How To Tell A Memorable Story | Dr Chinonso Egemba | TEDxJibowu

foreigner, yes you know what to do by now, if you ask me what I do, I'll

tell

you I'm a

story

tell

er and I'll tell you why, but before I do it I won't start with a little experiment when I gave the statement slow and steady wins the race What two animals do you think of yourself, you say The turtle and the words and the hair or the rabbits some people say rabbits but the turtle and the hair and this is a

story

that has been told from generation to generation and in this unique story they have told us taught greed we have been taught perseverance we will be taught above all patience why stories are important and that is what I want to talk about today we are talking about redefining health education in Africa in Nigeria but you know we have to start from somewhere in Nigeria using the narrative and let's go back to when we were kids, so when we were kids, a lot of our dreams and aspirations in life revolved around Spider-Man, Superman, hitman Ben 10, no, no, no, no.

I didn't grow up seeing benzene. I don't know, maybe I look like it, but you know I'm a lot older than I look, thanks, so we grew up watching Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Ben 10 and the rest. If you had asked us at that time, when we are growing up, what you would like to become and we had children doing this in the hope that at some point a net would come out of your wrists, we had children climbing through the season trying to jump. down and that's how powerful the effects of stories are on our lives, but now we're grown up, we're adults and stories still have that kind of power over us, the only difference is that there are different stories and therefore stories We've been told good stories about James Bond, he wants to have an Omega watch, guys, you don't want to have an Omega or a Rolex.

Wow, so they look at James Bond and then they see someone who is powerful, a well-built man, but I don't realize that it's a story that they're telling you, so at some point I realized that there's a certain part of that story and decided to use it to change the narrative of how health education happens in Nigeria or in Africa. but before we do that, can we talk about why stories are important? And the first thing that is important is that you have to understand that first stories are universal, so whether you like it or not, you are told a story and you are part of a story. or you're telling a story.

So stories are universal. Every way you turn to a story is told in your popular songs. A story is told on your television screens. A story is told when you are visiting your friend. It is told and because of how connected we are to storytelling, it has been part of our narrative. Human beings have always been programmed to tell stories, in fact, we were one of the first, we are the only animals that have evolved. to the point where we can tell things that haven't happened yet and I'm going to explain it to you, so when you find a group of deer or you meet a group of meerkats in the wild, they have learned that when they make a sound, something sounds. is happening well, so let's say there is a lion nearby and a meerkat makes a sound.

What's going on? Other animals get there. They receive the signal. That's what there is a line around and then they can't play in the bushes either. Other animals have developed certain stories. certain things that you know, whether it's mating season, whether you know that an intruder is coming to invade another animal's territory and all the animals say things like they are now human beings because of our imagination, we have started telling things that They haven't occurred to me. However, and this is how we can say things about the turtle and the fur, of course, these two animals never got together and decided to run a race, other animals still do not have this ability, so the stories are universal number two, your Your brain does not have the ability to differentiate between what is real and what is not, in fact, research has shown that when you are watching a tense story, your brain secretes cortisol, cortisol is the same hormone that is released when you body is under a certain amount of stress you would ask, assume your brain knows this isn't real, it's just a story.

My wife, for example, doesn't like watching horror movies at night. Why would she tell you that it affects her sleep? So she will prefer to see them during the day. but at night, but I, on the other hand, am thinking, but your brain should know that it's just a movie, right, it's not real, it's not going to happen and sitting in this room there are quite a few people like that, no you know. watch horror movies at night how many of you watch happy videos on social media that you see oh there are people who just met and notice that they feel good, what is happening to them, so why are they experiencing the happiness of the other person?

A story some of you just watch cat videos or some of you call it baby fever you love to watch cute baby stories and you say it's baby fever actually it's not baby fever it's just a hormone called oxytocin that has been added to your blood called a bonding hormone and This is why you really want to have a baby, of course, if you do it the right way so stories create a real connection, so the best way to teach, Persuading and understanding others based on their stories is one of the best ways you get interested people to like you and hate people who are boring.

One of the most differentiating factors between interesting and boring people is that a person tells stories and tells them. another does not. I am communicating the following stories. Inspires to action. How many of you were present during or because you were all around SARS? Yeah no answer The star infectious disease that came out says and everyone was worried, everyone was scared right, and then kovid came and the health organizations came out and said you know everyone should wash their hands, everyone should wear a mask , everyone should know, do this and do it. that, but do you think the inspired actions were those instructions?

No, it was the stories we told ourselves, it was the stories we heard on the news, it was 15 people who died in social settings and suddenly those instructions make sense, am I communicating? stories Inspire action I can sit all day and tell you all the things you can do about your health and all the things you want to know, these are the things that will make you live longer, but if I don't put it in a format with the that you can relate to as a story you probably wouldn't. One pastor in particular decided many years ago, you know, I want to raise certain amounts of money for people in certain areas of Africa, thank you and this is, let's just raise it and you. you know growth with statistics and figures and in fact a lot of things that happen in internet stocks are statistics and figures and you look at it and two days later you forget about it and this guy started with do you know that five people out of every 10 people in Africa They are hungry everyone said yes and it was time to donate and people kept their wallets in their pockets why are there facts that don't inspire action to read and what he decided to do instead was get a child's story and he decided to tell his story, why do you guys love chess and Sloane so much?

Stories always tell stories about real people who can connect with the So Stories Inspire action, so now let me tell you my story. I can't tell you about her. the powerful stories about telling your story, let me tell you how many years this happened in my 400 level in the University I was in. This is my first administrative and administrative experience as a medical student, it's where you know you come into contact with patients and yet you're not a doctor, you're just a medical student and you're told to get information from this patient and You tell us what you want to do and I contacted this elderly man who was about 65 years old and had a transient stroke and I got all the information from him and his son and we went to the doctor and the doctor spent about an hour and a half explaining what what this man had to do to prevent the next stroke and I forgot about him only for me to come back a couple of years later preparing for my final exam and we went into the room to plan what our strategy was for this exam and also practice with some patients in the world and when we came to the world, here it was. the same man lying with his son this time had had another stroke and did not survive it and it struck me that this man did not understand what the doctor spent hours telling him is that he does not understand what Hypertension is that he does not understand what It's a stroke, don't you understand why I was suffering from something called The Curse of Knowledge?

How many of you know what the cost of knowledge is? It's a bias where if something is obvious to you you assume it's obvious to everyone else, but it's not, so I decided I was going to spend the rest of my life educating people and we went to The Villages and started educating women. older and we went to outreach activities and we are just educating, educating. educate and that's why I became interested in radio and decided to apply for a radio show. You know, I wanted to have my own health talk show on the radio and I landed on the first Navy radio station somewhere in Nigeria.

I'm not going. to mention the name of the radio and they said um here are the books do your thing and I spent five minutes talking into the microphone it was recording and when I was done the lady said we'll get back to you of course you know. what that means and out of frustration waiting for them to respond I went to another radio station and said the same thing I want to have a radio show on um I want to have a health talk on the radio no one is having Health talks on the radio they said oh why that's really interesting you know, but let's see what you can do and I went to the radio booth and did my thing and they said we'll get back to you and we all know how frustrating that can be. be and I decided well I have my phone I have Facebook and I decided to use Facebook at that time I was learning graphic design from my late friend Harold and I still started designing graphics and I designed a lot of graphics wash your hands check your blood pressure I did this and for three years no one told me paid attention I moved to Instagram because in my head it wasn't Facebook and I moved to Instagram it was like the people on Facebook weren't serious and I went on Instagram and did the same thing just sharing graphic designs this is what to do this is how Doing this is how to live longer and no one was paying attention and then I remembered somewhere I was like ah, people on Instagram love life, they just want to see swag, you know, they want to see you in the Bahamas in Santorini and all that, like Instagram people aren't serious and then I went to this is a story and then I went to Twitter and I started the same thing on Twitter too yeah five reasons why your hand is causing you problems in your life and no one was paying attention and I wanted to say on Twitter that people aren't serious too until I decided to tell the story of something that had just happened in the hospital and I just told the story on Twitter and that was it and it got me.

I thought I had been on Twitter during all of this, but no one was paying attention until I told the story. How many of you followed the World Health Organization? I'm not trying to shade you, please, you are part of the people who sponsor my lifestyle. We follow UNICEF and. the rest I don't know if you actively look for opposites very little you follow them because of their brand you follow them because they have told you somewhere that you get this connection but you don't actively look for it your post now one of the things you should also notice is when you go to pages like that and that's their strategy when you go to pages like that they don't tell stories, what they do is they generally get instructions and all that. that is their language right now there are people and I say this without any kind of concept in the last few years I have built a community on all social media platforms that exceeds three million people, right, three million people, many of them They actively look for my posts, they search for them, they wait for them, they come out and say, ah, what did our Proto doctor say today?

Why don't I tell stories. I am not the best doctor in Nigeria. I'm just a better storyteller than a lot of Bien, so I know you're sitting here wondering how I can tell better stories because these straight talks won't be complete without giving you the number one tips. Listen, which is weird because you're thinking why it's the first tip. about telling stories, listening, so when I say listening I also mean observing, there are certain things that people do, there are certain things, there is a way that they act and when you listen, when you observe, you can help, you could help build a story to speak better.

Number two is using the four Ps. So what are the four Ps of storytelling? Number one is the people who are the people in your story. Your story is not complete if you are telling people a story. Your story is not complete without people. that story, how many of you know in the kitchen, everyone, why, because there arepeople in my story, they are everyday people number two, their story must have a place, so where are they talking about, where are they trying to fit in now, if you have noticed. don't sound like that on social media when I'm telling a story I sound like I don't speak English properly I make deliberate grammatical errors I say things that people on the street say why that's my place those are the people I'm trying to reach and why That's why I have to speak their language.

I'm not trying to impress you. I'm not trying to tell the whole world how to live healthily. I'm just trying to tell Africa and that's why we've had people from In Tanzania, we had people from Kenya the last time I was in Kenya. You know, people came up to me on the streets like I really love your videos.really and that's because we're connecting with them. I'm telling you the stories that you can connect with in your own place and number three is a plot of what the story is about. That's the plot. I think it's self explanatory and then the number. four is the purpose, why are you telling that story?

So if you go back to my videos or the videos that I share on social media, one of the things you'll notice is that every story has a purpose, every story, every time you meet. Click on any of those videos. I'm talking about something and then keep it short, why long stories, poor people, right now we live in a world where our attention span has been greatly reduced. I put on a movie and by the time I watch two more hours, no. and the excuse I give myself is please please please please I'm old you can't stress me out now our attention span is short and one of the things they force us to do is be able to tell short stories and tell short stories your creativity is running out. forced viewing you will be forced to be creative you are being forced to cram a lot of information into a short format without overwhelming your audience, so keep it brief and also keep it simple No, no, don't tell me glamorous things, no, I don't need the details , just tell me the story correctly and then the last one, but not the list, highlight the emotions and to highlight the emotions I'm going to To end with another experiment, you know, I started with an experiment, so I'm going to end with one.

How many of you can vividly remember what you ate on August 31, 2001? Someone said anything, but if I ask them what they ate. the day you graduated from high school maybe you will remember it even if it was a long time ago if I ask you what you ate what happened to you the day your heart was broken you will remember why simply because with those experiences your emotions are there and so if your narrative is not It highlights or incites the emotions of people you haven't told a good story to, so wherever you are, whatever field, whatever you're trying to do, if you want to reach more people, tell more stories. , tells short stories and tells. good stories thanks