Will Make You
I have compiled a list of movies that will bring you to tears, make you question your actions and life. These are the movies I can't help but let myself well up over. Refine See titles to watch instantly, titles you. You grabbed your car keys(if you cant drive yet, pretend) and hopped to your car, heading for a Wawa with a bathroom. Halfway there, the immense pain in your bladder was causing you to groan, yet you couldn't relieve yourself yet. You can make a guided meditation (you might try this nine-minute one) part of your morning routine or integrate it into a lunch break or the end of your work day. This Video Will Make You Forget Your Name.LAST VID. for watching the optical illusion video:)My Social Media:https://. Education, Formal, Formal Education, Fortune, Living, Make, Self-Education, Will, You Quotes to Explore Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
'Those who tell the stories rule the world.'
--Hopi American Indian proverb
As a business leader, you’re currently taking the toughest leadership test. How can you maintain collaboration, communication, and trust in your organization, and how can you motivate and inspire people regardless of whether they’re in the office or the virtual meeting room? How can you keep your customers in love with your products/services in a world that’s rapidly changing due to a global pandemic? And how can you implement change initiatives, get stakeholders’ buy-in, and keep your organization thriving regardless of what life or governments throw at you?
Through stories.
The power of stories can help you connect, motivate, inspire and persuade. Human beings have been hardwired for stories. We have an instinct, it would seem, for stories. This theory has actually been backed by science.
Modern scientific research has now concluded that the human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor. Stories were how our early ancestors navigated the dangerous world around them. Through stories, we evolved and thrived. While our species has changed quite a bit over the last several hundred thousand years, one thing hasn’t really changed: our absolute need and desire for stories.
Related: The 5 Elements of Storytelling Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know
A common misconception is that storytelling is only for big, grand, emotional stories like the ones you read in books or see in movies and Ted Talks… when, in fact, stories:
✓ Sell products
✓ Help leaders inspire and connect with their teams
✓ Give meaning to boring statistics and facts
✓ Make meetings more engaging
✓ Inspire buyers to take action
✓ Rally people around a common cause
… and much more.
Consider these statistics:
- 79% of people scan the web instead of reading word by word.
- Professionals spend 51% of their time managing information instead of acting on it.
- Every 60 seconds, 700,000 Google searches are performed, 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, and 168 million emails are sent.
- Blog posts with videos are linked to 3X more than text-only posts.
What do all of these statistics have in common? They point to the fact that people are looking for specific information every day, and yet many people aren’t engaging or interacting with the information at their disposal.
Your teams, your partners, your investors and customers all need to engage and interact with you for your business to thrive. Storytelling is how you can connect with all of these people in a meaningful way. And who better to learn storytelling from than Hollywood?
Related: Storytelling Can Help Anyone Connect With Your Brand
Hooray for Hollywood
The film industry makes over one billion dollars each year in the United States alone. It makes 50 billion worldwide. What is behind these staggering figures? Two things:
- Our need for stories, which, as you saw, has been scientifically proven.
- A storytelling formula that has been proven to work over and over again.
Movies captivate audiences because they make us feel so much. We laugh, cry, shriek, yell. We forget our own lives for two hours and go on a journey with the movie’s hero.
This is the power of storytelling.
The people who make these movies have some tricks up their sleeves. They know exactly how to craft these stories to get a reaction, whatever reaction they want, out of us.
Here are six storytelling elements Hollywood uses, and you can, too. Inspire and take your team and customers on a journey with you.
1. Structure
If you pay more attention to the movies you watch, you’ll begin to recognize the structure of the stories being told. Structure is critical to good storytelling. Without it, the movie can feel a bit loosey-goosey and avant-garde, and the audience can become confused and bored.
All good stories have a beginning, middle and end. All good stories also have a hero who goes on a journey and is transformed by it. How can you use this trick in your business to connect with and inspire others?
Let’s say you were invited to speak at an industry event. You knew that at this event were prospective investors, and you really wanted to convince them to invest in your business. You might decide to tell the story of how and why you started your company. Take them on a journey, and be sure to give your story a solid beginning, middle and end.
If you do a good job telling your story, your audience will have connected emotionally with it, and you will have inspired those investors to set up a meeting with you.
2. Make people feel something
In human nature, an emotional investment often leads to financial investment. Whether through an article, blog post, newsletter or email campaign, if you can make your audience (prospects) feel something, you have a much better chance of making an actual connection, and eventually, a customer for life.
Stop thinking about how great your features are and start focusing on the benefits they offer your customers. For example, maybe you sell storage space. No one really cares that you offer 12 x 8 temperature-controlled spaces. What they care about is that their most prized possessions, like their mother’s wedding dress, will be safe until they move into their new home. Pushing people’s emotional buttons is one of the most important storytelling skills. And you’ll find you can often command higher prices for your products and services than your competitors simply because your customers have emotionally invested themselves in your brand.
Related: How to Use Storytelling to Sell Your Brand and Vision
3. Get to the point
While a movie may technically be an hour and a half long, the screenwriter knows they only have a few minutes to hook the audience and keep them interested. Otherwise, those people will find something else to watch.
This is a great thing to remember in your business meetings. No one loves a meeting, especially these days with meetings now taking place over the Internet. Most of us are suffering from Zoom burnout.
Keep this in mind and do what Hollywood screenwriters do: Hook your audience. You also only have a few minutes because, though your audience is forced to continue sitting there, they can easily mentally check out.
So do something to engage your team members right off the bat. This could be telling a joke. Asking how everyone’s weekend was. Sharing a piece of good news about your organization. Something to grab their attention so you can keep it through the duration of the meeting.
4. Use language everyone understands
Why does a movie like Toy Story speak to so many people of all ages? Because it tells a powerful story in a simple way. Avoid using industry jargon in your marketing or presentations. Don’t try too hard to come off as an expert. Instead, focus on how you can share your ideas and vision. Usually, that will be via simple language that everyone understands.
5. Be relatable
There’s a difference between sharing information with your staff and telling a story. Content, data or information is, in and of itself, not something we can easily relate to as human beings. Remember, the science now says our brain is better at processing stories instead of processing logic.
If you want your employees and customers to relate to you, then be a relatable leader. This means letting your guard down and being human. Share more of your own personal stories and emotions with others, and they will feel more comfortable and willing to connect with you.
6. Great movies are the result of passionate people
Do you have any idea how long it takes for a movie to get made? From idea to opening weekend, it can take years! Writers, directors and producers have to be passionate about the films they are making because the process is often frustrating and tedious.
How do you rekindle your own passion and remember your why? Let’s face it, burn out is real. It’s hard starting a business and keeping it going for years. It’s also incredibly challenging leading teams. It’s no wonder so many business leaders get to a point where they forget why they even started their business in the first place.
You used your passion to get your business off the ground, don’t forget to bring that passion to your marketing and leadership.
Final thoughts
Leaders aren’t people who tell others what to do. Great leaders are people that inspire others to their own greatness. Great leaders don’t focus on sales so much as they do genuinely connecting with others. These types of leaders are the ones we want to follow, support and buy from.
How does someone become off-the-charts successful? Some say it’s luck. Others say it’s hustle. The truth is, success only comes with a combination of both-, as well as a few other ingredients.
Defining success can be tricky because it’s so subjective. Some people want to make a million dollars a year. Others want to make a good living and have three weeks of paid vacation time a year so they can travel. Then there are those with the desire to build something of their own, and still others who want to find ways to make money passively so they can spend more time on their hobbies.
Whatever your definition of success, these 11 skills can help you achieve it faster.
1. Stop replaying negative thoughts in your mind.
A recent article in The New Yorker reveals that when we remember the past, we do not remember it in the way we think we do. The images that come to mind aren’t like old films being replayed in our heads. In fact, every time we remember something, the memory changes based on the way we remember it.
The more you replay negative thoughts in your mind, the more you are practicing feeling that emotion--which means the more you believe it. Soon you’ll start to believe you aren’t good enough or talented enough, and you’ll never become successful.
Will Make You Love
The key is to recall memories or mistakes you’ve made in the past, and see them through a lens of learning. Reframe them as moments of growth.
Related: 11 Mindsets Learned in Prison Made Me Mentally Unstoppable
2. Construct a positive environment for yourself.
So much of success depends on our environment. Rarely do we give this enough credit. Where you work and where you spend the majority of your time has a huge impact on what you accomplish and how you feel about it. The right environment will help you feel more engaged in and enthusiastic about your work. A negative environment will suck the joy and inspiration out of you.
The same goes for your home, and perhaps even more so because home is where you go to recharge your batteries at the end of the day. Find ways of making your home feel like the retreat it should be. For example, get a little feng shui in your life by clearing the clutter and creating an environment in which you can truly relax and feel comfortable.
3. Get clear on your why.
As Simon Sinek would say, “Start with Why.” You have to know why you want to do something in order to succeed over the long term. Sometimes the why isn’t immediately obvious, and you have to follow your curiosity in order to find it. That’s okay. But if you’re merely following the money, or are chasing validation or the idea of “being seen as successful,” you’ll never find your why. Those motives simply aren’t sustainable enough.
Will Make You Jump Jump
Your why is your inspiration and your bigger purpose. It’s what drives you, even when everything seems to be falling apart. Sinek tell us that “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Identifying your why is key to knowing how to hook your audience or would-be clients and customers.
It takes time to find your why in everything you do. But start looking, and soon it will make itself known.
Related: Why Discovering Your 'Why' Is the No. 1 Business Move
4. Listen to your gut, but double-check with your mind.
Most of the time we know the right answer long before our logical mind does. We can just feel it. That doesn’t mean you should make decisions based solely on your emotions. What it does mean, however, is that you should also give that emotional part of you a say in the matter.
As it turns out, your rational mind also plays into your gut instinct. Your intuition is built on your firsthand experiences. It’s your brain’s ability to project how something will play out based on past experiences and practices.
The best thing you can do is to trust your gut--but then double-check with your logical mind. Run the numbers. Play devil’s advocate. Make sure you’re being rational, but still let intuition drive decisions.
5. Visualize your success.
Visualization principles have been proven to work in everything from professional sports to business and beyond. Those at the top of their professions have long been using this technique to help them perform their best. The more clearly you can picture doing something in your mind, the easier it will be to pick up a new skill or instill a new habit.
Visualizing yourself living the life you desire and doing the things you want to be doing is a key to your overall life journey and success. That’s not to say you should spend all your time sitting at home hoping and wishing. It just means you need to hold your vision firmly in your mind’s eye and then go for it!
Related: The Extraordinary Power of Visualizing Success
6. Practice more than you preach.
Anyone can talk about success. What’s hard is putting your nose to the grindstone day after day. In order to become successful, you’ll need to master skills worthy of that title in the first place. And you also need to fundamentally believe in what you’re doing.
You need to know your purpose and follow through on your core beliefs and values. After all, nothing will destroy your credibility like a lack of connection between what you say and what you do.
Will Make You Violin
So say what you’re going to do, follow through with it and, above all, believe it. Keep walking the walk and you’ll achieve your goals while inspiring others to do the same.
7. Communicate effectively.
Soft skills are often the biggest differentiators between those perennially aspiring to be successful and those who achieve success.
Effective communication is a skill. It’s something that takes practice, and requires that you invest heavily in not only understanding others, but also yourself. You have to be the master of your own ship before you can instruct others on how they should be sailing.
Recognize when you get frustrated, and know how to manage your negative emotions. At the same time, it’s important to understand when it’s appropriate to give constructive feedback and when it’s best to save words for later. Communication is an art, and it takes time to learn how to perform well.
Related: 5 Ways to Effectively Communicate With Employees
8. Commit to your goals.
Once you make a commitment to yourself, it’s on you to follow through to the end.
There is a difference between being involved in something and being wholly committed to making it happen. To succeed, you must fully invest yourself in your goals and be determined to see them through. Consider this: if you don’t want to commit to your dreams, someone else will. And nothing is more agonizing than watching someone else achieve your dream.
It may take years to fully learn how to commit to something. But learning to commit is key because it is the one skill most easily transferred from goal to goal. If you can prove to yourself that you can be persistent in one domain, chances are that you can be persistent in any area of your choosing.
But you have to do it once, and really see it through to the end, in order to fully understand what it means to commit and accomplish a goal.
9. Never stop optimizing.
Part of the “success process” is continuing to optimize and learning to make the best use of your resources over time. As soon as you stop trying to improve, you’re no longer working toward success. At best, you will remain stagnant.
The process of developing, constructing and reconstructing is part of a journey that never ends. It’s a skill to be able to constantly look for ways to improve. But just like anything else, the more you practice it, the better you’ll get. Keep testing new strategies and collaborating on different methodologies. Pioneers are those who push the boundaries and carve their own path in life.
Related: 3 Ways to Drive Continual Improvement
10. Ask questions, constantly.
You should never stop learning. Ever.
We learn by asking questions, not telling people the answers we think we know. Therefore, the more we question, the better answers we get.
Part of becoming successful is taking the time to ask others for guidance. Those people are usually those older than you who have already achieved what you’re looking to accomplish. There is so much value in asking questions. For starters, asking questions makes your brain more open to forming new patterns and considering different possibilities.
The deeper your questions, the wiser you will become. And in the process, you will learn to understand yourself better. That self-knowledge will ultimately give you a sense of peace and happiness.
11. End each day in reflection.
It’s easy to get stuck on the treadmill of life, running from one thing to the next without considering how everything you do is interconnected. But if you want to have sustained success, you need to make time to reflect at the end of each day.
Setting aside even five minutes to consider what went well and what didn’t will give you an awareness of the issues and flaws that you need to address. Reflection, whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, is a key part of continuing to improve and refine over time.
Without reflection, you might as well have blinders on. Take a step back. See the bigger picture. That will allow you to make more astute decisions about where you want to go.