Let me tell you a story!
- waynefarran
- Nov 23, 2015
- 2 min read
Ok, time to let you in on one of my Sociology 101tricks.
For any of you that know me well, especially a handful of my closest friends.
If I started off talking by saying. "Let me tell you a story" and then proceeded on talking about anything in general; prior to starting the second sentence you would hear one or several of my friends have a little giggle and or see them smiling as someone said, "here we go, one of Wayne’s stories".
Truth is, this is no accident, nor is it me rolling out a "same old cliché".
It's me priming you to listen intently, or at least more carefully. For whatever reason we as people are more willing to listen to a story carefully, give our undivided attention and or focus on the words being said after this prefacing statement of "let me tell you a story".
Perhaps it's imprinted into us at an early stage as a child. As children we all remember being told stories or being read to out of our favourite books do we not? It's that early stage in our life that I believe has made us more susceptible to listening carefully when being told a story.
Now in saying this I’m not talking about then following my statement up with a "once upon a time" line; far from it. Nor for that matter do I preface the line with a follow up of fiction.
I use this line to prime my listeners; to get them ready for something that I am about to say; something that I feel is important and that they need to take in.
Here is an example:
So in a general conversation with someone talking about gardening and lawn care, i then say;
"John, let me tell you a story.
Typically based on my prior years’ experience, weeding and feeding my buffalo lawn, you really need to get rid of all of your weeds from the lawn, at least two weeks prior to feeding the lawn. Otherwise you’re just feeding the weeds as well."
I have used the "let me tell you a story" to prime you so that you pay attention to what I say, be it a small paragraph or several minutes.
Next time you’re watching the news, see if you spot any prominent people use this line; I bet now that I have unveiled this to you, you will start to see this being used in real life.
If you want to go a step further, try it out for yourself. Next time you’re with friends and you're involved in general conversation; watch their body language how they interact in general conversation. Then as you start to talk; introduce the "let me tell you a story" I bet you will see that they pay more attention as you talk.
So, is this about being deceptive? No, absolutely not, it's about hopefully getting someone’s undivided attention, or at least getting them to pay more attention to you when you have something important to say.
Wayne~
