Rather than telling a story of your full and complete accomplishment, tell the story of a small part of the success. Tell about a small step. Feel free to allude to the better days that may lie ahead, but don’t try to tell everything. Small steps only.

Every story must have an Elephant. The Elephant is the thing that everyone in the room can see. It is large and obvious. It is a clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery. It signifies where the story is headed, and it makes it clear to your audience that this is in fact a story and not a simple musing on a

• Stories should never only be funny. The best ones are those that use humor strategically. Ideally you want your audience to experience a range of emotions over the course of your story. You can’t achieve this if your audience is laughing for the entire time.

Nervousness can be your friend. Too much of it is never good, but not being nervous at all isn’t good either.

If the successful climb taught Tim to trust others, listen to his gut, accept failure, find inner peace, believe in himself, or uncover a strength he never knew he possessed, that would make for a story with much greater universal appeal and potential connectivity. We all have our own Mount Everests to summit. Tim’s just happened to be the real

I maligned myself by admitting I’d thrown a shoe at a student. I marginalized my accomplishment by pointing out that while I may have saved Lisa, I had failed to save the many who came before her. I know. It’s not the easiest thing to do. Sometimes we are so proud of our hard-fought success stories that we want to tell every bit of them. Sometimes

Smaller moments, to be sure. Tiny, even. Moments no one would have recognized had they witnessed them firsthand. But they are easier to tell and just as good as the big moments. Maybe better.

This is how to tell a success story: Rather than telling a story of your full and complete accomplishment, tell the story of a small part of the success. Tell about a small step. Feel free to allude to the better days that may lie ahead, but don’t try to tell everything. Small steps only.

That is my goal here: Make them laugh so the collision and the resulting violence hurt more. Contrast is king in storytelling, and laughter can provide a fantastic contrast to something authentically awful.