, and at a certain point, I began to notice this pattern in myself, where I would become interested in an area, and I would dive in and become all consumed, and I’d get to be pretty good at whatever it was. And then I would hit this point where I’d start to get bored.

And usually I would try and persist anyway, because I’d already devoted so much time and energy and sometimes money into this field. But eventually, this sense of boredom, this feeling of like, “Like, yeah, I got this. This isn’t challenging anymore.” It would get to be too much, and I would have to let it go.

But then I would become interested in something else, something totally unrelated, and I would dive into that and become all consumed, and I’d feel like, “Yes, I’ve found my thing!” And then I would hit this point again where I’d start to get bored. And eventually, I would let it go. But then I would discover something new and totally different, and I would dive into that.

This pattern caused me a lot of anxiety for two reasons. The first was that I wasn’t sure how I was going to turn any of this into a career. I thought that I would eventually have to pick one thing, deny all of my other passions, and just resign myself to being bored.

The other reason it caused me so much anxiety was a little bit more personal. I worried that there was something wrong with this, and something wrong with me for being unable to stick with anything. I worried that I was afraid of commitment, or that I was scattered, or that I was self-sabotaging, afraid of my own success.

If you can relate to my story and to these feelings, I’d like you to ask yourself a question that I wish I’d asked myself back then. Ask yourself where you learned to assign the meaning of wrong or abnormal to doing many things.

I’ll tell you where you learned it. You learned it from the culture.

We are first asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” when we’re about five years old. And the truth is that no one really cares what you say when you’re that age.

It’s considered an innocuous question, posed to little kids to elicit cute replies like, “I want to be an astronaut,” or “I want to be a ballerina,” or “I want to be a pirate.” Insert Halloween costume here.

But this question gets asked of us again and again as we get older, in various forms. For instance, high school students might get asked what major they’re going to pick in college. And at some point, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” goes from being the cute exercise it once was to the thing that keeps us up at night. Why?

See, while this question inspires kids to dream about what they could be, it does not inspire them to dream about all that they could be. In fact, it does just the opposite. Because when someone asks you what you want to be, you can’t reply with 20 different things. Though well-meaning adults will likely chuckle and be like, “Oh, how cute!” But, “You can’t be a violin maker and a psychologist, you have to choose.” This is Dr. Bob Child.

And he’s a luthier and a psychotherapist.

And this is Amy Ung, a magazine editor turned illustrator, entrepreneur, teacher, and creative director. But most kids don’t hear about people like this. All they hear is that they’re going to have to choose.

But it’s more than that. The notion of the narrowly focused life is highly romanticized in our culture. It’s this idea of destiny, or the one true calling, the idea that we each have one great thing we are meant to do during our time on this Earth, and you need to figure out what that thing is and devote your life to it.

But what if you’re someone who isn’t wired this way? What if there are a lot of different subjects that you’re curious about and many different things you want to do? Well, there is no room for someone like you in this framework. And so you might feel alone, you might feel like you don’t have a purpose, you might feel like there’s something wrong with you.

There’s nothing wrong with you. What you are is a multipotentialite.

A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits. It’s a mouthful to say. It might help if you break it up into three parts: multi, potential, and ite. You can also use one of the other terms that connote the same idea, such as the polymath, the Renaissance person.

Actually, during the Renaissance period, it was considered the ideal to be well-versed in multiple disciplines. Barbara Sher refers to us as scanners. Use whichever term you like or invent your own. I have to say I find it sort of fitting that as a community, we cannot agree on a single identity.

It’s easy to see our multipotentiality as a limitation, or an affliction that you need to overcome. But what I’ve learned through speaking with people and writing about these ideas on my website is that there are some tremendous strengths to being wired this way. Here are three multipotentialite superpowers.

One: Idea synthesis.

That is combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection. That’s where the new ideas come from.

Shaw Wong and Rachel Binks drew from their shared interests in cartography, data visualization, travel, mathematics, and design when they founded Mesh you.

Mesh you is a company that creates custom, geographically inspired jewelry. Shaw and Rachel came up with this unique idea not despite, but because of their eclectic mix of skills and experiences.

Innovation happens at the intersections. That’s where the new ideas come from. And multipotentialites, with all of their backgrounds, are able to access a lot of these points of intersection.

The second multipotentialite superpower is rapid learning.

When multipotentialites become interested in something, we go hard. We absorb everything we can get our hands on. We’re also so used to being beginners because we’ve been beginners so many times in the past.

And this means that we’re less afraid of trying new things and stepping out of our comfort zones. What’s more, many skills are transferable across disciplines, and we bring everything we’ve learned to every new area we pursue, so we’re rarely starting from scratch.

Nora Dunn is a full-time traveler and freelance writer. As a child concert pianist, she honed an incredible ability to develop muscle memory. Now, she’s the fastest typist she knows.

Before becoming a writer, Nora was a financial planner. She had to learn the finer mechanics of sales when she was starting her practice, and this skill now helps her write compelling pitches to editors. It is rarely a waste of time to pursue something you’re drawn to, even if you end up quitting. You might apply that knowledge in a different field entirely in a way that you couldn’t have anticipated.

The third multipotentialite superpower is adaptability.

That is the ability to morph into whatever you need to be in a given situation.

Abe Cahudo is sometimes a video director, sometimes a web designer, sometimes a Kickstarter consultant, sometimes a teacher, and sometimes, apparently, James Bond.

He’s valuable because he does good work. He’s even more valuable because he can take on various roles depending on his clients’ needs. Fast Company magazine identified adaptability as the single most important skill to develop in order to thrive in the 21st century. The economic world is changing so quickly and unpredictably that it is the individuals and organizations that can pivot in order to meet the needs of the market that are really going to thrive.

Idea synthesis, rapid learning, and adaptability. Three skills that multipotentialites are very adept at, and three skills that they might lose if pressured to narrow their focus.

As a society, we have a vested interest in encouraging multipotentialites to be themselves. We have a lot of complex, multi-dimensional problems in the world right now, and we need creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.

Now, let’s say that you are, in your heart, a specialist. You came out of the womb knowing you wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with you either. In fact, some of the best teams are comprised of a specialist and multipotentialite paired together. The specialist can dive in deep and implement ideas, while the multipotentialite brings their breadth of knowledge to the project. It’s a beautiful partnership.

But we should all be designing lives and careers that are aligned with how we’re wired. And sadly, multipotentialites are largely being encouraged simply to be more like their specialist peers.

So, with that said, if there is one thing you take away from this talk, I hope that it is this: Embrace your inner wiring, whatever that may be. If you’re a specialist at heart, then by all means specialize. That is where you’ll do your best work. But to the multipotentialites in the room, including those of you who may have just realized in the last 12 minutes that you are one,

To you I say: Embrace your many passions. Follow your curiosity down those rabbit holes. Explore your intersections. Embracing our inner wiring leads to a happier, more authentic life. And perhaps more importantly, multipotentialites, the world needs us.

Back to you…

Do you have a similar story to tell? One that’s based upon valuable insights on a subject the audience can relate to? Note that you don’t have to be a scientist, or world renowned expert on the topic, but you do have to explain your idea with clarity, and support it with strong examples that illustrate your idea.

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Crafting Impactful Personal Stories: A Guide to Literary Elements, Literary Techniques, and Literary Devices

August 7, 2025/in Language, Narrative, Nonfiction, Storytelling/by Mark Lovett

Introduction

The beautiful thing about telling personal stories is that everyone can do it. The fact is, we became storytellers in childhood, and we learned to do so with minimal instruction. As babies, we soaked up thousands of stories that swirled around us, and those narratives fed into our cognitive development. It didn’t take long for our infant babbling to become words, phrases, sentences, and finally, stories. Before our fifth birthday, we had become storytelling machines. (well, humans actually, but you know what I mean)

We didn’t consciously know anything about grammar, plots, settings, or character arcs. Yet subconsciously, we had learned a great deal about so many aspects of storytelling. Our skills continued to improve at each phase of our lives, from childhood to adolescence and into adulthood. And not a day goes by — unless you’re at a meditation retreat where you’re not allowed to speak — that you don’t tell dozens of stories, to family, friends, colleagues, even total strangers.

But having casual conversations is not the same as telling intentional stories in front of an audience. These are stories with a purpose, with an intent, with a message to share. And when that is the aim, it’s highly beneficial to study the literary elements, techniques, and devices that can dramatically increase the impact of your stories.

These stories transform both storyteller and listener (or reader) through the sharing of wisdom, insights, lessons learned, scientific discoveries, and visions of a better future. Whether recounting pivotal moments from your life journey or exploring ideas that could reshape how others think about the world, impactful personal storytelling requires more than just recounting events — it depends on the skillful use of foundational tools that make stories resonate deeply.

At the heart of compelling personal narratives lie three distinct but interconnected components:

Literary elements
Literary techniques
Literary devices

Understanding how these work together provides the framework for crafting stories that don’t just inform or entertain, but genuinely impact lives.

Let’s start with the most important subject, literary elements, as they’re the fundamental building blocks of any story. These are the essential components that give structure to a narrative — plot, character, setting, theme, conflict, point of view, tone, mood, style, and structure. Think of them as the architectural framework upon which all stories are built. Without these elements, your narrative will lack the ability to fully engage an audience effectively.

Layered on top of the elements, literary techniques represent specific methods writers employ to bring their personal stories to life. These include approaches like imagery, flashback, foreshadowing, dialogue, stream of consciousness, reflection, symbolism, juxtaposition, allegory, and satire. These techniques shape how the story is told and guide audience members through the emotional and intellectual journey that every personal story contains.

Then we come to literary devices, the precise tools that add depth, beauty, and resonance to language itself. Devices such as metaphor, simile, alliteration, personification, hyperbole, irony, oxymoron, paradox, analogy, and sarcasm work at the sentence and phrase level to create vivid images, emotional connections, and memorable expressions. (Note: I’ve only included ten for this guide, but there are far more devices to explore on your own.)

When you employ these components in harmony, you’ll create stories that transcend the mere recounting of events. Doing so will transform individual experiences into universal truths, making your personal (and unique) journey accessible and meaningful to others. The interplay between elements, techniques, and devices will allow you to connect with audiences where they are, with their own (but similar) life experiences.

Chapter 1: Literary Elements

Literary elements form the essential foundation of every powerful story, transforming a simple recounting of events into a compelling narrative. These ten elements provide the structural backbone that supports your personal story, ensuring it resonates with others on an intellectual and emotional level, and sometimes, on a spiritual level.

Plot

Plot represents the sequence of events that drives a story forward, creating the “what happens next” momentum that keeps an audience engaged. In personal storytelling, plot isn’t just what occurred — it’s how you arrange those events to create meaning and emotional impact. Here are some plot structures to consider as you think about the story you want to tell.

Remember, you always start by defining what you want to share, and what you want the audience to understand differently at the end of your story. Within that framework, consider the ways in which you can tell that story, and which elements best serve the journey that your plot will take them on.

The Journey Structure: Organize your story around a physical or emotional journey, showing how each step brought new challenges and revelations about yourself or the world.
The Problem-Solution Arc: Begin with a significant challenge you faced, detail your attempts to overcome it, and conclude with the resolution and what you learned.
The Transformation Plot: Show how a specific experience fundamentally changed who you are, using the classic structure of setup, inciting incident, rising action, climax, and resolution.
The Discovery Narrative: Structure your story around the gradual uncovering of an important truth, revelation, or realization that shifted your perspective.
The Circular Plot: Begin and end in the same place or situation, but show how the experience between changed your understanding of that moment.
The Parallel Plot: Weave together two related storylines from your life that eventually converge to create a powerful moment of understanding.
The Reverse Chronology: Start with the outcome or lesson learned, then work backward to show the events that led to that moment of clarity.
The Snapshot Plot: Focus on a single, pivotal moment and use flashbacks and flash-forwards to provide context and meaning.
The Quest Structure: Frame your personal experience as a search for something important — understanding, healing, purpose, or connection./li>
The Before-and-After Plot: Clearly establish who you were before a significant experience, then show the dramatic changes that resulted.

Character

In personal storytelling, you’re the protagonist, but effective character development means showing yourself as a complex, evolving human being rather than a flat narrator. Character development involves revealing personality traits, motivations, conflicts, and growth in your story.

As we’re focused on personal stories, the main character will always be you, but it’s common for other characters to be a part of the story you’re telling — part of your journey. So think about how you want to portray yourself, as well as other characters in the story. Is their personality or role in your story similar to yours? Contrasting? Opposite?

The Flawed Narrator: Present yourself honestly, including mistakes, misjudgments, and vulnerabilities that make your story relatable and authentic.
Character Through Dialogue: Reveal your personality and that of others through the actual words spoken during key moments in your story.
Internal Character Arc: Show your internal evolution by contrasting your thoughts and beliefs at the beginning of your story with how they changed by the end.
Character in Crisis: Demonstrate who you truly are by showing how you responded under pressure or during difficult circumstances.
The Supporting Cast: Develop the other people in your story as full characters with their own motivations, showing how they influenced your journey.
Character Contradictions: Acknowledge the complexities and contradictions within yourself that make you human and three-dimensional.
Character Through Action: Let your choices and behaviors reveal your character rather than simply stating what kind of person you are.
The Reluctant Hero: Show yourself initially resisting or being unprepared for the challenges you faced, making your eventual growth more powerful.
Character Relationships: Explore how your interactions with others revealed different aspects of your personality and priorities.
The Evolving Perspective: Demonstrate how your understanding of other people in your story changed as you gained new insights about yourself and the world.

Setting

Setting encompasses not just the physical location of your story but also the time period, cultural context, and atmosphere that shaped your experience. In personal storytelling, setting can play a crucial role in background to events, showing how characters evolve over time, and exploring your story’s theme.

From a physical standpoint, settings can be expansive (within a country) more localized (in a city or neighborhood) or very specific (on a street or inside a room). Think about a restaurant, a park, living room, research lab, or refugee camp. Take the audience to where your experiences happened, thus allowing them to relive the events with you.

Emotional Landscape: Use physical settings to reflect your internal emotional state — a stormy day during a difficult decision, sunshine after resolution.
Cultural Context: Explore how the cultural environment shaped your experience and the lessons you learned from navigating different social contexts.
Time Period Significance: Highlight how the historical moment influenced your story, whether it’s generational differences or living through specific events.
Contrasting Locations: Compare different places you’ve lived or visited to show personal growth and changing perspectives.
Sensory Immersion: Use rich sensory details of your setting to transport the audience into your experience and make them feel present.
Setting as Catalyst: Show how a particular place triggered memories, realizations, or decisions that became central to your story.
Symbolic Spaces: Use specific locations as symbols for larger themes in your life — a childhood home representing security, an urban crossroads representing choice, a sports venue to represent chaos and competition.
Seasonal Metaphors: Connect the natural cycle of seasons to your personal cycles of growth, loss, renewal, or change.
Urban vs. Rural: Explore how different environments shaped different aspects of your personality and worldview.
Sacred Spaces: Describe places that hold special meaning for you and explain how they contributed to your understanding of yourself or your values.

Theme

Theme represents the central idea or underlying message that emerges from your personal experience. It’s the deeper meaning that transforms your individual story into something universal, something that others can relate to and learn from.

While the details of your story are unique to you, the theme that your story is built upon is one that others have experienced in their own way. Put yourself in the audience’s shoes to consider the events that may have happened in their lives. Beyond the differences, to what extent is there thematic synergy.

Universal Struggles: Connect your personal challenges to broader human experiences like love, loss, identity, or the search for meaning.
Values Exploration: Use your story to examine what you truly value and how those values were tested, confirmed, or changed through experience.
Generational Themes: Explore how your story reflects broader generational experiences or breaks patterns established by previous generations.
Resilience and Recovery: Focus on themes of overcoming adversity, finding strength, and learning to heal from difficult experiences.
Identity and Belonging: Examine questions of who you are and where you fit in the world through the lens of your personal experience.
Growth and Transformation: Highlight themes of personal development, learning, and becoming a different (usually better) version of yourself.
Relationship Dynamics: Explore themes about human connection, family bonds, friendship, love, or the challenges of understanding others.
Purpose and Calling: Use your story to examine themes of finding your life’s work, passion, or contribution to the world.
Justice and Injustice: Address themes of fairness, equality, standing up for what’s right, or confronting systemic problems.
Hope and Redemption: Focus on themes of second chances, forgiveness (of self or others), and the possibility of positive change.

Conflict

Conflict provides the tension that drives your story forward and creates opportunities for growth, revelation, and change. In personal storytelling, conflict can be internal, external, or both, and often serves as the catalyst for the insights and lessons you want to share.

Personal stories sometimes involve conflict with another person or persons, but can also occur between an individual and a business, service organization, or government agency, even nature. Conflict can also involve policies or cultural norms. As you scan the list below, consider the places where conflict shows up in your personal story.

Person vs. Self: Explore internal struggles with self-doubt, conflicting desires, moral dilemmas, or battles with your own limitations.
Person vs. Person: Detail conflicts with family members, friends, colleagues, or strangers that taught you something important about relationships or yourself.
Person vs. Society: Examine times when you challenged social norms, fought against injustice, or struggled to fit into societal expectations.
Person vs. Nature: Describe encounters with natural disasters, wilderness challenges, or health issues that tested your resilience and changed your perspective.
Person vs. Technology: Explore how technological changes affected your life, relationships, or worldview, and how you adapted or resisted.
Person vs. Fate: Examine experiences where you felt powerless against circumstances beyond your control and how you found ways to respond.
Moral Conflicts: Detail situations where you had to choose between competing values or when doing the right thing came with significant costs.
Cultural Conflicts: Explore tensions between different cultural backgrounds, whether your own or those you encountered through travel, immigration, or relationships.
Professional Conflicts: Examine workplace challenges, career decisions, or ethical dilemmas in your professional life that shaped your values and priorities.
Generational Conflicts: Detail differences with parents, children, or other generations that led to important insights about change, tradition, and understanding.

Point of View

Point of view determines the perspective from which your story is told and influences how an audience will experience and interpret your narrative. In general, the point of view will be yours, as it’s your story, but when other characters are part of your narrative, their point of view can add depth and complexity to the story, as well as foster conflict.

First Person Present: Tell your story as if it’s happening now, creating immediacy and putting others directly into your experience in the moment.
First Person Past: Reflect on your experience from a position of greater wisdom, allowing for insights and perspectives you couldn’t have had at the time.
Multiple Perspectives: Show how the same events looked different to various people involved, demonstrating the subjectivity of experience and memory.
Child’s Perspective: Write from the viewpoint of your younger self, capturing the innocence, confusion, or limited understanding of childhood.
Observer Perspective: Focus on how you witnessed and were affected by someone else’s story, showing your role as supporter, witness, or student.
Alternating Perspectives: Switch between different time periods in your life, showing how your perspective on the same events evolved over time.
Second Person Address: Occasionally address the audience directly as “you,” creating intimacy and making your experience more universal and relatable.
Collective Perspective: Use “we” to tell stories about shared experiences with family, communities, or groups, emphasizing connection and shared meaning. “We” can also include the audience as a collective societal group.
Unreliable Narrator: Acknowledge the limitations of memory and perception, exploring how your understanding of events changed as you gained new information.
Dual Timeline: Alternate between past and present perspectives, showing both the experience as it happened and your current understanding of its significance.

Tone

Tone reflects your attitude toward the subject matter and alters how an audience interprets and emotionally responds to your story. It’s the emotional coloring that guides their feelings and understanding throughout the narrative.

While some stories maintain a consistent tone throughout, it’s more common for stories to shift tone as the narrative unfold. The point is to review each of your Story Blocks and determine which tone best supports the message you want the audience to understand.

Reflective Tone: Adopt a thoughtful, contemplative approach when examining past experiences and their meaning for your current life and understanding.
Humorous Tone: Use humor to make difficult subjects more accessible while still honoring their seriousness and the lessons they provided.
Nostalgic Tone: Create a warm, wistful feeling when writing about past experiences, particularly childhood memories or lost opportunities.
Inspirational Tone: Maintain an uplifting, encouraging attitude that helps other folks believe in their own capacity for growth and positive change.
Honest and Raw: Adopt a direct, unflinching tone when addressing difficult topics like trauma, failure, or personal struggles.
Gentle and Compassionate: Use a kind, understanding tone when writing about sensitive subjects or when offering forgiveness to yourself or others.
Urgent Tone: Create a sense of immediacy and importance when sharing discoveries or insights that could significantly help others.
Grateful Tone: Express appreciation and thankfulness for experiences, even difficult ones, that contributed to your growth and understanding.
Questioning Tone: Maintain a curious, exploratory attitude that invites the audience to examine their own experiences and assumptions.
Hopeful Tone: Convey optimism about the future and the possibility for positive change, even when discussing challenging circumstances.

Mood

Mood represents the emotional atmosphere you create for the audience, and influences how they feel while hearing your story. Unlike tone, which reflects your attitude, mood encompasses the overall emotional experience that you’re crafting for your audience.

Suspenseful Mood: Build tension and anticipation around critical moments in your story, keeping listeners engaged and emotionally invested in the outcome.
Melancholic Mood: Create a bittersweet atmosphere when reflecting on loss, missed opportunities, or the passage of time and its impact on your life.
Triumphant Mood: Generate feelings of victory and accomplishment when describing moments of breakthrough, success, or overcoming significant challenges.
Intimate Mood: Foster a sense of closeness and trust between you and your audience when sharing vulnerable or deeply personal experiences.
Mysterious Mood: Create intrigue and curiosity around discoveries, realizations, or experiences that gradually revealed their significance over time.
Peaceful Mood: Establish calm and serenity when describing moments of clarity, acceptance, or connection with nature, others, or yourself.
Anxious Mood: Convey feelings of worry, uncertainty, or fear during periods of crisis, major decisions, or unknown outcomes.
Joyful Mood: Share experiences of happiness, celebration, and pure delight that brought lightness and positivity to your life.
Tense Mood: Build emotional pressure around conflicts, confrontations, or high-stakes situations that tested your character and resolve.
Contemplative Mood: Create a thoughtful, meditative atmosphere that encourages listeners to reflect on their own experiences and insights.

Style

Style encompasses your unique way of using language, sentence structure, and narrative techniques to tell your story. It’s your distinctive voice that makes your personal storytelling recognizable and memorable. While it stands alone to some extent, it’s the combination of style, mood, and tone that wraps around the characters and plot to become a complete and complex story.

Conversational Style: Write as if you’re talking directly to a friend, using natural language patterns and informal expressions that create intimacy.
Lyrical Style: Use poetic language, imagery, and rhythm to create beautiful, flowing prose that enhances the emotional impact of your experiences.
Minimalist Style: Employ spare, clean prose that focuses on essential details and lets an audience fill in emotional and interpretive gaps themselves.
Stream-of-Consciousness Style: Write in the natural flow of thoughts and associations, capturing the actual way your mind processes experiences and memories.
Descriptive Style: Use rich, detailed language that creates vivid mental images and allows audience members to fully experience the sensory aspects of your story.
Dialogue-Heavy Style: Include substantial amounts of conversation to reveal character, advance plot, and make scenes feel immediate and dramatic.
Fragmented Style: Use short sentences, incomplete thoughts, or non-linear structure to reflect emotional states or traumatic experiences.
Analytical Style: Combine storytelling with deeper examination and interpretation of events, helping listeners understand the broader significance.
Episodic Style: Structure your narrative as a series of connected scenes or moments rather than a continuous chronological flow.
Metaphorical Style: Weave extended metaphors throughout your narrative to help audience members understand complex emotional or spiritual concepts through concrete imagery.

Structure

Structure refers to how you organize and arrange the elements of your story to create the most effective and impactful narrative experience. The structure you choose significantly affects how others understand and connect with your story. There’s no correct structure for a particular story, so feel free to try out a number of structures to discover the best fit for yours.

Chronological Structure: Organize events in the order they occurred, creating a clear timeline that shows natural progression and development over time.
Thematic Structure: Organize around central themes or ideas rather than chronology, exploring different aspects of a concept through various experiences.
Circular Structure: Begin and end at the same point in time, using the story to show how your understanding of that moment changed through experience.
Flashback Structure: Start with a present moment, then move backward to explore the experiences that led to your current understanding or situation.
Parallel Structure: Weave together two or more storylines that illuminate each other and converge to create deeper meaning and understanding.
Episodic Structure: Organize your story as a series of related episodes or chapters, each contributing to the overall theme while standing alone as complete moments.
Problem-Solution Structure: Begin with a challenge or question, explore your attempts to address it, and conclude with resolution and lessons learned.
Three-Act Structure: Divide your story into setup (introducing the situation), confrontation (dealing with challenges), and resolution (achieving understanding or growth).
Spiral Structure: Return repeatedly to the same theme or experience from different angles and with deepening understanding, showing growth over time.
Mosaic Structure: Combine fragments, memories, reflections, and insights in a non-linear way that gradually builds a complete picture of your experience and its meaning.

Chapter 2: Literary Techniques

Literary techniques are the specific methods and approaches used to bring personal stories to life. These techniques perform a variety of services, from creating visual images, to getting inside the mind of the storyteller, and transcending time, among other functions. Compelling stories will employ a number of these techniques, so keep them in mind as you craft your story.

Imagery

Imagery involves using vivid, sensory language to create mental pictures that allow others to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel what you have experienced. Effective imagery transports the audience directly into your story, making them active participants in your journey. It can put them in your shoes to some extent, and in doing so, support the theme and message of your story.

Visual Imagery: Describe the physical details of significant places, people, and moments with precision and color, helping others see your world through your eyes.
Auditory Imagery: Include the sounds that defined important moments — conversations, music, silence, or environmental sounds that added meaning to your experience.
Tactile Imagery: Describe physical sensations, textures, temperatures, and touch that were significant to your emotional or spiritual journey.
Olfactory Imagery: Use smell descriptions to trigger powerful memories and associations, as scent often connects directly to emotional memory centers.
Gustatory Imagery: Include taste descriptions when food, drink, or other flavors played important roles in your cultural, family, or personal experiences.
Kinesthetic Imagery: Describe movement, physical actions, and bodily sensations to help others feel the physicality of your experiences.
Emotional Imagery: Use concrete images to represent abstract emotions, making complex feelings accessible and understandable to your audience.
Metaphorical Imagery: Employ images that work on both literal and symbolic levels, adding depth and resonance to your narrative.
Seasonal Imagery: Connect your experiences to natural cycles and weather patterns that reflected or influenced your emotional and spiritual states.
Cultural Imagery: Include specific details about cultural practices, traditions, and environments that shaped your worldview and personal development.

Flashback

Flashback allows you to move backward in time to provide context, background, or deeper understanding of future events. This technique helps audience members understand how past experiences shaped later perspectives and decisions.

Childhood Origins: Return to childhood experiences that planted the seeds for adult challenges, insights, or patterns you’re exploring in your main narrative.
Pivotal Moments: Flash back to specific moments that changed your life’s trajectory, showing how seemingly small events had large consequences.
Character Backstory: Provide background information about important people in your story by showing key moments from your relationship with them.
Pattern Recognition: Use flashbacks to show how current challenges echo similar situations from your past, highlighting growth or recurring themes.
Contextual Understanding: Return to earlier events that help explain your current emotional state, decisions, or reactions to present circumstances.
Contrast and Comparison: Flash back to show how much you’ve changed by contrasting past and present versions of yourself in similar situations.
Missing Pieces: Fill in important information that wasn’t available to you at the time but becomes crucial to understanding the full story.
Emotional Origins: Trace current feelings or fears back to their origins, helping others understand the depth and complexity of your emotional landscape.
Wisdom Acquired: Show earlier moments of confusion or struggle that led to insights you now want to share with your audience.
Generational Connections: Flash back to family history or inherited patterns that influenced your story, connecting personal experience to larger family narratives.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing involves subtly hinting at future passages in your story. Doing so builds anticipation and demonstrats how early experiences connect to later challenges or revelations. This technique helps an audience see the deeper patterns and connections in your life journey.

Early Warning Signs: Mention subtle clues or feelings that you didn’t fully understand at the time but that later proved to be important signals.
Recurring Dreams or Thoughts: Describe persistent dreams, worries, or ideas that eventually manifested in significant ways in your life.
Intuitive Feelings: Include moments when you sensed something important was coming, even if you couldn’t articulate what it was at the time.
Character Glimpses: Show early signs of personality traits or capabilities that became crucial in later challenges or transformations.
Environmental Clues: Describe changes in your environment or circumstances that hinted at larger shifts to come in your life story.
Relationship Dynamics: Point to early patterns in relationships that predicted future developments, conflicts, or breakthroughs.
Skill Development: Mention seemingly unrelated experiences or skills that later proved essential for overcoming major challenges.
Value Formation: Show early experiences that planted values or beliefs that became central to later major decisions or life changes.
Health or Energy Changes: Describe subtle shifts in physical or emotional well-being that preceded major life transitions or revelations.
Symbolic Events: Include seemingly minor events that later revealed themselves as symbolic of much larger life patterns or themes.

Dialogue

Dialogue — the words exchanged between characters — reveals character, explains events, advances the narrative, and creates immediacy. Effective dialogue helps the audience hear the voices of the people who shaped your story. You may decide to quote dialogue between yourself and one or more other people, but you can also quote dialogue that you overheard

Revealing Conversations: Include verbatim exchanges that revealed important truths about yourself, others, or your situation.
Conflict Dialogue: Present arguments, disagreements, or tense conversations that highlighted important differences or led to breakthrough moments.
Wisdom Sharing: Include conversations where someone offered you advice, insights, or perspectives that changed your understanding or direction.
Internal Dialogue: Show your internal conversations and self-talk during crucial decision-making moments or periods of struggle.
Cultural Voices: Include dialogue that reveals different cultural perspectives, generational differences, or social contexts that influenced your story.
Emotional Expressions: Present conversations where deep emotions were expressed, whether love, anger, fear, joy, or grief.
Milestone Conversations: Include dialogue from important life moments — graduations, marriages, births, deaths, or career changes.
Teaching Moments: Show conversations where you learned something important or where you taught others valuable lessons.
Confession or Revelation: Include moments when secrets were shared, truths revealed, or important information disclosed.
Reconciliation Dialogue: Present conversations that led to forgiveness, understanding, or the healing of important relationships.

Stream of Consciousness

Stream of consciousness captures the natural flow of thoughts, memories, and associations as they occurred in your mind, creating an intimate and authentic representation of your internal experience. This technique allows the audience to experience your thought processes directly — what was going through your mind as an event was unfolding.

Crisis Moments: Show the rapid, chaotic flow of thoughts during emergency situations, traumatic events, or high-stress moments.
Decision Points: Capture the internal debate, weighing of options, and emotional considerations that occurred during important life choices.
Memory Triggers: Follow the natural flow of associations as one memory leads to another, creating a web of interconnected experiences and insights.
Meditation or Reflection: Show the deeper thoughts and realizations that emerge during quiet, contemplative moments or spiritual practices.
Creative Breakthroughs: Capture the flow of ideas, connections, and inspiration during moments of creative discovery or problem-solving.
Emotional Processing: Show how your mind works through complex emotions, cycling through different feelings and thoughts about significant events.
Identity Exploration: Follow your internal monologue as you question who you are, what you believe, or what you want from life.
Physical Sensations: Include the stream of awareness about bodily sensations, pain, pleasure, or physical changes that accompanied emotional experiences.
Relationship Analysis: Show your internal processing of relationship dynamics, trying to understand others’ motivations or your own reactions.
Future Projections: Capture your mind’s tendency to imagine possible futures, worry about outcomes, or dream about potential developments.

Reflection

Reflection involves stepping back from the narrative to analyze, interpret, and find meaning in your experiences. Doing so in your story will encourage the audience to reflect on the events in your story and reflect on what they might have done in your situation.

Lesson Extraction: Pause in your narrative to explicitly discuss what you learned from specific experiences and how it changed your approach to life.
Pattern Recognition: Reflect on recurring themes, behaviors, or challenges in your life and what they reveal about your character or growth areas.
Value Clarification: Use reflective passages to explore how experiences confirmed, challenged, or refined your core values and beliefs.
Emotional Analysis: Examine your emotional responses to events, exploring why you reacted certain ways and what those reactions taught you about yourself.
Relationship Insights: Reflect on how interactions with others revealed aspects of your personality, communication style, or capacity for growth.
Cultural Commentary: Step back to analyze how your personal experiences reflect broader cultural, social, or historical patterns and issues.
Spiritual Exploration: Reflect on how experiences affected your spiritual beliefs, sense of purpose, or connection to something greater than yourself.
Professional Development: Analyze how career experiences shaped your understanding of success, fulfillment, and professional values.
Generational Perspectives: Reflect on how your experiences differ from or echo those of previous or subsequent generations in your family.
Universal Applications: Explore how your specific experiences relate to universal human challenges and what insights might benefit others facing similar situations.

Symbolism

Symbolism uses objects, actions, or situations to represent deeper meanings and themes beyond their literal interpretation. In personal storytelling, symbolism helps others understand complex emotions and concepts through concrete, relatable images.

Nature Symbols: Use elements like storms, seasons, plants, or animals to represent emotional states, life phases, or spiritual concepts.
Object Symbolism: Employ meaningful possessions, heirlooms, or everyday items as symbols of relationships, memories, or values.
Journey Symbols: Use roads, bridges, doors, or other pathway imagery to represent life transitions, decisions, or personal growth.
Light and Darkness: Employ contrasts between light and shadow to symbolize understanding and confusion, hope and despair, or knowledge and ignorance.
Water Symbolism: Use oceans, rivers, rain, or drought to represent emotional depth, change, cleansing, or spiritual renewal.
Color Symbolism: Associate specific colors with emotions, themes, or people important to your story, creating subtle emotional connections for the audience.
Musical Symbols: Use songs, instruments, or sounds to represent memories, relationships, cultural identity, or emotional states.
Architectural Symbols: Employ buildings, rooms, or structures to represent security, confinement, aspiration, or different aspects of your identity.
Cultural Symbols: Include meaningful symbols from your cultural background to represent heritage, identity, belonging, or conflict between traditions and change.
Circular Symbols: Use rings, cycles, or circular motions to represent completion, wholeness, eternal connections, or the cyclical nature of life experiences.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition places contrasting elements side by side to highlight differences, create emphasis, or reveal deeper truths about the experience at hand. This technique helps audience members understand what you were experiencing at a moment in time.

Before and After: Place descriptions of yourself before and after major life events side by side to show dramatic personal transformation.
Cultural Contrasts: Juxtapose different cultural environments you’ve experienced to highlight how they shaped different aspects of your identity.
Generational Differences: Place your experiences alongside those of parents, grandparents, or children to show how times and perspectives have changed.
Economic Contrasts: Juxtapose periods of financial security and struggle to show how circumstances affected your values and priorities.
Emotional Extremes: Place moments of great joy next to periods of deep sorrow to show the full range of human experience and your resilience.
Urban vs. Rural: Contrast city and country experiences to show how different environments brought out different aspects of your personality.
Professional vs. Personal: Juxtapose your public, professional self with your private, personal self to explore themes of authenticity and identity.
Childhood vs. Adulthood: Place childhood memories alongside adult perspectives on the same events to show growth in understanding and wisdom.
Success and Failure: Juxtapose your achievements with your setbacks to show the complete picture of your journey and what you learned from both.
Individual vs. Community: Contrast times when you felt isolated with moments of deep connection to show the importance of belonging and relationship.

Allegory

Allegory tells a story which represents a larger, more universal story or concept. In personal storytelling, allegory allows you to share personal experiences that illuminate broader truths about life, society, or human nature. This technique can be used for one part of your story, in effect telling a story within your story.

Family Dynamics as Society: Use your family experiences to represent larger social, political, or cultural dynamics and conflicts.
Personal Journey as Hero’s Quest: Frame your personal transformation as a classic hero’s journey that represents universal patterns of growth and self-discovery.
Workplace as Microcosm: Use your professional experiences to represent broader economic, social, or ethical issues affecting society.
Relationship as Dance: Use a romantic relationship or friendship as an allegory for the delicate balance required in all human connections.
Addiction Recovery as Rebirth: Frame your or someone else’s recovery journey as a death and rebirth story that speaks to universal themes of transformation.
Immigration as Bridge-Building: Use immigration or relocation experiences to represent the universal challenge of connecting different worlds or identities.
Education as Liberation: Frame your learning experiences as an allegory for the universal journey from ignorance to enlightenment.
Health Crisis as Battle: Use illness or injury experiences to represent the universal struggle between hope and despair, strength and vulnerability.
Parenting as Gardening: Use your experiences raising children or being raised as an allegory for nurturing growth, patience, and faith in natural processes.
Career Change as Metamorphosis: Frame professional transitions as an allegory for the universal process of shedding old identities to embrace new possibilities.

Satire

Satire uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to critique and expose flaws in human behavior, institutions, or social conditions you’ve encountered. In personal storytelling, satire can make serious points more palatable while entertaining the audience.

Social Convention Critique: Use humorous observations about social norms, etiquette, or expectations you’ve encountered to highlight their absurdity or limitations.
Bureaucratic Absurdities: Satirize interactions with government agencies, corporations, or institutions to highlight inefficiency or disconnect from human needs.
Cultural Contradictions: Use humor to point out contradictions in cultural values or practices you’ve observed or experienced personally.
Professional Pretensions: Satirize workplace cultures, professional jargon, or career expectations that seem removed from genuine human values or needs.
Technology Dependencies: Use humor to critique society’s relationship with technology, social media, or digital communication based on your own experiences.
Consumer Culture: Satirize shopping experiences, marketing messages, or material obsessions you’ve observed or participated in.
Educational Systems: Use humor to critique educational approaches, testing methods, or institutional priorities that seemed counterproductive to real learning.
Dating and Romance: Satirize modern dating culture, relationship expectations, or romantic conventions based on your personal experiences.
Health and Wellness Trends: Use humor to critique fitness crazes, diet culture, or wellness industries you’ve encountered or participated in.
Self-Help Satire: Satirize the self-improvement industry, motivational speakers, or personal development trends while still acknowledging genuine insights you’ve gained.

Chapter 3: Literary Devices

Literary devices are the precise tools that work at the language level to create vivid imagery, emotional resonance, and memorable expressions when telling personal stories These devices add beauty, depth, and impact to narratives, transforming ordinary descriptions into more evocative expressions that connects directly with the audience’s hearts and minds.

Metaphor

Metaphor creates direct comparisons between unlike things without using “like” or “as,” helping others understand complex emotions or concepts through familiar images. In personal storytelling, metaphors make abstract experiences concrete and relatable.

Life as Journey: Describe your life experiences using travel metaphors — “crossroads decisions,” “rocky paths,” or “finding my compass” to make personal growth tangible.
Emotions as Weather: Use weather patterns to describe emotional states — “storms of anger,” “sunshine of joy,” or “fog of confusion” to help the audience feel your experiences.
Relationships as Gardens: Describe relationships using gardening metaphors — “planting seeds of trust,” “pruning away negativity,” or “harvesting wisdom” from connections with others.
Challenges as Mountains: Frame difficulties as mountains to climb, emphasizing the effort required and the view gained from overcoming obstacles.
Memories as Treasures: Describe recollections as valuable objects — “gems of wisdom,” “buried treasure of experience,” or “polished stones of understanding.”
Identity as Architecture: Use building metaphors for personal development — “laying foundations,” “constructing new rooms,” or “renovating my sense of self.”
Time as River: Describe the passage of time as a flowing river — “currents of change,” “tributaries of experience,” or “downstream consequences.”
Knowledge as Light: Use illumination metaphors for understanding — “dawn of realization,” “shadows of doubt,” or “beacon of truth” to describe learning.
Healing as Mending: Describe recovery processes using repair metaphors — “stitching wounds,” “rebuilding strength,” or “restoring wholeness” after trauma or loss.
Dreams as Wings: Use flight metaphors for aspirations and achievements — “soaring ambitions,” “wings clipped by fear,” or “taking flight toward goals.”

Simile

Similes create comparisons using “like” or “as,” offering clear and relatable images that help audience members connect with your experiences and understand your message. Similes provide vivid descriptions while maintaining the distinction between the compared elements.

Emotional Comparisons: Describe feelings using familiar sensations — “grief hit me like a tidal wave” or “joy bubbled up like champagne” to make emotions tangible.
Character Descriptions: Compare people to animals, objects, or forces of nature — “stubborn as a mule,” “graceful as a dancer,” or “unpredictable as weather.”
Memory Descriptions: Use similes to capture how memories feel — “memories floated back like autumn leaves” or “the past clung like morning fog.”
Physical Sensations: Compare bodily experiences to familiar phenomena — “exhaustion settled over me like a heavy blanket” or “energy coursed through me like electricity.”
Time Comparisons: Describe the passage of time using familiar processes — “years passed like seasons changing” or “moments crawled by like honey dripping.”
Learning Experiences: Compare gaining knowledge to familiar activities — “understanding clicked like puzzle pieces fitting” or “wisdom accumulated like layers of sediment.”
Relationship Dynamics: Use similes to describe interactions — “we connected like old friends reuniting” or “communication flowed like a well-rehearsed dance.”
Challenge Descriptions: Compare difficulties to familiar struggles — “the problem loomed like a mountain peak” or “obstacles fell away like dominoes.”
Spiritual Experiences: Use natural comparisons for transcendent moments — “peace descended like morning dew” or “faith grew like a seed in fertile ground.”
Transformation Descriptions: Compare personal change to natural processes — “I emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon” or “growth happened as slowly as trees reaching skyward.”

Alliteration

Alliteration repeats initial consonant sounds in closely connected words, creating rhythm, emphasis, and memorability when telling personal stories. This device adds musicality and can highlight important concepts or emotions.

Emotional Emphasis: Create memorable phrases for strong emotions — “crushing confusion,” “brilliant breakthrough,” or “devastating disappointment” to intensify feeling.
Character Descriptions: Use alliterative phrases to make people memorable — “gentle grandmother,” “persistent professor,” or “wise warrior” for important figures in your story.
Place Descriptions: Create vivid location descriptions — “mountain meadows,” “bustling Boston,” or “peaceful prairie” to help folks in the audience visualize settings.
Action Sequences: Add rhythm to movement — “racing rapidly,” “carefully climbing,” or “gently gliding” to create flow in narrative moments.
Theme Reinforcement: Use alliteration to emphasize central ideas — “courage conquers,” “love leads,” or “hope heals” to reinforce important messages.
Memory Triggers: Create catchy phrases for significant moments — “magical moment,” “terrible Tuesday,” or “perfect peace” that stick in others’ minds.
Sensory Descriptions: Enhance sensory details — “sweet summer sounds,” “harsh howling winds,” or “soft, silky sensations” to intensify experiences.
Humor and Lightness: Add playfulness to lighter moments — “silly situation,” “fantastic failure,” or “marvelous mistake” to create levity.
Spiritual or Philosophical Concepts: Make abstract ideas memorable — “soul searching,” “divine direction,” or “faithful following” for meaningful concepts.
Titles and Headings: Create compelling chapter titles — “Childhood Challenges,” “Professional Pursuits,” or “Relationship Revelations” to organize and emphasize themes.

Personification

Personification gives human characteristics to non-human things, making abstract concepts, emotions, or objects more relatable and vivid. This device helps the audience connect emotionally with particular experiences.

Emotion Personification: Give feelings human traits — “fear whispered warnings,” “hope danced in my heart,” or “doubt crept into my thoughts” to make internal experiences tangible.
Time Personification: Make time an active character — “the clock mocked my impatience,” “days crawled by reluctantly,” or “the future beckoned invitingly.”
Nature Personification: Give natural elements human qualities — “the wind sang lullabies,” “trees whispered secrets,” or “the sun smiled warmly on our gathering.”
Memory Personification: Make memories active participants — “childhood memories knocked on my door,” “regrets haunted my dreams,” or “lessons learned guided my steps.”
Challenge Personification: Give obstacles human characteristics — “the problem stared me down,” “opportunity knocked twice,” or “failure taught me humility.”
Place Personification: Make locations come alive — “the house welcomed us home,” “the city pulsed with energy,” or “the room held its breath in silence.”
Object Personification: Give meaningful items human traits — “the old photograph smiled from the mantel,” “my grandmother’s ring hugged my finger,” or “the book opened its arms to me.”
Concept Personification: Make abstract ideas human — “wisdom walked beside me,” “truth revealed herself slowly,” or “justice demanded attention.”
Health Personification: Give illnesses or healing human qualities — “disease invaded my body,” “healing embraced me gently,” or “strength returned like an old friend.”
Dream Personification: Make aspirations and goals active — “dreams called my name,” “ambition pushed me forward,” or “success played hard to get.”

Hyperbole

Hyperbole uses deliberate exaggeration to emphasize emotions, create humor, or make memorable points in your stories. This device helps other people understand the intensity of your experiences through dramatic overstatement.

Emotional Intensity: Exaggerate feelings for impact — “I was scared to death,” “my heart exploded with joy,” or “embarrassment killed me” to show emotional extremes.
Physical Exhaustion: Overstate tiredness — “I could sleep for a thousand years,” “my feet were crying,” or “I was dead on my feet” to emphasize fatigue.
Time Distortion: Exaggerate duration — “the wait lasted forever,” “it happened in the blink of an eye,” or “I’ve told you a million times” for temporal emphasis.
Difficulty Description: Overstate challenges — “it was impossible,” “the hardest thing in the universe,” or “more difficult than climbing Mount Everest” to show struggle.
Surprise Expression: Exaggerate shock — “I nearly died of surprise,” “my jaw hit the floor,” or “I couldn’t believe my eyes” to show astonishment.
Love and Affection: Overstate positive feelings — “I love you to the moon and back,” “the best person who ever lived,” or “worth their weight in gold.”
Size Comparisons: Exaggerate scale — “tiny as an ant,” “bigger than a house,” or “tall as a skyscraper” to make size memorable.
Hunger and Thirst: Overstate appetite — “I could eat a horse,” “starving to death,” or “dying of thirst” to emphasize physical needs.
Speed Descriptions: Exaggerate pace — “faster than lightning,” “slower than molasses,” or “quick as a flash” to show relative speed.
Frequency Exaggeration: Overstate occurrence — “happens every second,” “never in my life,” or “always and forever” to emphasize patterns or rarity.

Irony

Irony presents contrasts between expectation and reality, appearance and truth, or intention and outcome in personal storytelling. This device adds depth and oftentimes humor while highlighting life’s complexities and surprises.

Situational Irony: Describe events where outcomes were opposite to expectations — “the fire station burned down” or “the marriage counselor got divorced” — to show life’s unpredictability.
Verbal Irony: Use statements that mean the opposite of what they literally say — describing a terrible day as “just perfect” to add humor and emphasis.
Dramatic Irony: Share situations where you knew something others didn’t — watching someone make the same mistake you’d made — to highlight patterns and learning.
Career Irony: Describe professional situations where things turned out unexpectedly — “got fired from the job I hated and found my calling” to show hidden blessings.
Relationship Irony: Explore romantic or friendship ironies — “met my spouse when I’d given up on love” or “my biggest enemy became my closest friend.”
Learning Irony: Describe educational contradictions — “learned more from failure than success” or “the worst teacher taught me the most” to show unexpected wisdom.
Travel Irony: Share journey ironies — “went searching for adventure and found peace” or “traveled the world to discover myself at home.”
Health Irony: Describe medical contradictions — “the accident that saved my life” or “sickness that taught me how to live” to show silver linings.
Financial Irony: Explore money-related surprises — “losing everything helped me find what mattered” or “the cheap option cost me more” to highlight values.
Family Irony: Share generational contradictions — “rebelling against my parents made me just like them” or “the black sheep became the success story.”

Oxymoron

Oxymoron combines contradictory terms to create striking phrases that capture complex emotions or situations in personal stories. This device helps express the paradoxes and contradictions that often define human experience.

Emotional Contradictions: Describe complex feelings — “bittersweet goodbye,” “painful pleasure,” or “joyful sorrow” to capture mixed emotions during significant transitions.
Relationship Paradoxes: Express complicated connections — “loving hate,” “distant intimacy,” or “familiar stranger” to describe complex relationships with family or friends.
Success Contradictions: Describe achievement paradoxes — “beautiful disaster,” “successful failure,” or “organized chaos” to show how success and failure intertwine.
Growth Experiences: Capture development contradictions — “old wisdom,” “mature innocence,” or “learned ignorance” to describe how growth often involves embracing paradox.
Spiritual Experiences: Express transcendent contradictions — “silent scream,” “dark light,” or “empty fullness” to describe mystical or profound spiritual moments.
Time Paradoxes: Describe temporal contradictions — “instant eternity,” “rushed patience,” or “temporary permanence” to show how significant moments distort time perception.
Physical Contradictions: Express bodily paradoxes — “numb pain,” “weak strength,” or “tired energy” to describe complex physical or health experiences.
Mental States: Capture psychological contradictions — “confused clarity,” “wise foolishness,” or “certain doubt” to describe complex mental or emotional states.
Social Situations: Express cultural contradictions — “alone together,” “public privacy,” or “individual community” to describe modern social paradoxes.
Life Philosophy: Describe existential contradictions — “living death,” “hopeful despair,” or “meaningful meaninglessness” to express complex life philosophies or worldviews.

Paradox

Paradox presents seemingly contradictory statements that reveal deeper truths about our experiences. This device helps express the complex, often counterintuitive nature of personal growth and human understanding.

Growth Paradoxes: Express counterintuitive development — “I had to lose myself to find myself” or “weakness became my greatest strength” to show how growth often involves contradiction.
Success Paradoxes: Describe achievement contradictions — “failing forward,” “succeeding by giving up,” or “winning by losing” to show how traditional success metrics don’t always apply.
Relationship Paradoxes: Express connection contradictions — “the more I tried to hold on, the more I pushed away” or “distance brought us closer” to describe relationship dynamics.
Learning Paradoxes: Describe educational contradictions — “the more I learned, the less I knew” or “ignorance was my teacher” to show how true learning involves recognizing limits.
Freedom Paradoxes: Express liberty contradictions — “rules set me free” or “surrender gave me power” to describe how constraints can create freedom.
Happiness Paradoxes: Describe joy contradictions — “accepting sadness brought happiness” or “stopping the pursuit of happiness helped me find it” to show emotional complexity.
Control Paradoxes: Express agency contradictions — “letting go gave me control” or “accepting powerlessness empowered me” to describe the nature of true influence.
Time Paradoxes: Describe temporal contradictions — “the end was the beginning” or “going backward moved me forward” to show how time and progress aren’t always linear.
Communication Paradoxes: Express expression contradictions — “silence spoke louder than words” or “listening helped me find my voice” to describe the complexity of communication.
Spiritual Paradoxes: Describe transcendent contradictions — “emptiness filled me up” or “dying brought me to life” to express profound spiritual or transformational experiences.

Analogy

Analogy creates extended comparisons that help the audience understand complex experiences by relating them to familiar situations. This device provides deeper explanations than simple metaphors or similes, often running through entire passages.

Life as School: Compare your life experiences to educational processes — lessons, tests, grades, graduation — to help folks understand personal development as learning.
Relationships as Dance: Use dancing as an extended analogy for relationships — learning steps, finding rhythm, leading and following, stepping on toes — to explore partnership dynamics.
Career as Garden: Compare professional development to gardening — planting seeds, tending growth, weeding out problems, harvesting success — to show how careers develop over time.
Healing as Construction: Use building renovation as an analogy for recovery — assessing damage, laying new foundations, rebuilding structures — to describe healing processes.
Parenting as Navigation: Compare raising children to being a ship’s captain — reading weather, adjusting course, teaching crew skills — to explore parenting challenges and responsibilities.
Identity as Wardrobe: Use clothing analogies for self-discovery — trying on different roles, finding the right fit, outgrowing old styles — to describe personal identity development.
Marriage as Cooking: Compare relationship building to preparing meals together — gathering ingredients, following recipes, adjusting flavors, sharing the feast — to explore partnership.
Recovery as Weather: Use seasonal cycles to describe addiction recovery — harsh winters, gradual springs, full summers, preparation for challenges — to show natural rhythms of healing.
Grief as Journey: Compare loss experiences to traveling through difficult terrain — dark valleys, steep climbs, rest stops, eventual destinations — to help those in the audience understand mourning.
Faith as Investment: Use financial analogies for spiritual development — initial deposits, compound growth, market fluctuations, long-term returns — to describe spiritual journey economics.

Sarcasm

Sarcasm uses ironic or bitter humor to highlight contradictions, express frustration, or critique situations when telling personal stories. This device can add humor while making serious points about human nature or social conditions.

Self-Deprecating Humor: Use sarcasm about your own mistakes — “Brilliant move, genius” or “That worked out perfectly” to show humility and humor about personal failures.
Social Commentary: Employ sarcastic observations about social norms — “Oh yes, because that makes perfect sense” to critique illogical social expectations you’ve encountered.
Professional Situations: Use workplace sarcasm — “Another ‘urgent’ deadline” or “Thanks for the ‘constructive’ feedback” to highlight professional frustrations with humor.
Family Dynamics: Apply sarcasm to family situations — “Family dinner went swimmingly” or “My relatives are so supportive” to describe complicated family relationships.
Dating Experiences: Use romantic sarcasm — “He was a real catch” or “What a charming personality” to humorously describe disappointing dating experiences.
Health Challenges: Employ medical sarcasm — “This is exactly how I wanted to spend my vacation” to add humor to difficult health situations.
Financial Situations: Use money-related sarcasm — “My bank account is thriving” or “Perfect timing for an unexpected expense” to lighten financial stress through humor.
Travel Mishaps: Apply vacation sarcasm — “The airline really takes care of their customers” to describe travel disasters with humorous perspective.
Technology Frustrations: Use digital sarcasm — “Technology makes everything so simple” to highlight the irony of complicated digital solutions.
Learning Experiences: Employ educational sarcasm — “Well, that was educational” or “I’m so glad I learned that the hard way” to show how difficult experiences taught valuable lessons.

Conclusion

The art of impactful personal storytelling emerges from the skillful integration of literary elements, techniques, and devices working in harmony to transform individual experiences into narratives that connect with wide-ranging audiences. These three foundational components serve distinct but complementary purposes in crafting stories that resonate deeply with readers and listeners to create lasting impact.

When personal stories are crafted properly, the storyteller’s journey becomes a mirror in which others see their own struggles, hopes, and possibilities reflected. The wisdom gained through one person’s experience becomes accessible to those who haven’t yet faced similar challenges. Discoveries, insights, and lessons learned — whether practical, emotional, or spiritual — help others navigate their own paths.

The most powerful personal stories achieve this transformation by honoring both the specific details of individual experience and the universal patterns that connect all human lives. They balance honesty about struggle and failure with hope about growth and possibility.

Whether you’re sharing hard-won wisdom from personal challenges, insights from professional discoveries, or visions for a better future, the conscious use of literary elements, techniques, and devices elevates the impact of your storytelling. These tools help you craft narratives that not only preserve your experiences but actively contribute to the healing, growth, and understanding of all who encounter them. The goal of impactful personal storytelling is not merely to be heard, but to create genuine connection and positive change in the world.

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If you’re ready to craft your own personal story, these resources will help make it more impactful!
Storytelling in Three Steps
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks
The Essential Literary Elements

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Are we heading towards World War III? – Heni Ozi Cukier at TEDxLisboa 2025

July 25, 2025/in Democracy, Government, History, Politics, Society, TEDx, Warfare/by Mark Lovett

World War I — The Great War — The War to End All Wars. With a death toll that exceeded 20 million, many believed it was, and others at least hoped it was, but such was not the case. More than 3 times as many perished during World War II. Afterwards, fewer believed or even hoped it would be the last. The atomic bomb changed everything we thought we knew about war.

The Cold War kept the world on its toes until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, supposedly bringing that era to and end. And for a while there was a resurgence of hope that humanity had finally turned a corner. Mutual Assured Destruction was supposed to keep us crazy humans in check.

But in his talk at TEDxLisboa in March 2025, professor Heni Ozi Cukier asked the audience to consider the question again: Are we heading towards World War III? On the one hand, answering such a question would consume many hours, if not days, so the challenge from a storytelling perspective was how to do that in less than 18 minutes from the stage.

Beyond the fact that this is one of the most important questions that any of us can ask, Heni’s talk is an excellent example of how to take a very complex topic and present it in a way that general audiences — composed of people who are not experts in geopolitics — can understand.

In short, technological progress brings incredible benefits, but they also breed insecurity, resentment, and uncertainty. Historically, such anxieties have made societies more unstable and vulnerable to extreme ideologies that fuel militarism and war.

Heni does this in two ways. First, he takes us back in time to examine what was happening when previous world wars erupted. In this way we can frame what’s going on in the world today against how events transpired in the past. But even this method involves too many variables, too much complexity, so he highlights four dimensions for the audience to track from past to present:

social
economic
political
military

Within the first minute, the audience is clear on the topic at hand, the three time periods in question, and the four dimensions that will be reviewed at each stage. In a sense, he’s given them signposts to follow as the narrative unfolds, ensuring they won’t get lost along the way.

If we have the aggressors’ alliance growing stronger and the opposing alliance becoming divided and weak, the incentives for the aggressors to strike, they’re really big.

Follow along with the transcript as you listed to Heni’s talk. Notice how each element is presented in order. How each is explained enough to understand, without over-explaining. And the conclusion does not give us an answer to the question initially posed, but summarizes the current state of world affairs in a way that invites us to do our own research, and come to our own conclusion.

Transcript

History has taught us many lessons, and we should pay attention to its signs because we might be heading towards World War III.

One way to understand today’s events is to look for clues from the past. But cherry-picking historical events to forecast the future is a risky exercise that oftentimes only reinforces our biases. So, I want to do something different. Instead of comparing historical examples with what is happening now, I will examine four major dimensions of life: the social, economic, political, and military dimensions. And I will analyze key trends within each one of those dimensions in three critical moments in history: before World War I, before World War II, and today.

So, let’s begin with the social dimension. And there are many factors that shape societies, but I want to focus on how technological innovations have produced social anxieties and destabilized societies throughout history. Before World War I, the Second Industrial Revolution was transforming life with electricity, cars, phones, mass production, and more. While many celebrated these advances, they also disrupted societies.

For instance, machines replaced workers, and new farming techniques uprooted populations from the countryside. This led to insecurity and resentment. At the same time, traditional authorities such as churches and monarchies, they were questioned at that time. And new mass movements, they emerged, such as labor unions and nationalist leagues. People were afraid that progress was shaking the very foundation of societies.

Moving a little bit ahead, in the interwar years before World War II, technology continued to affect life. The word “robot” was even coined in 1921, and it symbolizes fears of possibly machines substituting human jobs. At the same time, or a little bit later, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes warned us in 1930 of a new disease, namely technological unemployment.

During this period, we had communications revolutions that completely changed public discourse. So, these media became powerful tools for propaganda, polarizing politics, and amplifying social fears. Traditionalists at that time, they were worried that modern culture was simply eroding tradition, family, and religion.

Today, we are going through a technological revolution driven by AI, digital media, and social platforms. The internet, smartphones, and social media have transformed the way we work, communicate, and even think. Psychologists, they debate how digital life is affecting children’s development, while concerns over privacy and surveillance and AI-driven job loss continue to grow. Technologies are spreading ideas across the globe, but also they are amplifying frustrations, fears, and divisions faster than ever before.

In short, technological progress brings incredible benefits, but they also breed insecurity, resentment, and uncertainty. Historically, such anxieties have made societies more unstable and vulnerable to extreme ideologies that fuel militarism and war.

Now, let’s talk about the economics. And I want to present two perspectives on the economics. The first one is related to a common idea that economic prosperity prevents wars. And the argument goes like this. It makes no sense for a nation to go to war and destroy its own wealth. So they don’t want to go to war.

Before World War I, in 1914, Britain dominated global trade and finance. Germany was thriving industrially and expanding its exports. Both countries, they knew that there were no financial benefits that justify the enormous economic costs of going to war. However, World War I taught us a very important lesson.

Economics may explain what can be done, but politics decides what will be done. Fear, ambition, miscalculation, all overrode by even the strongest economic success, showing us that simply war and peace are not decided by economic arguments alone. We have to take into consideration political, ideological, and strategic reasons.

Okay. So, what is going on with the second perspective? And the common perspective says the following. People assume that nations, they want to be wealthy and powerful. It’s not that they don’t want that, they do, but they want something else. It’s better for them if they are wealthier or more powerful than their rivals. Right? So what it matters is the relative power. I want to be more powerful, I don’t want to be just powerful, I want to be more powerful than my enemy or my rival.

Let’s look at what happened at World War II. And in that moment, Germany and Japan, they did not see trade as mutually beneficial. Why? They were gaining less than their rivals: Britain, France, and the US, which made them vulnerable. What was their response? Searching for self-sufficiency and eventually war.

So what is going on today? There are two main ideas that we see all over. The US-China economic interdependence will prevent war. Really? I just told you what happened in World War I. Right? So, economics alone do not determine geopolitical outcomes. We have to consider political, strategic, ideological, and many other factors.

When we think of what is going on after or what happened after the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at that moment, states realized that it’s too risky to be really dependent on your rival. So, as nations reassess today their economic dependencies, they are all moving towards one thing, or actually two: self-sufficiency and economic nationalism, just like before World War II.

History reminds us that wars are not only caused by economic situations, but we have to take into consideration political factors and relative power.

All right. So, let’s go to the political dimension. Here, I want to talk about polarization. And polarization not only divides societies, but ultimately it might destroy the political order. Polarization comes in many forms: divided media, political battles, legislative deadlocks, contested elections, and its worst form, political violence. And that’s when armed groups emerge because they don’t trust institutions to resolve the disputes of society.

What we have in World War I, before that actually, in the Balkans, there’s a deep polarization, and many nationalist movements clashing against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And that led to the Serbian group, the secret Serbian group Black Hand, to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, which wasn’t an isolated event. It was the result of years of political violence in a fractured society that triggered World War I.

Now, what do we have before World War II? The same situation. Germany. The Weimar Republic was struggling with escalating polarization, and violence became common. Assassinations of key political figures, such as the Finance Minister in 1921 and the Foreign Minister in 1922, they demonstrated this. Soon, at that time, all political factions from the right, the center, and the left, they had their own militias. And obviously, this brought instability, and we know the rise of authoritarianism and World War II.

What do we have today? Very interesting and scary in some ways. January 6, 2021, the attack on the US Capitol. Some Trump supporters contested the result of the election. That is a clear example where polarization became violent. More recently, several assassination attempts against President Trump. Polarization and violence in the United States is coming from all sides, but this is not only the US.

Let’s look at Germany. There’s a deep surge or a big surge in political violence in Germany. Over the last five years, more than 10,000 attacks on politicians, while the far-right supporters of AfD have committed a lot of attacks against other politicians. The politicians from AfD themselves, they are frequent targets for this political violence. As you can see, the signs are really big. And when we analyze what history shows us, we realize that once armed groups emerge, compromise becomes impossible and conflict inevitable. If polarization nowadays has reached this level, society or the political order is on the brink of collapse.

Now, let’s go to the final dimension, the military dimension. And here I want to focus on alliances because they are key to understanding how conflicts become worldwide disasters. Wars, or world wars, they don’t start as global wars. They begin as regional wars. And then a regional problem becomes this big problem because of the alliances. Let’s take a look at World War I before that. We had a dispute between Austria and Serbia, and because of the alliance, it escalated to become a European war. And once Britain joined, it became a global war.

The same thing happened in World War II. We had three regional conflicts, separated conflicts, initiated by three different countries. Germany won a hegemony in Europe, Italy sought an empire in the Mediterranean and Africa, and Japan wanted to control China and Asia-Pacific. World War II only became a world war when the United States entered the war after the Pearl Harbor attack.

So, how is this related to today? We already have two regional wars: Russia in Ukraine and Iran with its proxy’s wars in the Middle East. And the third one is taking shape as China aims to take Taiwan. Maybe in that third theater, we’re going to see more countries joining. And then, as in World War II, we’re going to have three regional conflicts that become a global war.

There’s another important aspect of alliances, which is the level of integration, how united they really are. This is interesting. When we look at the Axis powers of the 1930s—Germany, Italy, and Japan—they were not allied. Really, actually, they were on opposite sides. When we look at the crisis in Austria in 1934 and in Ethiopia in 1935, Italy was on one side and Germany was on the other. When we look at who was helping China against Japan until late 1938, that was Germany.

And then, comparing this to today, we have a new axis being formed: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran today. They are all united, like who sends ammunitions, weapons, and even soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine? North Korea. Who gives food and energy to North Korea? China. Who buys Iran’s sanctioned oil? China. Who buys Russia’s gas? China. And China supplies Russia with electronic equipment to keep its war.

As you can see, the axis of today, which I call the axis of dictatorships, they are really united, much more than the axis of the thirties. And on the other hand, we look at the opposing alliance, which is what? NATO and the democracies, they are falling apart, and they’re breaking, and they are divided.

History tells us that alliances are very important. If we have the aggressors’ alliance growing stronger and the opposing alliance becoming divided and weak, the incentives for the aggressors to strike, they’re really big. I’m not here talking about any inevitable destiny, but I’m looking for historical patterns that help us connect the dots. And with that, we might not repeat the mistakes of the past.

And to end, I want to remind you of the famous aphorism: “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Thank you.

Some final thoughts…

You may have come to your own conclusion regarding Professor HOC’s talk, but as I see it, it’s not a prophecy of doom but a call to action. By understanding the historical patterns that have led to past conflicts, we can be more vigilant in how we address the challenges of our time. It is a reminder that peace is not a given, but something that must be actively pursued and protected. For each of us, this means staying informed, engaging in civil discourse, and holding world leaders accountable for their actions on the global stage.

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The Superpower of Comic Con – Natalie Kaczorowski at TEDxSanDiego 2016

July 12, 2025/in Audience, Comedy, Community, Identity, TEDx/by Mark Lovett

Comic Con is like a multi-day thrill ride, more carnival than convention, packed with eccentric attire, celebrities, and all things pop-culture. For years, onlookers have viewed these masters of the geek universe with a sense of confusion and comic relief.

That’s about to change, as Natalie Kaczorowski, aka Comic Connie, looks behind the mask of Comic Con to explain the hype, the craziness, and the exceptional superpower of Comic Con. Strap in for the thrill-ride of your life, as things are about to get nerdy.

“We are who we choose to be. So choose.”

Back in the day, when I was the organizer of TEDxSanDiego, I would start lining up speakers 6 months ahead of time. The theme for 2016 was The Age of Magic. One aspect of this theme addressed the incredible technology that was being developed and deployed around the world in ways that could change society.

But another way to look at this theme was through the lens of human identity and the human imagination. That got me thinking about Comic-Con, the world-famous conference held annually in San Diego. And as luck would have it, I knew someone who approached the yearly convention with an unbridled passion.

The brilliance in Natalie’s talk comes from her ability to weave her personal story of finding her identity and her tribe to the broader story of how everyone is just playing a role in life, whether they recognize it or not.

Notice how she captures the audience’s attention and has them laughing — first by referring to the superhero outfit she’s wearing on stage, and seconds later, to the outfit she’s wearing in a photo taken at Comic Con.

When I was a kid, I always had a flair for the dramatic. Turns out I had a condition called being an insufferable pain in the ass.

She then takes us from the woman she is on stage that day, to the young girl she was growing up and the central topic of how we all struggle to find our identity. In her case, that journey was through the world of comic book heroes.

Comic-Con is really an invitation to celebrate self-expression.

And when she introduces the topic of cosplay, it’s an opportunity to connect to the audience on the topic of self-expression, and thus, personal identity.

I want to live in a world where we don’t have to have an identity struggle or change or hide our appearance to hide from who we really want to be.

As you follow Natalie’s journey of self-expression, connecting with her tribe, and becoming her most invincible self, reflect upon your own path and the struggles you’ve had to simply be yourself.

If you’re in the process of writing a personal story of your own, note how Natalie blends various story blocks in order to create a narrative tapestry that’s founded in her own experiences, but reaches out the audience with a universal message.

Transcript

I wish I could wear this every day.
No, I meant this.
That’s me, by the way.

Sounds like a funny request, but this photo actually reminds me of this photo. Which is also me. Now, I know the first thing that comes to mind when you see this photo is, obviously, future TEDx speaker. But if you look deeper, you’ll see there’s a similarity between these two photos.

This is me at my most amazing. And this is me at my most invincible. And in both photos, I am my most fearless. I didn’t realize that until I experienced the superpower of Comic-Con for the first time.

Society doesn’t tell us that we can dress in superhero costumes in everyday life. We need to get a real job, get a real degree, start a real family. We are supposed to be normal. We struggle, though, with identity our entire lives. It’s a common theme in superhero stories, too. Peter Parker struggles with the fact that he’s Spider-Man. Clark Kent changes his appearance to hide the fact that he’s Superman. Bruce Wayne doesn’t feel free until he becomes Batman.

When I was a kid, I always had a flair for the dramatic. Turns out I had a condition called being an insufferable pain in the ass. I wasn’t raised by my real parents, so I imagined my journey through life in the context of Superman. I always felt like the world was on the verge of ending, so I felt like a vampire slayer. All that drama actually made things more clear. It was good versus evil, right and wrong, black and white. With great power comes great responsibility.

Somewhere along the line, I quit looking at the world that way. We reach an age where we stop believing that we’re capable of saving the world or in magical lands where anything is possible. Which is why Comic-Con is such an enigma. I get it. Not everyone understands Comic-Con. First of all, you don’t simply just go there! It’s really hard to get tickets! Tickets to Comic-Con aren’t really bought so much as you win the privilege of paying for a ticket.

During open registration, badges sell out in less than an hour in the most stressful, indigestion-inducing process in history. Ask anyone that’s been through this, it’s the joy of being selected for Hogwarts matched with the sheer terror of surviving the Hunger Games.

I get asked all the time, why go through all that trouble? Or more commonly, you pay so much money and get dressed up and sit in some theater to watch a bunch of people talk. It’s gonna come out on YouTube. I mean, you guys get it, right? So annoying. Let it sink in.

Truth is, millions of people try to go to Comic-Con. It has something for everyone. It ranges from well-known comics and mainstream movies and television, to also include video games, anime, science, technology, everything in between. It’s the one place where the line to the men’s room can consist of Reed Richards, Han Solo, Captain Picard, someone cosplaying astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the actual Neil deGrasse Tyson.

You might have heard that term cosplay before. It’s a big part of Comic-Con. Cosplay is the art of dressing up. And like any classic art, it revolves around self-expression. Celebrities even dress up to go to Comic-Con for the same reason everyone else does: because you can be whoever you want to be. Even if you just want to dress and blend in with the Stormtroopers.

Comic-Con is really an invitation to celebrate self-expression. I’m going to tell you an origin story about how my two identities became one. Natalie grew up in a small town. She didn’t win any high school awards. But if there was a trophy for most contributed screencaps of the Dharma logos on the Lost Wikipedia page, she would have won it. She found a small tribe of people that would put up with her crazy teen antics, even embrace her for it. She thought that familial bond she had was isolated to her hometown until she went to Comic-Con.

Now, here’s a place full of hundreds of thousands of people that not only got it, but celebrated it. It’s a utopia, a hub of energy, full of lights and sounds and culture. Comic-Con is like a parade, Mardi Gras, and Times Square, all at the same time. It’s Nerd Mecca. Of course I’d want to live there. I mean, she, she would want to live there.

So, Natalie moved to San Diego. And every year when Comic-Con came to town, it was like homecoming. But on the last day of Comic-Con, she gets this sinking feeling in her chest. She felt worse after Comic-Con. She didn’t know why. She did all the normal things: got a job, got a degree, gotten married. Something was missing that compelled her to change. So she began to dismantle all of the beautiful things she had, one by one, until she had none of those things.

A friend of ours came up with an idea about how to best utilize her talents. We called it Comic-Con-nie. All that was needed was a camera, her passion for Comic-Con, and to act like a super nerd. Oh, and she had to wear the costume. That changed everything. Wearing that costume, playing that part, it allowed her to unlock her passion for talking to people about the characters and the stories that excited her.

And when she ran out of different costumes to wear, she started wearing nerdy t-shirts, even off-camera. And then something amazing happened. People from diverse backgrounds would recognize those symbols. They’d strike up conversations she never saw coming. Sometimes it’s, “I love your shirt!”

Seeing that symbol gives them this freedom in identifying that we are members of the same tribe. That was my radioactive spider bite. That’s when who I was trying to be and who I was afraid of being finally came together. That’s when I realized, this is who I’m supposed to be. Comic-Con connects individuals with their tribe. But fandom is the connection that the tribe has with characters which represent an ideal that we admire.

It could come in the form of power, like Superman’s abilities. Iron Man’s financial strength. Sherlock Holmes’ superior intellect. Or maybe, maybe we just need courage. Like Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, or Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, who in the face of insurmountable odds still have the courage to fight. And the best part? People are lining up to speak with Charles Xavier.

I understand there’s a lot of pushback with this idea of dressing up in large groups. For some reason, people find it strange to wear Vulcan ears to match your Starfleet uniform. But when you spend over $300 on an authentic jersey and paint your face in your team’s colors, I have news for you. You are a nerd! Nerd! We do this, though, for love of the story. It’s united humans together for thousands of years.

Maybe it’s a group of people sitting in an auditorium or watching online randomly chosen members of society tell their stories. You can nerd out about anything. I’ve stood in line overnight to watch a panel for a TV show called Supernatural. Thank you. In 2016, Supernatural broke a record by entering its 12th season. I’m not still watching to see which of the two main characters is going to get punched in the face by a ghost this week. I stand in line to meet other fans. The show speaks to us because it teaches us that home isn’t necessarily where you came from. Family doesn’t end with blood. We are stronger together than we are apart.

Comic-Con is a ritual that celebrates this transformation. For four days out of the year, you can be whoever you want to be instead of who you’re supposed to be. Define yourself. That’s the superpower of Comic-Con. Comic-Con was the catalyst for my own transformation. Natalie and Comic-Con-nie have merged into me. To become my most amazing, my most invincible. And they’ve led me to this stage so I can become my most fearless.

I want to live in a world where we don’t have to have an identity struggle or change or hide our appearance to hide from who we really want to be. What if being a superhero in everyday life was normal? You dress for the job you want. And dressing the part and playing the part means being the part. Then the real question is, who are you cosplaying as this year?

We are who we choose to be. So choose.

Thank you.

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