The day that you die is when your story will matter most. You cease to exist. You are no longer around. You are incommunicado.
That is the day when your story will matter to most. How will people tell it? How will they communicate it? Will they be passionate about telling your story to others? Even though you are no longer around, will your story have an impact on the life of others and how they choose to live life. Will it impact the decisions they make because they heard your story?
Your life story begins now. Start deciding how you want to tell it. More importantly, decide how you want others to tell it when you aren’t around. Whether you are dead or just not in the presence of others, decide what you want in that story and how it should be told.
Envision the story board and start living it today.
This is so very much what I do with my clients. They must write essays as part of their applications to colleges or MBA programs. No matter what the given topic is, the secret question the admissions officers are asking is, “Who are you? What is your story?”
A great moment came this year one night as I was working with a teenage client who was struggling with these questions. He had a breakthrough moment and pounded out his story. Ripping the paper out of the printer, he ran to the kitchen, holding the essay over his head, and exclaimed to his mother, “It’s ME!”
I told him he should always keep it. It is, indeed, him, at just this moment.