Skip La Cour’s BodyBlog

Telling entertaining stories to friends, family, and business associates is a great way for you to become more interesting person. Your ability to share stories with others is also a great way to “break the ice” in any new social setting.

Commit to learning just three (3) interesting stories this month. That’s all you really need. You don’t need an original story for every new person or new group of people. Don’t put pressure on yourself to be that creative. Originality isn’t important.

The NBC television network used a slogan in a commercial that promoted their rerun season. That commercial professed “If you haven’t seen it—then it’s new to you!” As long as the people you are telling the story to haven’t heard it before—it’s original.

These stories can be from your own life experiences or stories that you’ve heard from other people. It really doesn’t matter where they come from as long as they’re interesting. Every time you hear or read a good story, write it down.

Practice your story-telling skills. Just like everything else in life, you’ll get better at telling stories the more you practice. Each time you tell a story, practice telling it with more facial animation and body language. Embellish the story with more vivid and expressive words. Learn how to add more entertainment value each and every time you tell it.         

Knowing every single one of the benefits and rewards (material and emotional) that await you after especially challenging goals are completed will help you keep working toward achieving them. Identifying as many of these benefits and rewards as possible will keep you focused on the matter at hand.

Take the time to write them down. Get in the habit of reviewing this list on a daily basis. It’s important that you review this list every day—even when things are going well for you. Don’t wait do so only during the challenging times.

No matter how difficult your journey may seem at times, you must rely on your own mental and emotional strength to pull yourself through.

It would be nice to always have someone around who is always available to listen to problems, anticipate your needs, and support you when things aren’t going well, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, people will not always be there for you because they must deal with their own challenges,

Life is a self-made proposition. Many people unfairly expect someone else in their life to give them emotional support or motivational lifts every time they are down. They get disappointed when others aren’t there for them. These unfair expectations of others can destroy relationships.

Don’t put the pressure on other people when problems come up in your own life. Put the pressure on yourself—right where it belongs. Taking the pressure head on may be just what you need to overcome your challenges. Heck, who knows? Maybe the other people in your life think that YOU should be there for THEM when you are wallowing with disappointment.

Learn to become self-reliant. Expect to get through the tough times yourself–and be thankful for those times when someone else is able to help you out. 

A person will set his or her goals based on what he believes about him or herself.