Telling a Great Story

I was on a flight across the Midwest a few years ago, staring out the window at a snowy landscape six miles below. My mind wondered to what ranchers down there must do when a foot of snow covers the ground. I thought about how they still have to get up every morning and bring feed to their cattle. How they must long, just once in a while, to stay in their warm bed with the covers pulled up around their neck and dream about another life.

Then I realized, we all tend to want something other than what's in front of us. It's what we do as humans. A different life, any life could be better than the one we have. That's what happens when we fail to see the fullness of the story we're living, right here, right now. I don't have to go to the other side of the world to live a better story. The best story often beckons from my own back yard. It's there that I can find a life of influence and abundance. A life that matters. I can be a character that makes a difference in my own story, and the stories of those I know.

There’s a sign that hangs in our living room. It says, "Your story begins at home." That painted piece of lumber helps me remember that the most precious things in my life are the ones closest to me. It really is the relationships in my life that feed me. My relationship with God, with my wife, my children, my grandchildren, and with those that I love to be around. Wherever I travel, I always long to get back home. It's my grounded place, my place of peace. Home is the launching pad for my greatest adventures and my best stories.

Sometimes as storytellers, we need to start with knowing our own story, before we can truly understand how to tell someone else's. That sense of knowing my own story helps me to be a better storyteller.