Be bold and own your story
It doesn’t mean what you think it does
I recently spoke at a panel about storytelling organized by the program I attended at UC Berkeley. When it came to present ourselves, I had prepared what I wanted to say, and there was a lot of negotiating with my monkey brain.
You see, I’ve been challenging myself to not define myself as my job, and I started throwing words like artist and photographer and storyteller at my Google Doc.
Are you reaaaaaally going to present yourself as an artist?
Seriously? Artist, photographer, writer — all of these before saying what you actually do?
Come on. Totally out of context. Just follow what everyone else is doing, and say you’re a Berkeley alum, you were an engineer and now you’re a product manager.
Who do you think you are?!
Woof.
I really had to push through to quiet these thoughts.The reality (that I’m telling myself) while I adore my job, it is not even close to being the most interesting thing about me.
It is certainly not the first thing that I want people to know about me, even if that’s what they might expect I will lead with.
And so I said:
I’m a French Moroccan artist, photographer, writer and engineer. I’m an MEng alum, class of 2018. When I’m not doing one of these things, I work as product manager at a NYC-based company called Justworks. I truly believe that the stories we tell ourselves shape the direction of our lives, so I’m super excited to be here!
You’ll notice two things here.
First, the intentionality of preparing. Because storytelling isn’t always about whipping up the improvised great line.
The second is the intentionality of what I’m actually sharing. Let me lift the curtain on how I came to this condensed summary of Laïla.
Each of these elements serve a purpose in painting the story that I believe to be mine:
- French Moroccan: duality that’s an essential part of my identity
- artist, photographer, writer: what I care most about these days
- engineer: peek into where I came from
- MEng alum: context that’s helpful to audience as to why I am there, and what may help them connect with what I’m going to share.
- product manager at a startup: more context that’s helpful as to the purpose of the event, with the peripheral career lens.
- what I think of storytelling: tying it all together with a statement I believe in that’s inspiring and that aligns with my desire to be a radiant, joyful and enthusiastic person.
Here’s why this was scary. Even if I was speaking into a Zoom void, and couldn’t even see the participants, the monkey brain was all hands on deck to try to persuade me to keep a low profile.
While I noticed that, I also started reminding myself that our identity is just another story that we tell ourselves to define who we are.
What harm is there in deciding what our story is? None.
There is no right or wrong with our story. Our brain tells us that there might be “people” who come and judge us for deciding to craft our story however we want, but the truth is that most of the time, what Brianna Wiest calls the “faceless crowd” is just the expression of our own fears.
Even if there are, in fact, people around us who come and judge us for it, that’s just the projection of their own fears and jealousy that you are daring and they haven’t yet.
More often than not though, you being you leads to inspiring others to allow themselves to be them.
I’m obviously not saying we should lie. If I were to come out as Swedish-Canadian, well, that wouldn’t fly far. But who cares which part of myself I decide to put forward?
What harm is there in conforming to the status quo? A lot.
Every time we’re not being true to ourselves to conform, we die a little inside. It’s not always a full blown stab in the heart, but rather an insidious, sneaky, death by erosion.
If I waited for an external signal to define myself as a writer, how would I know I was allowed to bless myself with the title?
Would it have to be one book?
Ten books?
A New York Times best seller?
How many millions of copy would I have to reach before finally accepting that I was a writer all along?
Giving the world the power to determine what we are and aren’t is the shortest path to suffering and self-torture.
What power is there in claiming what that is? Everything.
When we realize how much we can claim for ourselves, well. That’s where it all begins. This is when we give ourselves the permission to not defining ourselves based on an external factor anymore.
As long as I create, I’m an artist.
As long as I write, I’m writer.
I don’t need any certification or whatever else for it to be true. So I can say it without fearing to question it, or lose it at the first objection from the world.
If I mainly defined myself as a product manager, and then lost my job, what would I be left with? A shell of emptiness.
But who could take away my appetite for adventure, my eagerness to write and courage to share my stories? There is infinite power in claiming control back on our own stories.
This isn’t about performing for the world.
It is in fact, strictly between you and yourself.
When I was debating whether to present myself the way I did, there were two voices going back and forth:
- The voice that was telling me not to was focused on what attendees would think of me
- The voice that was urging me to dare was my own little inner voice, who was simply demanding yet another proof that I believe all these things to be true
Owning your story is learning to see yourself however you’d like to see it and not shy away from it.
The external part is just an expression of you affirming it to yourself.
To get there, we need to be bold.
Bold, because owning our stories is scary as fuck.
We want to belong.
We fear rejection like a plague.
From an early age, we absorb that love is conditional and stepping outside of the mold is the danger zone that (we think) will lead us right into rejection and loneliness. We’re afraid of how people around us will react. Interestingly, we’re most afraid — which we can see in the freedom that anonymity gives us in sharing our stories fearlessly.
Boldness is defined as a mix of courage and confidence, an ability to take risks. It is also defined as having a strong and vivid appearance.
What I like about these two definitions is that they are complimentary: when I encourage myself to be bold, I encourage myself to expand into all of who I am, and to lean into shining my whole light rather than dimming some of it.
Being bold isn’t innate. We’re not born either bold or not bold.
This is something we slowly learn to give ourselves. A muscle we flex.
We take a small leap, and we appreciate ourselves for it, regardless of the outcome. Then we take another one, and another one, and another one.
Some things become natural, and then we look for the next scary part of ourselves we haven’t owned yet to flex our boldness muscle with.
Being bold doesn’t mean without fear. It means daring to do it afraid.
When I introduced myself the way I did, my heart was racing a little. When I hit “Publish” on the post in which I shared I was writing a book, it took me 10 minutes to calm down.
Being bold doesn’t mean to be cool as a cucumber whenever you’re doing something scary. Feeling jitters to do anything that feels true to us is part of the process.
It’s about learning to not see that feeling as a wall that stops us, but a wave of courage that carries us.
This is what I mean when I say: be bold and own your story.
And if you ask me, this might be the most beautiful gift we could ever give ourselves.
