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how do you create personal signature stories the first is carve out clear areas of incompetence by the way these were all completely inspired by our family and my father in particular be sneaky seek highs and lows and Bank your stories it's fine if they're brief and pithy so that's what I want to talk about today the first thing is carve out clear areas of confidence I think it's very say Tommy that dad has done an extraordinarily good job of carving out these clear heads and confidence early days he never took a picture I don't think he's ever actually taken a picture this is my mom taking a picture of me being held by my dad he's very good at holding people he's good at picking clothing not great at actually taking a picture very clear in social settings not good at that he's also not greeted it elegant eating so like if you if you are at a dinner party and you might have like a muffin over here very good chance you might have a nibble of it and also maybe like have some disastrous in unintended consequences now this sounds like I'm making fun of data I'm not making fun of that he is a genius he is a genius my husband Andy Smith is he here all right my husband Andy Smith is also genius I find a lot of men in my life four geniuses in this way and so carving out clear ears and confidence if I could just share a quick story and so Andy when we got married early on you know I decided I wasn't going to be that 7 year old grandma who took out the garbage I really wanted my husband to do that and you know in the first week in marriage whatever whoever takes out the garbage first is basically going to take out the garbage for the rest of their life so I knew that I know Johnny got dad as my dad and so I said would you take out the garbage and he said yeah absolutely I would so when he didn't go out I thought that was curious but I wasn't worried I said you know probably used words to describe what I wanted I'll put a calendar request on a calendar and he will accept it and then it will go out so when it didn't go out I thought that was weird so I updated the task request on his Google Calendar and I said garbage goes out happy face happy face exclamation point exclamation point in KC was conditioned as a young child to think that garbage going out is a negative thing I was going to classically conditioned him to believe it was a positive thing and so he accepted that update I didn't go out and so I said you know what's going on like why is the garbage not going on I don't know how to be more clear and he goes oh I would like to take out the garbage but I'm very confused like what time does it go out go out on the right hand side of the driveway or the left hand side of the driveway and after they pick it up like when do I take it in or I take out the garbage our kids take out the garbage other people take out the garbage now but it's beautiful carving out clear ears of confidence not only gives you stories but it also reduces the amount of time you actually have to do work so what I've done by the way once I learned these techniques from other people is I decided to actually carve out in confidence around cooking so not only do I not cook when the few times I do cook and I burn myself I take a picture and I post it on social media so people can be clear I don't cook this is what happens when I cook all right the second be sneaky and then branding in one study we asked individuals what's your happiest childhood memory we have parents we ask kids and these are the type of answer is that where that were revealed in the study constructing the forests with my brother our family read day the day after Christmas fishing for tadpoles was Jane in the summer dancing to Michael Jackson's beat it with my friends are Linda Evangelista spring cleaning fashion shows and special days I said actually special days so let me tell you what special days are special Arwen died to Jan or Joe or I when we were young and basically we were on a need-to-know basis so you know where are we going to go he was going to tell us and so but he would want to do certain things like he'd want to go to the cow game but we wouldn't want to go so he call it a special day and so when it tells where we're going to go we're just going to go on a special day and we were so excited oh my god is a special day and then we would arrive at Cal Berkeley and we have pom poms get them there and cotton candy at the time stuff and it actually ended up being like ridiculously memorable a fantastic story and actually you know I'm curing out talking about it and so he was sneaky in very systematic ways and then he would brand them a special day I mean it's genius right he probably took us on five bomb who did way more stuff with us noms with no friends and did not brand those things as special days and now we remember the special days third he highs and lows so when you think of personal signature stories you're really not thinking of like I was wanting a winning winning winning when he won got the promotion whatever you're really thinking about highs and lows these are the opportunities for stores right so when dad says intriguing authentic involving involving a big piece of that is feeling like you're going on high and a low until you're designing these rollercoasters and that makes sense right because when we see movies like James Bond they all have highs and lows the arc here and wow what happened I don't knows he gets the girl and every single James Bond film you know has that arc or Jurassic Park you know what's going on t-rex what's going on big t-rex what's going on big big t-rex so arts don't have to be sophisticated they just have to have some highs and lows or Casablanca which has these like through micro story themes in it and so when you're finding signature stories for yourself or your family or your life you're looking for those highs and lows which is a really exciting way to actually raise kids for example because when the lows hit you know it's going to be a great dori and if you can have a comedic lens that allows them to take risks and you don't take things so seriously it also allows you to sort of document things so I wanted to mention that Disneyland is is I think we can all agree the worst place ever it's very very unhappy place but most people don't remember that because they don't take pictures of like the unhappy moment we do we do and we also write it up in our holiday card I'll share one from a few years back Cooper one of our sons wrote a highlight of the year Disneyland we prepared to the trip for weeks filling our jean pockets with cookies for sustenance and brushing up on our Disneyland history on arrival though we found that the parking was painful tickets expensive lines long on the upside my dad John and I found out with a GPS driven map ranked attraction checklist and crowdsource wait time guide to get us around the park strategically optimizing our fun while minimizing lines unfortunately the iPhone died in 30 minutes necessity forced us to try something arguably better a cleverly color-coded conveniently foldable pocket-sized tool it's called a map it's provided by Disneyland it's amazingly free the only free thing at Disneyland so that was fortuitous on the way out we met saundra our au pair and chaos on our sister outside the haunted house where Sandra was shaking from heatstroke being a doctor my mom recommended sheets and great seconds later Sandra's body decided to put the grapes in Reverse we loved lissandra to find a place a left bad advice and fewer bystanders she slept the entire car ride home and we were required to be silent for the whole time so it ended up on a note we can't wait to go back so now the question is why would you see Kaiser knows why I know Disneyland awful why would I go with my family besides you know they're my family and he should go and you know what's actually experience is you know you get there to Disneyland and then you get in lines and you don't realize how long they are and then you get to you know small roles which is branded a happiest place on earth true I'm not sure but then you take a picture of Devin literally crying which I always find hilarious and then they're tired you know Cooper and Devin are twins are on andis laps fatigued but then you get the fireworks and then you forget the cotton candy all over their face and chaos a mess and our Opare throwing up but you just remember the end right you remember that peak and you remember the end and that has disproportionate impact so if we seek highs and lows if we design for memories rather than just experience will cultivate a life of story and last Bank your stories even if they're short and pithy we talked a lot about source six-word stories and I find it to be a really you know powerful tool Larry Smith and others have actually generalized this concept but it was really born by Hemingway who run throat baby shoots issues for sale never worn so make my students in the power of story class write six-word stories to describe them their lives and and you all shared stories and so we're going to share a few of these stories that you I'll just like have you look at that and see if we get out like a little you know vote on which one's best died which one did you say you liked there's a few that you really liked the NBA theater you once please get lucky once twice yeah and ambition was purple yeah Robert Imani who's not here but had a huge impact just huge impact on my life for the two years I was at hot he led to the Dragonfly effect was a book that Andy and I wrote together with Carly at ler I also like married the wrong girl fixed it you know but the best with the Bensons ko curse oh okay you get the award for fast food story we got here at a Keurig and for the others we're going to have three runners-up which we will tell you about later and you will get some books author on branding these six words stories are really important you can you can do them in the day you can have your kids do them at night you can instead of in a conversation about what you did today over the dinner table you could have a conversation about what the story was unlocked and how many of you have soulless conversations at the dinner table about what you do today and our what are you gonna do tomorrow like that was one thing like you were always died so averse to us talking about logistics but that's what defines our life it's to do this oftentimes its logistics its goals that we think are really important but what actually defines our lives are the stories and if you think of your wedding if you had one or potentially you know someday you might die and the memorial that you might have what are the stories that are shared it's not a set of lists it's not a set of things that you accomplishes the stories that others remember about you and so Bank the stories even if it's six words or or less and Bank those stories that are distinct that make you or your family truly distinct bold and so you take risks that are relevant to different audiences dad talks a lot about authenticity and truth we're living in a time right now where there's a significant trust deficit we don't trust necessarily our politicians we don't trust oftentimes leaders and it's not just a finance industry it's it's everywhere but what people trust is people they know people who story they believe it and so cultivating those stories becomes really really important and codifying them and capturing them does as well these bold stories these memorable stories so that they stick over time stories that are shareable so that they can spread and garner action and stories that to pick something large or something meaningful so I just wanted to end with one of my favorite quotes tell me the truth facts and I'll learn tell me the truth and I'll believe but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever thank you [Applause]