A Mantra To Keep You Going

 
 
A Mantra To Keep You Going
"Simply Begin"..... I keep chanting this to myself as a mantra.
 
Once upon a time, I set a huge goal with a group of friends to train for a 50 mile trail run.  We trained over the Summer, and often hit the trails of the mountains in North Carolina. The training runs were always long and hard.... but in the end, worth it. We'd climb for hours in the hot blazing sun, all working towards that moment when we'd hit the summit and take in the gorgeous views. 
 
I use those memories whenever I'm feeling stuck or feeling fearful about taking on a new challenge. I remind myself to #simplybegin
 
Sometimes, I want all the answers before I begin. Anyone else with me?
 
I want to know the "how".... but all we really need to know is our WHY -- why do we want this? Why is it important? Why does...
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Brain Dump- A Journaling Exercise for the Cluttered Mind

 
 
Brain Dump - A Journaling Exercise for the Cluttered Mind
As a life-long journal’er, I’m often surprised to meet people who don’t journal. You may be one of them. I find people who don’t journal often feel confused about HOW TO journal, how to get started.

I have to say, I think journaling has been instrumental to my love-affair with storytelling. The two just go hand in hand.

Stories don’t come to me on a silver platter…. I often have to go hunting for them. And more times than not, I’ll find them inside my journal.

One of the things I do the most is a basic brain dump. Whatever I’m thinking, I write. It’s stream of conscious writing where you literally write down every word as it comes to you in your head. It doesn’t always make sense…. but you write it down anyway.

...
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The Stories hiding behind Your Pivotal Moments

 

Listen to our daily blog-casts on Amazon. Enable our "What's Your Story" daily flash briefing and listen using your Alexa device!

 
 I have a journaling exercise for you that can very easily lead to some great storytelling moments to share with your audience.

I want you to examine the Pivotal moments of your life. Everyone has pivotal moments they’ve been through that have affected their career, relationships, finances, spirituality…. so take some time today to examine yours.

Where in your life have you experienced big changes, abrupt endings, new experiences that shaped you and shifted you?

I’ve mentioned on this flash briefing before that one of the best ways to sharpen your storytelling skills is to first sharpen your journaling skills.

Taking some time each day to put pen to paper inside a journal helps you mine the stories that are inside of you….. buried behind a lot of day-to-day monotonous details …. but once you excavate...
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Do you have a vulnerability hangover?

 

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www.facebook.com/groups/lightbeamerscommunity

There’s a little-known side-effect to sharing your story that not a lot of people talk about — so let’s talk about it! 

For a lot of people, the idea of having other people look at them, hear them, and observe them is truly unnerving. Think back to your school years, the courage it took sometimes to raise your hand in class and answer a question. All of the other students in the classroom would turn and look at you while you spoke. 

Or, if you ever had to get up in front of the classroom to make a presentation — you likely felt like a ball of nerves.

As we grow up, that stuff doesn’t necessarily go away — it just manifests into a whole different type fear and feeling. I call it a Vulnerability Hangover. 

Part of learning how to share your story is learning...

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Don't Try to Boil the Ocean

 

I heard an expression last week I’d never heard before… and it’s one that keeps boiling to the surface, so to speak, in a way that’s captured my attention.

As I mentioned yesterday on this flash briefing, I hosted my first LIVE event in Dallas this past weekend…. and all last week, leading up to the event, I was a buzz with activity, trying to make all of the last-minute arrangements and take care of details.

Every Thursday, I do a FB live interview called Bright lights — and the women I was interviewing, Susan McCuistion, was sharing her ideas behind her social campaign called StandFor … which is all about focusing on the things we stand FOR rather than the things we stand against.

She was talking about how often times, we get so intent on standing against something …. like standing against discrimination…. standing against war…. standing against hate…. that what we end up doing is calling in more of...

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Turn On Your Flashlight

 

 

Listen to our daily blog-casts on Amazon. Enable our "What's Your Story" daily flash briefing and listen using your Alexa device!

I’m coming off a huge weekend high, as I launched and hosted my first LIVE event in Dallas Texas on Saturday — the first Storytelling Symposium to empower women.

4 other Speakers joined me for the half-day workshop, as we poured into the audience our best advice, tips, and inspiration to help them step more fully into their own story — and use it to shine a light into the world.

I shared with the audience a vision I had recently while meditating at a women’s retreat I attended last month.

The meditation had me imagining a golden light shining down on top of me. I immediately saw this light in my minds eye, and could see myself as a dark shadow under this golden light.

And in that moment, I heard a click — and it was as if I turned on a flashlight. Suddenly, the dark shadow was gone and below that big golden...

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You Can Be Like Debi

 

Listen to our daily blog-casts on Amazon. Enable our "What's Your Story" daily flash briefing and listen using your Alexa device! 

Every Monday I share a photo in my online community for the members there to practice their own storytelling skills using the photo as a visual trigger.

I want to share with you an example of how one of the Community Member’s used this prompt recently.

The photo was a winter wonderland scene where the entire landscape was covered in beautiful white snow, except for one tree, that was sticking out in the middle of the photo — a beautiful red Japanese maple tree — the contrast between the bright red leaves against the all white landscape is what made photo interesting.

One of the women in my community later shared how she’d taken that photo and written an entire post for her LinkedIn Profile.

Debi is an accountant, who has her own business helping other small business owners with their accounting and bookkeeping needs.

She...
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A Critical Piece of Your Story -- The Transformation

 

Listen to our daily blog-casts on Amazon. Enable our "What's Your Story" daily flash briefing and listen using your Alexa device! 

Yesterday on the briefing, I took you through an exercise to help you work on your origin story — one of the 3 foundational pieces of storytelling you need to share with your audience. Your origin story is a piece of historical context that you can trace back to the beginning of your own story

Next, I want to introduce you to the 2nd foundational tool, which is your Transformation story.

With each of these foundational stories, you want to consider the message you are spreading to your audience with your work. Whatever it is you do, however you have an impact on others -- that’s what you want to keep in mind as you evaluate your stories.

Your Transformational story is that moment or series of events in your life & business when you experienced a big shift — a complete change in your perspective.

It’s sort of like...

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What is Your Origin Story?

 

Listen to our daily blog-casts on Amazon. Enable our "What's Your Story" daily flash briefing and listen using your Alexa device! 

If you’ve just stumbled upon this Flash Briefing, or my blog, you might not really know who I am or why I talk so much about Storytelling.

So let's dig into something called an Origin Story.... 

It's part of the 3 foundational pieces of storytelling I teach because every business owner and personal of influence needs to have these in their arsenal. 

I’m here to help make storytelling easy for you — so you can get busy using it in your business and in your marketing to attract your ideal audience and grow your impact.

Here's a peek at my own origin story, then we'll talk about what this looks like for you....

For over 25 years, I’ve been working in the world of storytelling….as a journalist, writer, video producer, and speaker.

Way back when I was a kid even, I was fascinated by stories. I would stay...

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The New Marketing of Social Media

Let’s talk about why your story matters and how Social Media has changed the game.

We have this thing now called old marketing and new marketing. Old marketing were the adverts and articles you’d find in magazines, newspapers, and billboards.

The new marketing is based more than ever in your ability to tell a good story…. and to do it in a social atmosphere, and reach so many more people as a result.

To some people, this feels very overwhelming, and I hear you!! Many of my clients lament to me they just want to give up because it feels so hard to put themselves out there… and many of them are so worried they won’t get it right!

Instead of looking at social media as rulebook you have to follow…. something that’s on your daily to-do list and a box you have to check off…. what if you viewed it as an opportunity to just have creative freedom to say, do, be whatever and whoever you want.

When I talk to women about weaving their...

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