Post 2: Writing my story and getting who I am

Into the core of the red maze I go!  Most of today has been spent while focusing on my personal story, things like:

• Who am I?
• Why am I qualified to guide people in their transformation?
• What are my credentials?
• What are my successes?

I started working on this earlier in the week and had a 35 year track record of my career to cover.

I stopped and put it down for a few days, yet this story was still rumbling around inside of me.  I didn’t sleep well after I began writing my story which had stirred up old feelings from the various times of my life both good and not great.  Additionally, it was like going public without my clothes on, it felt like I was about to be seen nude.   I’ve been a great editor of my life and only sharing with the public the best parts of myself, after I had gone through my process of dealing with the challenges.  I wondered if I had anything worthy of sharing with others???   The traditional guidelines of success usually looked like being a Slum-dog Millionaire or overcoming some health issue to be in the Olympics.

Could a simple woman facing average challenges be one of my credentials?   Challenges such as: being a single mother; balancing a career with parenting; overcoming the male dominated culture that faced women in sales; how I turned into an author and became a teacher; how I survived countless romantic and marriage disasters; how I survived when I was faced with great loss; how the only thing that got me through was my spiritual connection, gut feelings and my endless quest to live a passionate life.

Today the answer is a resounding YES!  There are lots of people who can relate to being an average person and the basic challenges that I have gone through in life.  I haven’t made millions yet, and I basically very healthy, I have basic needs and challenges.

The red maze led me through the past and as I wrote it all out, I began to see that everything in my life actually had prepared me for what I was about to launch.  Today as I went back through my story, I highlighted the sections with a header, such as: Business Owner failure leads me to a career in Sales;  I had a natural “gut” instinct; I learned the value of being in relationship with my numbers and so on.

As I highlighted each aspect of my career experience, I saw how much I had learned from the seeming failures and delighted in my wins.  I could see that my ability to turn the lemons into lemonade was my biggest claim to fame and my unique selling proposition.  How many people can relate to taking their basic gifts, talents and skills, combine it with some horse-sense and turn it into a product? It is what every good cook knows is that you can turn the same recipe into a pancake, a biscuit, or a cake depending on how much you vary each ingredient — they all have the same ingredients of flour, egg, oil, and water.   It’s how you vary the ingredients in your recipe that makes the difference.  Business is the same as cooking.  Who I am is a really good cook!

Things I now know:

1.  There is no such thing as a success without a failure first.

2.  The ingredients of your life are part of a recipe that will turn out a perfect cake.

3.  It isn’t what you know as much as how you use what you do know to take action.

See you tomorrow for the next Post!  Be sure and comment, let me know you were here.

Thanks,

Jan Stringer