We continued our live read of Crucial Conversations and today was all about skills for mastering your stories. The steps are as follows:

• Retrace your Path
• Notice your Behavior
• Put your Feelings into Words
• Analyze your Stories
• Get Back to the Facts
• Watch for 3 Clever Stories (Victim, Villain and Helpless)
• Tell the Rest of the Story (Victims become Actors, Villains become Humans, Helpless become Able) 

This was episode 180 of our week-daily virtual coffee, which takes place in Konktown’s discord server: discord.gg/konktown and Clubhouse’s Startup Club House from 8-9am EST. It’s free and open to anyone from anywhere in the world.

Some of the key highlights from today’s discussion included:

• Discussing skills for mastering our stories, such as retracing our path, putting feelings into words, analyzing stories, and telling the rest of the story
• The importance of separating facts from subjective interpretations in stories
• Recognizing “clever stories” like victim, villain, and helpless stories that people tell to justify actions
• Learning to question our own role in problems rather than see ourselves only as victims 
• The value of humanizing others rather than making villain stories in order to improve communication
• Taking responsibility and accountability for our own actions and using dialogue skills rather than feeling helpless

Show notes based on our discussion (as per Otter.ai’s beta tool):

Crucial Conversations book and avoiding passive aggression. (1:27)

Controlling emotions through storytelling. (5:31)

Recognizing and managing emotions. (11:00)

Storytelling and emotional control. (16:59)

Separating facts from subjective interpretations. (23:03)

Crucial conversations and self-justifying stories. (28:57)

Storytelling and its impact on relationships. (35:39)

Storytelling and its impact on behavior. (39:43)

Self-justification through storytelling. (44:12)

Self-awareness and empathy in communication. (48:25)

Improving communication and relationships at work. (53:11)

Overcoming emotional blocks in communication. (58:26)

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