“…of far greater power to you are not my stories but yours. Which Stories have you heard that shape your life? What do you believe? I mean what you really believe, when you are asked to lift the Swords in your life, or lay them down. What makes who you are? We can find answers in the Stories we tell.” – Randall Wallace (screenwriter of Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, Pearl Harbor).
Posts Tagged With: Story
What were you Made for?
What were you made for? What is your Purpose? Your Story?
Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of…? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling…of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? …All the but hints of it — tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echos that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” – C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
The Untamed Find Their Story
Jason Clark writes in his book Surrendered and Untamed:
When I was a kid it was possible for boys to kill evil giants and men to walk on water. When I was a kid it was possible to live inside a whale, a raging fire and a lions den. When I was a kid it was possible to pray for the sick and watch them recover. Shadows could heal, and the dead could be raised. When I was a kid I believed that with God, all impossibilities were possible.
But now Clark, as an adult, finds that this wonder has been turned into “tamed three point sermons.”
Even if one isn’t theistic in their beliefs, most will understand what Clark is writing about. No, it’s more than understanding. They feel it burning within them. We grow up searching for purpose, our story. Grand plans are made and lofty thoughts pondered. Nothing is impossible. The wonder of life and creation is still with us. Then, one day, we wake up in a land that looks nothing like what we imagined.
Reality, some people call it. Life.
These are excuses. And not very good ones.
Sometimes it takes time to find our part in the Story. Everything conspires to put a stop to uncovering what we were meant to be or do. Forces in the world want us to give up, throw in the towel. Every once in awhile there are glimpses of where we should be.
Memories. The sunset. The stars. Children who have yet been trained to give up, forget and not see.
Here’s to never giving up. Being revolutionary. Standing up to the status quo and those who say you cannot or should not, or won’t ever be.
Find your story. Don’t stop until you do. Not ever.
Categories: Books, Uncategorized
Tags: Jason Clark, purpose, Story, Surrendered and Untamed
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Creating Your Author Brand (Pt. 2): Your Authentic Voice
It’s my privilege to welcome Lisa to my blog today. I’ve known her for several years now and have watched her journey through difficult circumstances to find her bold, unique voice that is at once compassionate and compelling. Who better to share her story of discovering her authentic voice than this beautiful woman who has fought for it so hard?
I spent ten years trying to brand myself.
If I wasn’t thinking about my personal brand as a writer, maker, and coach, I was working at digital agencies large and small that specialized in branding, reading up on the subject, teaching on it, and writing about it. For two and a half years I even ran a boutique branding agency that worked exclusively with creative entrepreneurs. I watched dozens of writers, artists, coaches, healers, and the like wrestle deeply with how to “show up” in their marketplace.
By the time…
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How to Create Your Author Brand (Pt. 1)
Your author brand is nothing more than your authentic story.
Let’s set aside all the fancy talk of platforms and networking, fonts and social media strategies, logos and websites, brand archetypes and all the “expert advice.” Because none of that matters until you know your story.
You probably think your story is your book. Your words on the page. And you’d be partially correct. But that’s not your whole story.
Your story is the experiences and struggles that inspired you to write your book. Your story is all the late nights and early mornings typing away while your kids slept. Your story is the hidden wounds you work through with your characters and the message in your heart you’re desperate for people to know.
You’re living your story right now.
And the story that you’re living is just as important – if not more – than the story you’re telling…
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What is Your Choice?
So many people get lulled into a day-to-day existence of hitting their marks, getting stuff done, running place to place — to do it all again the next day. And the next.
Every so often there are tuggings on our minds, glimpses and reminders, that we are meant for more than just staring into televisions, playing with our phones and letting society tell us who we are and what we should be.
For brief moments we realize that we are part of an epic tale. All is not what it seems to be. A war rages in us, around us. A question demands an answer: What is your part in the story? Will you embrace it or walk away into a bottomless abyss of whatever others have decided for you?
Milena chose to step through the veil. Ethan conquered the Darkness and embraced his strength. Kane stopped fearing what he was. Duncan would find his place among those like him. Kyra made the shadows flee from her. They all stood together against the impossible.
Among the Shadows not only tells their stories, but of what simmers in us all.
Categories: fantasy, Fiction
Tags: Among the Shadows, Darrick Dean, Story, veil, Watchers, Watchers of the Light
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“I must tell you a story”
Why do people read? Why do writers tell stories? in Epic, John Eldredge writes:
It goes far deeper than entertainment…Stories nourish us…we hope to find in someone else’s story something that will help us understand our own…Stories shed light on our lives. As Daniel Taylor has written, “Our stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what we are to do…” That is why, if you want to know someone, you need to know their story. “But in order to make you understand,” explained novelist Virginia Woolf, “to give you my life, I must tell you a story.”
Tell yours, read that of others. Find your place in the Story.
The Power of Story
It has almost become a cliché in books and film. A woman that needs rescued or a man fighting for his girl. Even though women are no longer helpless maidens in distress in most tales, there is a fundamental mythos underlying these stories, and the modern iterations. Stasi Eldredge writes in Captivating:
“…every man longs for a Beauty to rescue. He really does. Where would Robin Hood be without Marian, or King Arthur without Guinevere? …There is nothing that inspires a man to courage so much as the woman he loves.”
All true and perhaps that’s why the storyline never gets old. No matter how old-fashioned social “experts” claim it is, this is the story people want to read. And perhaps, as in many stories, it is a reflection of an underlying reality.
The power of Story is that it reminds us, awakens us, to undeniable essences of our humanity.
Whose Story are You In?
Are you an extra in someone else’s play, or are you the author of your own drama? …you must become both the author and star of your own story…However, too many of us succumb to a weak internal story informed by flawed but popular beliefs. We are reactionary to objective events, easily buffeted by the winds of change…we end up being extras in someone else’s story, reacting our way through life…[we all] have a unique reason for existing and a unique offering to the world…we must look deep within to find it. – Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal
And on 
Darrick Dean 