What’s Your Story This Year?
Tell your story…
If you’re a Medium writer (I am referring to the platform obviously), those are the very first words written translucently on the blank canvas. For some, the flow comes automatically as they are born storytellers and other medium writers (referring to individuals like me this time), start picking up on their artistic flows as they start punching blind strokes.
The unique factor that differentiates an ordinary story from the one that is etched in our hearts forever is that all of these extraordinary stories have something that the audience can resonate with and can have a takeaway with them (potentially) forever.
Be it The Alchemist’s “If you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” or “it’s not who I am underneath, it’s what you do that defines you” from Batman. The epic one-liners like “It’s nothing personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business”, “Live long and prosper”, “May the force be with you!” or even “Valar Morghulis” are no exceptions.
But, storytelling has never been my business…
Let’s admit it, all of us had to and wanted to spin better stories at some point in time in our lives or the other. If only you had a better story to tell your mom for getting low marks, your manager because you went late to the office for the n’th time, desperate attempts to carry on the late night conversations with your crush among others.
If you Google “great storytelling”, you get a ton load of content that has ‘x’ must follow steps, depending upon how much you are ready to consume at that point in time, you can always try to understand them.
In one of the articles, a particular point that specifically stood out was “No story from your life is as interesting to others as it is to you” (guilty of Googling the same). Contrarily, there is a huge market revolving around capturing every life details of successful people in the name of autobiographies and biographies.
Even in our professional lives, the only story we are constantly trying to weave is the most obvious “Tell me about yourself” story that everybody gets shot at (quite literally) during their job interviews.
So, how does one go about a good personal story?
Remember, unlike fiction, it is your story and you’ll have to know how to make it more interesting for the audience. Again, there is plenty of value-adding content out there on how to go about answering this very question, but there is one article that I generally share with people, which entails the entire story.
Lara Galinsky, in her Harvard Business Review article on “Tell Your Whole Story in an Interview”, shares an interesting technique to spin a better story about yourself. Reach out to people who know you with questions like,
- What did I gravitate toward naturally?
- What activities did I lose myself in?
- What did I talk about all the time?
- What did I love to read?
and then extract the themes to further understand yourself, so that you can connect these discoveries with what you do now or want to do is a great way to convince people on how you can thrive in a new role.
Since acing job interview was not the main themes of this post, you can check out Lara’s article here for further insights.
My technical skills are strong enough, would I still need to tell stories?
The reason storytelling is both a skill and an art (very importantly) is that it is mostly associated with the human element. If you think about it, Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa is still revered over time not just because he was technically strong with his painting skills.
Structured courses on fiction writing would highlight the storytelling spine among other elements that form the skeleton of the story. But, remember, whether your story is about bees, cars or future robots, it can never be fulfilling without those emotions, turning points and edge of the seat moments.
For people interested to know why they were hooked on to those non-human stories, check out this article on Pixar’s rules on great story telling that highlights human element imbibed in those stories.
Can we get to this year’s story at least now?
Sorry, it is the context that sets most of the story very often! Here we go..
Every year, it is quite common for all of us to make a bunch of resolutions during the last month of the year and quickly forget them before the end of the very first month of the next year. There are a handful number of strong resolved individuals who succeed at maintaining those resolutions.
How is it that they alone are deemed worthy while the rest of us fail to lift the Mjölnir? Again, this could be an interesting topic for another article and there is already quite a number of content around the same (seriously do not want to deviate from the story at least this time).
Coming back to narrating the story of the year (and desperately trying to connect it with New Year resolutions), just remember that your new year resolutions actually go a long way in defining you as an individual. Because, along with a new year resolution, everybody makes a silent promise to themselves on how they’re going to spin the story for the following year.
The only situation where individuals flinch is when they are faced with the uncertainty of dealing with two paths that they might chance upon during the year, and struggle taking the right decision especially when the ending of the story is at stake. Remember, with great freedom comes great uncertainty (not sorry for the shameless plugin), while some choose the resolutions over small pleasures, others sacrifice the short-term goals for the long term.
One more long story?
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”
This is a popular misquote that people think is originally from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but it is actually from George Harrison’s “Any Road”.
The conversation between Alice and the cat as quoted in chapter 6 of the book is,
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
The crucial part of the above conversation is the last statement, ‘if you only walk long enough’. Even if you have the right twists and turns, the chances of a good story turning out to be an epic boil down to how long you’re ready to walk on the same.
And, for those thinking of the long-term, make sure the decisions you make lead to an epic story that you can share with your kids and grandkids someday that would keep them in ‘awe’.
P.S: Actually planned to write on the topic “How about you try out a long-term resolution this year?”, but this looked a much-needed story to share.
P.P.S: The original plan was to explain more on the long term thinking and its impact on business, technology and social life, but there is always a TED video that come in handy with a better story. Check out this TED Talk by Ari Wallach on 3 ways to plan for the (very) long term!
So, what’s your story this year?
Sorry, for one more P.P.S: Ironically, the very first story I ever published on Medium was “the will that I will write someday!” as a part of some new year resolution! 😂
