Go for the Story

Your clients, consumers, sponsors and donors want to know who you are. Yes, they must know what you do and what you offer, but before people connect with you in a way that calls them to action, they must know who you are, and they must feel, in their heart, something that resonates deeply with how they see themselves as well.

Many of us practice humility – the art, as I define it, of not tooting our own horns. I believe, and teach my children, that if a person has a gift or trait worth celebrating, that gift will shine through in their actions and way of being. People living with a sense of humility don't feel a need to go around telling others how wonderful they are. I put this in simple terms with my children, saying, “Live life with your gifts shining and those who are called to notice them, and to notice you, will do so in their own time and way.” In other words, let folks see and discover who you are instead of telling them all about your greatness.

This premise works well until we find ourselves in a position where we want to communicate who we are quickly to someone who has never met us, or who doesn’t spend enough time with us to really know who we are. We may be faced with writing a brilliant essay for admission into a university or certification program or creating the text for our website. We might need to write a grant or create marketing material for our business. There are times when we need to soundbite our lives and our gifts into a few words on a flat computer screen or piece of paper. Then what?

Go for the story. Throughout thousands of years of history, information has passed from generation to generation through stories, and there are good reasons for this tradition. Stories catch our attention, hold our interest, and allow us the room to find our own resonating truth within the message presented.

Below, I am including a story I wrote called “Courage in the Lake” that I posted to my personal blog several months ago. While this is not a text designed to be used on the home page of my business website, I’m including it here to illustrate a few points.

At the fact level, I can sum up the content quickly:

* I didn’t know how to swim and did not identify as an athlete in any form.
* I set the goal of doing a sprint-triathlon and took swim lessons to begin working toward my goal.
* I found, to my surprise, that the process of training for a triathlon created a shift in my writing life as well. Rather than just writing for my own purposes and focusing on the writing needs of others, I found courage and a calling to share more of my own prose with a larger audience.

The story below, however, embodies the nuances that the facts omit. Notice, too, that I include my own humanness and vulnerability in what I share. The pieces of ourselves we sometimes hide and protect when wearing our business suits are often the very parts that allow others to quickly connect and trust that we are good people, being and doing the best we can in this life, just as they are.

In telling our story, we have the opportunity to show how we live our gifts without having to name them all in an explicit way. Good stories show instead of tell, which is the same message I want my children to hear when we talk about living life. Live brilliantly with humility.

I hope you enjoy "Courage in the Lake" and, if we haven’t already met, that you can catch a glimmer of who I am. As you face your next goal – clarifying your company’s marketing message, launching your own business website or blog, or writing that book that has been growing within you, I ask you these questions: What is your story to tell? What is at the heart of who you are and who it is that you want others to see? What is holding you back from living brilliantly? How will it feel when you share who you are with clarity and confidence? You are the only one who can tell your unique story, and the world of opportunity will rise up and cheer when you do.


Courage in the Lake
When I tell people I am training for a sprint-triathlon, I always add the part that I needed to learn how to swim as part of my training. This usually gets some raised eyebrows, and most people clarify, "You didn't know how to swim?" Technically, years of childhood swim lessons had paid off and I could doggie paddle well enough that the camp counselors didn’t strap a bubble to my twelve-year-old back. Yet, the whole concept of putting my face in the water, breathing, and swimming at the same time for any distance was something I never had grasped.

Katherine, my children's swim instructor, agreed to work with me privately. We both began to realize how ambitious my goal really was. I needed to abandon old habits and learn basic skills for the first time. Muscle tone, stamina, and coordination were not yet mine. Katherine broke swimming down into small, manageable skills, and seeing me struggle with those, found new ways to demonstrate the simplest concepts of kicking and breathing in and out. Her patience and enthusiasm were unending, and she was as committed to my success as I was. When our lessons were done, I stayed in the lake and continued to work on my own while she instructed my kids.

We had just completed our third lesson, and I was working on my own in the lake. I had made progress over the past few weeks, but nothing came naturally and I was still struggling with the basics. With gaggles of children swimming and laughing nearby, I pushed my face back into the water for the umpteenth time and kicked my legs with all my might. I swung one arm up and over to grasp the swim noodle in front of me and then moved the other arm up and over to take its place. I turned my head to the side, breathed in, gasped, sputtered, floundered, and stood up. Back in I went. Legs kicking? Check. Arms rotating? Check. Turning my head to breath? And…this was not working. I either missed my opportunity to breathe, or I breathed in the lake when I did. My heart was racing, my legs were cramping, and this thing – swimming – that others did with such ease and grace made no sense to my body or mind. I stood up in the middle of that lake and took stock. I was a grown woman, with seaweed wrapped around my toes and stuck to my sagging bathing suit. I checked the nose clip pinching my nostrils, adjusted the blue goggles that squished my eyes, and stared at the flaming orange tube of bendable Styrofoam in my hand. My ego began to rage. I was using every accommodation I could imagine, and I was failing miserably. I felt stupid and incompetent. I weighed my options and wondered how important that silly sprint-triathlon goal was to me anyway.

As I stood there dripping, I realized I had never done anything physically in my life that felt this uncomfortable, this impossible, and for which the probability of absolute failure felt this real. In my life, I had played pretty safe; I engaged in hobbies that were within my comfort zone and I researched adventures thoroughly before I leaped. In that lake, and in that moment, I became intimate with the unknown. I had no evidence that I would ever learn how to swim. I had the choice to stick my face back in the water or give up on the triathlon goal and head on home. No one was going to give me a hard time about it. I really could just give this one up. I stood there, considering my small choice as if my life depended on it. Something deeper than stubborn perseverance and integrity rose up from my soul and I plunged my head back into the cold brown water.

The freedom that coursed through my veins was intense. I was freed up to fail. If I never learned how to swim, I was going to have a blast trying. I reveled in being engaged in an activity that stretched me to the core, challenged me, and spoke to a part of me no thing had ever spoke to before in my life. I splashed around in joy for another hour that day, making bits of progress in swimming and leaps and bounds of progress in living life.

In the waters of the lake, I tasted what successful people experience every day. Successful people have no idea whether they will succeed or fail. They just do whatever is theirs to do because they say they will. In that moment, I recognized that I was done playing safe and selfish. I would send my personal writing out into the world. People would like it or they would not. In life, as an author, I would succeed or I would fail. I would sink or I would swim. In leaving the fear of failing at the bottom of the lake, I discovered the joy in swimming, and that joy is what makes life worth living. - SK

Post script - I am a registered participant and will be swimming, biking, and running with 700 other courageous women in Hopkinton State Park on Sunday, September 12, 2010. I live and breathe the mantra that, indeed, anything is possible!

Post post script - Triathlon completed in 1 hour and 50 minutes with a big ol' smile on my face and the pictures to prove it!