If you’ve been subscribed to Honestly Human for a while you probably like engaging with personal stories. I’ve shared more than one-hundred and thirty original stories so far in this publication. Many of you would argue with me if I suggested that you have just as many stories to tell. Most people would like to be more confident storytellers, but they allow that wish to go unfulfilled, because they don’t believe they have any good stories to share.
But that’s never true.
I’ve seen it over and over again in story coaching, individuals who are convinced they have no stories to tell wind up being the most satisfying providers of them.
In actuality, this is due to a common cultural infection, induced by mass media, that I call “story blindness.” Story blindness is a damaged inner connection to the richness of our own past. It sets in when we consume too many manufactured stories of celebrities, sports heroes, and media darlings.
It’s actually not so hard to restore an appreciation for your own lived experience and to share it.
Here’s how I do it.
I’m usually on the lookout during the week for personal memories that might make for an interesting experience to share.
By “interesting,” I mean mostly for me.
When it comes to storytelling, personal curiosity about significant life memories is my main entry point. I need to feel drawn to explore an event in my past. When that fundamental spark of interest is present, it drives inquiry into the event, and the inquisitiveness does all the work. I never make myself write about something that doesn’t glow with that inherent charge.
The secret to succeeding with this approach is to develop an inventory of memories to choose from.
As part of my writing practice, I take some time each week to browse through my story inventory tool, All My Stories.
I created the app last year so I could consolidate life memories and easily refer to them when I’m headed into a writing project, like my weekly newsletter, or a speaking engagement. But you don’t need an app to do this. You can just start with a written list.
The story that jumped out while reviewing my list this week happened a few years out of high school. I added it to my story queue in the app, and now I’m coming back to give it my focus.
My added stories are automatically organized chronologically here, with tags applied to find them by topic if needed. So I scroll through the hundreds of stories I have in my inventory to this time period in my early twenties to this story about a moment I dreaded.
The story is, “First time on stage on Barnum tour.”
If I add how old I was, the app automatically calculates the date. If I remember the date, the app calculates my age.
In this case, it was August 1982. I was 21 years old.
Next, I click on the story line to go into the detail I’d previously recorded there when I remembered the event.
Whenever a memory like this pops into my mind, I record it here in the app. For each new entry I write a title that summarizes the experience and fill in the template I’ve created for story development.
The template uses my 4P model to identify the key elements of the story.
Problem
People
Place
Perspective
I highly recommend using this simple system for sharing any story. If you include all four elements you’ll dramatically improve your narrative.
I’m just missing one structural element that I personally like to add from the beginning. A photo. A good visual helps me to remember that I’ll be describing a scene and a specific moment for my audience. That’s the “place” element.
I need to paint the picture of where I was, who was with me, and what it looked like.
Remembering that I still have an old Barnum program in storage from that tour in 1982, I pull out the grainy brochure from a dusty file box and take a picture of the center spread featuring my cast mates. The photo captures the scene I want to convey. I place it at the top of my essay.
I’m now ready to dive into this memory, the story of the first time I appeared onstage with the Barnum musical.
There are a million details associated with this theater tour, how I got the job, the seventy cities we traveled to in nine months of performances. It would be easy to overwhelm my reader with backstory.
Here’s a big pro tip.
If you want to improve your storytelling, skip the backstory and go right for the main action.
So, that’s what I’m looking for. An opening problem that gets us right into the pivotal moment of my experience. And that’s not just for my audience. The opening lines of my story are critical to capturing and driving my own interest in telling it. Starting with backstory is a sure way to cut my motivation and momentum off at the knees. I want to get right into a high point of tension. What happened that night that was most dynamic and challenging?
What was the first P? The problem?
This is where I began.
My First Time On Stage as a Professional Actor
It did not go as planned
“Rick. Malcolm hurt his ankle, you’re on.”
Holy shit.
This was not supposed to be happening.
The stage manager had just popped his head into my dressing room to drop this bomb into my lap, delivering the unexpected news as casually as a maitre d’ informing me that my table was now ready for dinner.
But I was being asked without warning to appear onstage for the first time as a professional actor in a Broadway touring show, playing a part that I had not yet memorized.
Actors have nightmares about precisely this scenario: getting pushed onstage when you can’t remember your lines. I’ve had plenty of my own anxiety dreams in that vein, but I was now facing the real thing.
This was the touring company of a Broadway show about the life of P.T. Barnum that was called . . . Barnum. It was the first show of our seventy-city tour, opening in Columbus, Ohio at the Palace Theater.
Getting the job had been a million-to-one long shot that involved a breathless phone call from a friend, the overnight sale of my worldly possessions, the cancellation of all my work, the sub-letting of my apartment, a flight from Arkansas to New York city that got delayed so I missed the audition, my friend begging the director to give me another chance, and me finally landing the role of “swing” for the tour.
You’re probably wondering what the heck a swing is.
The Barnum show was unique, because the entire story of Barnum’s life was told through musical numbers that were staged in circus form.
The swing roles for this show were very demanding. I was understudying seven men and my swing partner, Carol, was covering five women. Each of these roles involved two stage hours of intricate choreography, musical numbers and songs, dialogue, circus props, and the display of multiple circus skills; juggling, trapeze, acrobatics, tightrope walking, teeterboard, plate spinning, and unicycling. Each performer hired for the tour—in addition to being able to sing, dance, and act—was a specialist in one of these circus skills.
The swing had to have competency in all of these talents to cover any cast member at a moment’s notice.
And that’s just what I got.
I was standing in the dressing room practicing my ring juggling (because I sucked at it) and knew I might be called upon to perform it onstage one day. I’d previously been told that I’d likely have weeks before I’d have to go on. We’d barely had a week of rehearsals in New York before hitting the road. The idea was for me to study my notes, watch the show multiple times in the early stages of the tour, and get my confidence up before being thrown into the deep water. Now here I was, 79 minutes into the first performance, and I was on. Already in costume and make-up, I grabbed my waist sash, and headed stage left.
“No . . . stage right,” the tour manager gently corrected me as I sprinted out the door, but then spun on my heels and crossed backstage behind the scrim to the other side.
I stood, stage right, frozen, trying to remember what Malcolm did, when, and where I should go next.
Fortunately a group of my fellow cast mates gathered up behind me to parade onstage for the next scene and I just went with them.
My brain raced.
Where should I stand? What were we doing?
Oh! Singing and dancing! Yes. I remembered the number now.
Mid-song I started to shuffle left and I heard a voice behind me whisper, “Follow me.” Gordon Weiss (or Gordy as we called him) cheated his usual positioning slightly ahead of me so I could copy the choreography, and him, before we cut back behind another line of dancers. Gordie was a constant and ultimate joker, never serious, always messing with somebody’s head. But he dropped that whole persona in a moment when I needed a life preserver. I rode his coattails to the next scene.
Now what? More brain freeze.
Someone’s hand made contact with my lower back, nudging me center stage, then turning me to face another cast member. Juggling clubs appeared in my hands and I was suddenly passing them with a partner.
We’d practiced all this many times. I knew what to do once I was in place. It was the transitions that were stumping me. But in the moments where I was lost—someone would whisper, lean, or guide me to the next spot.
My past theater experience helped me qualify for the role, but mostly it was my athletic background that got me there. Not every person could competently cover eight circus specialties while singing and dancing onstage.
In my previous sports life I excelled at gymnastics, diving, cross-country, the high jump, and cycling. But the first time I got a chance to play on a basketball team in junior high I was taken off the floor three minutes into the game because I couldn’t sync with the team.
All the sports I excelled at were individual efforts. Team play scrambled my sense of control.
Nine months on the road with this cast of professional actors—generous, talented, and kind cast mates—would change that. I had to rely on them from the beginning and work with them to the end. This was my first experience of making my way through the show by surrendering to the help and direction of my cast mates. It was getting me through my maiden Broadway voyage.
But then I remembered what was coming in the finale.
The last big musical number was a circus extravaganza with all the stops pulled out. The band we traveled with would hit full volume, “Barnum” himself would be lit center stage, and all around him the cast would belt out the final number, weaving in and out in a visual feast of festooned costume and coordinated patterns, with most of the props we’d hauled on tour airborne in a shower of color.
It was the last moment of this musical number that I dreaded.
The teeterboard.
You’ve seen it in the circus. It looks like a see-saw, but rather than two people sitting on each end, the teeterboard features one performer standing on the lowered end of the board, and then two or more others dropping onto the raised end of the plank from a height, which sends the standing performer flying, fifteen to twenty feet into the air, in a high-cresting layout or series of somersaults.
I knew that I’d be involved in this final display, but I couldn’t remember whether I’d be pushing on the board or soaring toward the rafters.
It was a dangerous stunt that required precise timing, clear communication, and physical coordination among the team. While learning to be the flying man in rehearsal I’d once over-rotated on a practice run, hit the floor, and chipped a bone in my elbow. This was for real. We’d be executing the feat at the end of a complicated musical number, gasping for breath, in the final minutes of a several-hour show, with ninety other things happening onstage at the same time.
When the moment came I could see who was setting up in formation for the teeterboard flight. Fred took the flying spot on the board. Thank god. That meant I’d be one of the pushers, lining up at the opposite end of the teeterboard with another cast member, running past the standing man Fred, jumping onto the fulcrum of the teeterboard with one foot and launching ourselves high with the full force of our weight onto the raised side.
We’d have to hit the board just right, lock arms as pushing partners mid-jump, and hit the far end at the same moment to apply sufficient force for Fred to successfully complete his full layout without landing on his head.
As the music crescendoed, the lights circled, and the cast sang, I made out the visual cue of Fred slapping his hands on his thighs. This was the ready signal for us to sprint for the board. As my foot hit the fulcrum I knew I’d misplaced it. I tried to recover, but my balance was fading off to the left. I was going to miss the end of the board.
My push mate was Robert, the designated tightrope walker who balanced on it during each performance while playing a song on the violin. I can’t remember if Robert, having grown up in project housing, actually sent money home to his mom every month to help her with rent, or had the demeanor of someone just like that. Strong and steady, he reached out with one of his large gentle hands, drew me back in, threw his arm over my shoulder, and made us a single unit as we headed for the end of the high board. In unison, we hit it with the full weight of our bodies.
Robert and I were two of the largest men in the cast, and we sent the flyer skyward in a satisfying gravity-free spectacle of acrobatic fireworks that concluded the show.
We’re all on a perpetual diet of inspirational aphorisms, like trust the process, everything happens for a reason, or talent wins games, teamwork wins championships. But hearing these a million times over wouldn’t have equaled my direct experience with Barnum as a young man. I was forced to move into the unknown as if everything was going to work out, and then learned to accept help from others so that it actually did.
It took me four hours to share this story here at the keyboard, but during that time my spirit has traveled the theaters of North America and Canada, and into the memories of past friends who contributed their talent and depth of character to perform the story of the Greatest Show on Earth and the man who founded the institution.
Every time I go back and recall such life stories in detail I consciously reclaim some of the history that has led to my present life. Direct experience is wisdom that cannot be replaced, and yet, we often move on from it before we’ve discovered its gifts. Personal storytelling is, ironically, a legitimate path to the present moment. We’ve all been through a great deal in our lives. When we review what we survived and how we’ve thrived, we become more confident in navigating our current challenges and adventures.
Your own moments of dread or triumph can inspire and guide others. And some of the best stories take place in a family kitchen rather than on a Broadway stage or battlefield. You have amazing stories to tell. And if you can’t see them at the moment, that doesn’t mean they’re not there. I’d love to help you find them.
If you’re interested in gathering your own stories, either to review them for yourself or to share them with others, you might want to try All My Stories. I’m running a session to provide more information about the app. If you’re interested, send me a message and I’ll let you know when that happens.
We’ll talk about the value of personal storytelling and it will give me a chance to introduce you to a truly fascinating person.
It’s you.
Many thanks to
and my editor wife Clelia Lewis for their eyes on this article in development.
Your varied adventures never cease to amaze me (and your cataloging process for stories—creating your own app for that purpose—I mean, who does that?). But it perfectly explains your passion for storytelling and your gift for encouraging others to share their own.
While I can’t begin to rival your Barnum Circus Show experience, your story did—just as you suggested—stir up a memory of my own: a time I joined an improv group in Brazil.
Not being fully fluent in Portuguese at the time, I took on the role of a physical comedian, using my unusually skinny frame (6'2", 140 lbs back then) to my advantage. I volunteered to be the foil to the heroic figure in our performances—he was strong, daring, and handsome, while I was the one who tried to bring down a villain only to end up flat on the floor. I was regularly tossed about between characters or sent flying out a set-piece window—to the delight and laughter of the audience.
After the first few shows, people began to chant for my character’s entrance. They’d lovingly given me a stage name: Pateta Magro—“the skinny fool.”
When the crowd started clapping and stomping, calling for Pateta Magro, I’d step onto the stage and the performance hall would erupt in cheers and laughter, everyone waiting for my next foolish move—one that would inevitably end with me being hurled across the room or through a paper wall.
That unexpected adventure helped me free myself from the decades-old shackles I’d carried from being bullied. Through that experience, I realized I could step out of my painfully shy self—even if just for an evening. Over time, I learned that if I could reinvent my persona in one simple performance, I could, with practice, carry that freedom beyond the stage.
So thank you, Rick—your story stirred up a tale I’d almost forgotten, one that made me smile as I remembered the laughter, the camaraderie, and the sheer joy of those moments when my castmates and our audience helped me break free from my shell.
Your "Barnum" story *alone* had me on pins and needles; given how new you were to the production, I'm puzzled how you didn't panic and go into vapor lock back stage. Talk about grace under pressure.
Yet you position this engaging recollection in a way that illustrates how your storytelling process, assisted mightily by your new app, All My Stories, can work for anyone with a story to tell.
And *everyone* has a story to tell.
Super job on this one, Rick.