The Story You Most Need to Tell
You know who it is for, why they need it, and how it can help them.
“The courage it takes to share your story might be the very thing someone else needs to open their heart to hope.”
—Unknown
My friend Mike Kim, author of the best selling book You Are The Brand, teaches that there are three questions we should use to discover the work we are meant to do:
What pisses you off?
What breaks your heart?
What is the big problem you are here to solve?
In 2015 while facilitating strategic planning processes for various business around the country, I learned the power and importance of those three questions.
I had built a fairly niched business focusing primarily on credit unions and was reaching the point where I was pondering what was next for me when it hit me that I had to find my next step.
The moment came one afternoon when the conversation bogged down as strategic discussions often do. The group seemed unable or unwilling to think bigger and the process stalled.
Then we took a break and it happened, again.
One of the participants cornered me and started sharing all kinds of great ideas they had chosen not to put into the conversation. The energy was palpable, the ideas were not top-of-mind-discovered-in-the-moment stuff, they were deeper. They had been thought through for some time and had a lot of merit.
I turned to the woman sharing them and asked why she had not put them into the conversation. Her soft-spoken reply still echoes in my head—she hadn’t shared them because she didn’t think they would listen to her.
At that moment I knew my answer to Mike’s first question—this is what pissed me off—talented capable women in rooms where the future of the company was being discussed who were holding back because they didn’t think anyone would listen.
It pissed me off because I knew exactly what she was talking about. I had seen this movie over and over again across the previous decade. It was one of the reasons I had added a lot more pre-work into my planning process—so we could capture ideas from everyone beforehand and get them into the conversations.
But until that moment, I hadn’t realized there might be more to the story.
You see, I related to her story more than anyone might have imagined. For much of my life, I was that person—the one who sat in rooms and remained quiet during the sessions, then sought out those who might listen and shared my ideas at the breaks. Sometimes I waited until we all headed out to dinner and carefully chose who I spoke with in the hope that my ideas might be seen as having value.
And it broke my heart to realize that so many of the women (and some men) I had enjoyed conversations with during the breaks in my planning sessions were just like me. They had been silenced by something in their past. A careless comment from someone they respected that they felt discounted their voice; a traumatic event that had silenced them; or a bit of negative feedback that caused them to doubt the value of their contributions.
In that interaction that day I realized the story I most needed to tell had nothing to do with business strategy and everything to do with helping people find the path past their past. I needed to do it myself, and I needed to help others discover their path beyond whatever it was that kept them from stepping up, showing up, and speaking up.
That is the story I need to tell. I know who needs to hear it, why they need to hear it, and what it will do for them. That is the story behind #TheBackstoryInitiative, and what I have committed the remainder of my life to doing.
Today’s Action Question
Give yourself permission to discover the story you most need to tell. Start by answering these three questions:
What do you know now (that you needed to know) that would have helped you to face the most difficult moments of your life?
Who might be at a similar point in their lives today?
If you shared your story with them and offered them the perspective you now have, how would their life be changed?
Chances are you will immediately recognize the story you most need to tell, who it is for, and how it can help them. And when you do, you will be compelled to share it. I hope you will and would love to hear how it helps those you share it with.
P.S. If you’re finding value in these posts, please take a moment to share them with someone you know who needs to be inspired to think differently and become the person they are capable of becoming. You might help them take the most important step — the first one.