Stories from Our Past Showing the Future

Yesterday I had an interesting experience. I was in a teleclass* and the exercise was to share a story about a time or instance when you felt happy or fulfilled. I am fortunate to have many such stories, but the one that struck me was a speech contest I was in many years ago. My topic was a humorous speech on "Coming to the Big City" and I spoke about the transformation I underwent when I left home and faced new challenges. I realize now that the speech was itself a phase in my transformation, an acknowledgement of shedding painful shyness and the gaining of confidence to speak in public.

The next part of the exercise was to listen to the stengths in the story. As I heard the strengths (public speaking, story telling, transformation, humor), I realized that pulling that story forward to the present showed me that my life since that event was in large part predicted by that speech. Later, I became an attorney, an educator, a manager and a coach and all of the strengths from that story have come into play.

What is your story?

Shaun

*a seminar conducted by phone.

(c) 2005 Shaun Jamison All Rights Reserved.