We had checked in, gotten our attendee bags, bought Storyline tshirts and then were just waiting for the doors to the atrium to open. I said to Ben, "Do you think Glennon and Shauna and Bob are just mingling somewhere in here with everyone?" Before he had time to answer we saw Glennon AND Shauna walking TOGETHER across the room. Ben said, "This is your chance! Go talk to them!"
I didn't waste the opportunity and went right over to them both. Oh my goodness how I love these women. They are two of my very favorite writers and people in the world. When I grow up I want to be more like them. Their words and wisdom and optimism are just.... Wow.
So getting to see both of them at the same time was a huge moment to say the least. I'm such a fan.
As soon as they walked away I realized I had forgotten to give them the friendship bracelets I had made for them. So I went on over to talk to them both again. Glennon was pumped to pick her 'Merica earthquake and I had her pick one for her sister too. Then I let Shauna choose one and she picked the one I predicted that she would. I think friendship bracelets are more Glennon's style than Shauna's, but they both tied them on right away. Glennon told me she would wear her's on stage today for good luck.
I didn't know if I'd run into any one unexpected today but quickly spotted my friend Becca Currey from Hope College where we were SIBs together. She was there with Sara, another SIB, that came after me. It was so good to see them and have a little bit of Hope here at Willow.
This Storyline conference is basically the perfect storm of my tribe of writers-- Bob Goff, Shauna Niequist, Glennon Doyle Melton and Bob Goff all in one place. It's two days of sessions of talks with people that I can't write down every word fast enough, but I still tried. The following are all of my notes from today and they are lengthy to say the least. Feel free to read every word or just scroll through to the speaker names you recognize.
Shauna Niequist- Introduction
Ideas can change us and community can shape us.
It's never too late to start living a better story.
We all win when we create things together.
Donald Miller
You are at home here. Take off your shoes when you come in, leave with someone else's. It's a spiritual thing--we'll figure out the metaphor later.
Story- What kind of life is interesting or meaningful or exciting.
I encourage you all to spend two years with screen writers like I did so they can tell you why your life sucks.
I learned this formula of how to tell a story and then I thought, what if I lived out of this formula.
You know a movie is good when people keep sitting in the theatre as the credits are rolling. So I went recently and saw Toy Story 3, the greatest screen play ever written.
I feel a sense of gratitude, not for the film, but that I get to be alive. I think, maybe this thing is more special than I thought. Let's live in a way that at our funerals people just keep sitting. We want people to say that their life shows me that this could be more than I thought.
There are 7 Common Elements of Stories
Character- that's you of course, you have to want something
if they want nothing or it's not clearly defined then there is no story
then the story question is, Are you going to be able to get it done?
Problem- it can't come easy without conflict and tragedy
conflict makes it meaningful and it shapes you
Guide- the person who understands them and helps
who is out there in front of you, who has wisdom?
Plan- usually pretty simple, something we can count on
Action- call to move, a story is only told when it's lived
Success- what's at stake? what would success look like?
Failure- what happens if you don't live this story?
"What do I want?" Can your boss/spouse/friends answer that question about you?
Are we willing to engage in conflict? There's always a redemptive side.
What's your plan?
What action do we need to take?
What will life look like if we live it out?
What will life look like if we don't?
Viktor Frankl recognized that Freud says that man lives to find pleasure. But Viktor says man looks for meaning and if they don't find it they numb themselves with pleasure.
1. Project that serves others
2. Intimate, safe relationships
3. Redemptive perspective on our suffering
"God did not create us to live in reaction, but to be co-creators of a meaningful life."
My friend was telling me that he thinks life is meaningless and I said to him, "What if life is not meaningless? What if just your life is meaningless?"
What if God has given you a blank book. You can write what you want, there is that much freedom. All the elements are there but it's just boring. But what if the story could be a page turner?
What if you didn't even have time to question if your life is meaningful?
My life isn't nearly as exciting as all the other speakers that are here, but this is the life God gave me and I'm loving it.
What will the world miss if you do not tell your story?
The dominant way that people consume stories is through us. Story changes the moral compass in the brain.
What if the story you live shapes the moral compass of the people around you?
What's worth living for?
What's worth arguing about?
Jenna- She saw Jars of Clay in concert, wrote them a letter and they offered her a job as a Jr in college. They told her to come after graduation and run Blood Water Mission in subsaharan Africa. She's now drilled over 1,000 wells.
Todd- He keeps believing and pressing and giving and understanding and shaping the conversation of what's happening in the Middle East.
God does something when we stand up and say, "I want to do something with you. I want to build something with you."
We bond when we do stuff together. God's dying to do something with us.
Katherine- Wall Street investor finds a kindred spirit with violent inmates. She started a program in a jail for all of these inmates, runs a classroom of all these adult violent males. If 1 of them tried to hurt her she said the rest of them would try to hurt him.
Tom- Director of movies like Ace Ventura and making bank but totally miserable. So he sold everything and moved into a double wide trailer and now he only wears t-shirts.
How did God wire me? How is it unique and special and different? Figure that out and then you won't be living someone else's script.
Pete- Coach of the Seattle Seahawks. One of the most people I've ever met. He told me that 10% of his life is football. He's not a Jesus guy but he said, "There's something in the cosmos that makes me want to love people." I know who that is... Santa Clause!
Pete hears about all these teens in LA getting killed. So he goes in to LA and just meets and talks to people and makes friends. He starts "A Better LA" and lives a story that is very different.
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to their graves with their song still in them." -Henry David Thoreau
Propaganda
Scars, we like to call them life tattoos. And they're beautiful.
Prop, as his friends call him, is a really fantastic slam poet. I'd seen a video of his before where he presents the whole gospel in about two minutes. It was really awesome to see him perform to different pieces in person.
Michael Hyatt
I vowed that I would never be like my dad. That vow shaped my life. I took control of my life.
I thought that I had it all together until my business failed, my health failed, my marriage was struggling. Being in control didn't work either.
So many people live their lives drifting, mesmerized by everything around them. They're not intentional about where they're going.
Drifting and Driven are both the default life, the unconscious way to live.
The 3rd option is Designed. Be the story teller of your own life and co-create it with God.
There are 3 major questions:
1. How do you want to be remembered?
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever used to help me make the big choices in life." -Steve Jobs
2. What's important to you?
The myth is that you can do everything. You have to have a set of priorities. The choices we make are important because they shape the meaning of our life.
You can do anything, you just can't do everything you want.
Write down the categories of your life and rank them so you know what's important.
The power of priorities is that they give us the power to say "yes" to the things that matter and "no" to the things that don't. It's usually not even a choice between what is good or bad but between what is good and best.
"The difference between successful and very successful people is that they say no to almost everything." -Warren Buffett
3. What single brave decision do you need to make today?
Planning is just a fancy version of procrastination. We just need to do the next right thing.
"If you're going to get fired, cause it." I needed to do what was right and not spend the next few years doing what someone else just told me to do.
"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." -Neale Donald Walsch
This is your one and only life. It's really a gift. Do what matters.
We left for lunch with three of Ben's YL people and my friends Audrey, Katie and Abby who are all Butler/YL people in Indy. We went to Giordano's for lunch and ate so much delicious pizza.
Donald Miller
Great characters know what they want. When we define what we're heading towards life makes a lot more sense.
Katniss, Winston Churchill, Mother Theresa-- we know what they all want.
Meaning and conflict go together--every writer has to make choices because you can't do everything.
Could we analyze our own lives and say what needs to go?
When you focus you can have a more productive and efficient life.
If something isn't growing or changing then it is already dead.
Saying "I want to do ______" will threaten some people. So some people revert back to who they used to be to avoid the tension.
We gain stability under thrust, pick somewhere to go to and just do it.
We fear the responsibility of our own agency.
Does God have a specific plan for my life? I actually think no. This idea has messed up a lot of people and caused really boring lives.
What if your relationship with God looked more like a dad coloring with his daughter than a dad telling his kid exactly what to do.
Does this honor God? Is it true of who I am? Am I going to need God? Will this make my heart light up?
God is not passive-aggressive. He's direct. And fairly temporary--let's do this and then move on.
I think we just have to chose something we want and go for it.
When people work with their passions it's like working with jet fuel.
Principles of Decision Making
1. Where God commands we must obey
2. Where there is no command, God gives us freedom (& responsibility) to chose
3. Where there is no command, God gives us wisdom to chose
4. When we have chosen what is moral and wise, we must trust the sovereign God to work all the details together for good
God says you have passion and talents. He's waiting. Do something together.
Creators are unbelievably powerful. We were made in the image of God and he makes some really cool stuff.
It's in us to create something for other people. We shouldn't be afraid of it.
5 Regrets of the Dying
1. they ignored their dreams
2. they worked too much
3. they didn't say what they thought
4. they wished they'd made more friends
5. they wished they'd chosen to be more happy
5 Commands for the Living
1. don't ignore your dreams
2. keep work and relationships in balance
3. project your God-given self onto the world
4. cultivate deep friendships
5. be grateful
Where am I going? Pick a point on the horizon, roll back the throttle and go.
Glennon Doyle Melton
Then it was time for my girl Glennon. I love that she is so authentically her. Ben says I had a minor freak out when she got up to speak. I love her presence and her ability to be really present and that she laughs at herself and that she's just so real.
AND she was wearing my friendship bracelet. This is a big deal.
Glennon means the girl from the valley. A check out girl asked about it and I said it was fitting because I'd been living in the valley lately. And she said, "Oh, but on the mountain tops the air is thin. And at the top of the mountain there is barely any room and all you can do is stand there. But in the valley there is water, that's where life happens." So I am a valley girl.
I got sober 12 years ago, on mother's day, when I found out that I was pregnant.
It was an invitation to show up, to come back to life.
God is not some crappy middle schooler who sends us 1 invitation and then just shuns us forever if we reject it.
I think He's always working on a new invitation for us. If we're alive then we're invited.
My mantra became: just do the next right thing.
My life looked very different than what I was seeing in shiny commercials of motherhood. I was dripping with children and marriage... wow.... wow.
Shame came creeping in, the way out of shame is art and meaning.
The invitation from God was to write, but it seemed boring and totally unsexy.
I wrote this list of 25 things about myself on facebook and it blew up in half an hour. I came back to my computer and it had a billion shares and I had 50 emails and 7 messages from my sister that said, "What did you do?!" and I thought, "Noooooooooooo."
But all these people said, "Me too."
This whole truth telling thing is like a key that unlocks people. This is interesting. Our surface stuff is all different, it's harder. So I went deeper, because the deep stuff is what we all have in common. But it's scare the bajeezus out of some people.
I've stopped believing that there is anything so horrible inside of me that I can't bring it out into the light. Truth telling is setting me free.
If you didn't know me better you might think I'm this mountain top person because I've got this blog and book and non-profit. But we are all messy and human the whole way through. Because I face my demons head on each day they're a hell of a lot less scary.
I'm invited to show up and speak up and create simply because I'm a child of God and so are you.
If we're living life right we recognize each moment as an invitation. I don't know why I'm being invited, but I trust the inviter.
When I was in the absolute worst moment of my life I got the most beautiful and sacred invitation of my life. I get to be Chase's momma. And I have these two little girls and this husband and this blog as living proof that we can do something beautiful.
We don't have to get ready first.
Be a soul, not a role. Roles are temporary.
I am small and the world is big. And whatever is holding the world together can hold me and my life together too.
What do I love? What is beauty? How do I fill up with it?
Be Still
Half the battle is starting and half the battle is not quitting.
The power of the creator is to sit with life's discomfort and turn it into art.
Be Ordinary
Special people don't move us, but the ordinary people that we can relate to are the special ones.
Be your favorite version of your future self. I don't have a plot in mind, but I have a character in mind.
What do I have to do to become that future self?
I did it! I'm done! (curtsy)
Glennon Doyle Melton and Shauna Niequist Q and A Breakout on writing
These answers are from both Shauna and Glennon which is hopefully not too confusing...
I'm going to show up and serve the people I'm supposed to.
Content matters. It will find it's way. Probably not in the way you expected.
When I go back to old post I sometimes see that I am so very different now. You change. You should change.
The deeper you connect, the less tendency you have to compare. You will see people as humans and not constantly compare.
Sometimes envy can point you in the right direction. Envy might be bottled up admiration. So when I read something I'm really jealous of I repost it and say, "Read this! It's really awesome. I love it!"
And people like to be liked so then they let you in to their circle and then there is friendship and connecting.
The people you're really jealous of are probably just the people you need to get to know better.
You have to be brave enough to tell your own story and kind enough to not write someone else's.
I get written permission from everyone I write about.
I take a story in my own life, the little moments that I can collect, where there is more going on under the surface.
I write down everything right away, all the details and the things I won't remember later like the way the room smelled or what their voice sounded like. Then I let it marinate and sit between 6 weeks and 6 months. Then you can see what it's really about. You can go deep and make it universal.
I know I'm a really good mom. And I love my work. And I love that my kids see that I love my work.
You do life year by year because things change. You and your partner and your kid need different things each year. We talk about our dreams and hopes and the meaning behind it--not just the logistics.
You train your brain to look for stories. A good day is a good day. A bad day is a good story. The more you train your brain to look for things the more you'll notice.
You keep a notecard in your back pocket or email yourself constantly. You keep a pantry of ideas and you won't run out of things to write about.
Writers don't care about right and wrong. They write what's true. It might be completely different tomorrow because we're all different each day.
Be willing to be human. Things will be messy and misunderstood sometimes.
You grow your platform by serving the people you already have. Show up every day. Content wins over time. Always do it your right way. What's authentic to you?
I don't need this to be huge. I just need to keep earning the right to be heard over and over.
When you find a voice you love in writing it's probably close to your own. So show up and try that for awhile. You'll find your own.
We just have to be tough enough to not quit. When you're truth telling you're doing it because you believe deep, deep down that we're all the same.
When things feel scary, when I've been doing a lot, I need to circle in real tight with my tribe, with my people.
Find people who are great at some specific thing and ask them to help you. You're building a little tribe and everyone can do that. You don't have to do any of this alone.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
Great content over time.
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