I occasionally talk to myself, do you? I’m telling myself my story. Okay maybe you’re thinking I’m one of those people that walk around having a running conversation with myself – nope that’s not me. I actually make a date to talk to myself. I’m sure this is starting to sound strange but stick with me here.
Like many people I think yeah, I’ve lived a somewhat interesting life doing somewhat interesting things and maybe it would be fun to tell my story. But what the heck – that is a HUGE task. I’ve lived a bunch of years and a few decades (or more), so the collection of stories and memories has built up. I know when I do share my stories that it’s fun to relive them and who knows maybe one day my kids will want to know a few more stories too.
Okay so here’s where the talking to myself comes in. I started over a year ago. Every month on my birthdate I sit down and talk to myself. I’ve got my birthdate (17th) on my calendar so I don’t forget. I make a cup of tea, sit down and turn on my recording app and I start talking. I love the free app Voice Record Pro.
I started by telling stories about the earliest years of my life and am slowly working my way forward. Every once in a while, when something fabulous and memorable happens (like competing in the world championships for coastal rowing in October for instance), I will jump ahead in time and record that story.
Generally speaking I’m working my way through and talking about where I was, who I was with, what I was up to and how I felt about it. These are the kinds of questions I ask people when I’m interviewing them. It’s very fun and easy to do. I got inspired to do this from a book I was reading.
Once you have the recordings done or a time frame completed (early years for instance), the audio files can be transcribed. I use an on-line service called Speechpad. It’s cost effective and gives me a word document to use for the next step which is distilling the story down into nuggets of memory. At Visual Life Stories, we are well trained in this edit and distill phase so get in touch if you need help.
I mentioned this idea at the Inspired Living Summit a couple of weeks ago and I was so thrilled when one guy came up to me at the break and said he had already put it on his calendar! Let me know how it’s going as you start talking to yourself and if you need someone to help ask you questions, I can do that too.
