There’s a fun little viral challenge making its way through social media at the moment called the 10 year challenge — where you post your profile picture from 10 years ago and compare it to the one of today. All over the internet, people are posting side by side pictures — some in which there are noticeably drastic changes in appearance, while others look relatively the same. Some people are asking the prolific question, “How well did you age?” This is a golden opportunity to sprinkle some storytelling to your audience by taking it a step further — and instead of focusing on how well you aged, focus on how much your story has changed. This is actually an exercise and story prompt I give a lot of my storytelling students — to look back 10 years ago and write about what their life looked like then, versus what your life likes like now. We often don’t even realize — or give ourselves credit for how much we’ve been able to do...

I want to ask you a question. When was the last time you dreamed big? I mean really big??

We are at the beginning of a brand new year so I imagine many of you have spent some time recently imagining and planning out your year — maybe you’ve set some big goals to accomplish this year, maybe you’ve even created a Vision board to help you bring those dreams to life. What I’m talking about today is BiGGER than what you can imagine for just this year.

I think it’s really important to push our imagination to the farthest limits it will go and really visualize the biggest dreams we can think.

Here is a journal exercise I want to give you today: Write down the biggest version of your dream you can imagine. If money, time, logistics, and knowledge were not a factor — how BIG would you like to dream? What would your life and business look like?

I want to encourage you to go crazy here. Write down the most ludicrous version you can dream up. I did this...

There's a storytelling technique I use often and I'm sharing it today on my Amazon Flash Briefing, What's Your Story.

This is really helpful when you feel uninspired, have writers block, or just simply have no idea what to say on your social media channels.

There’s a Christian study practice called Lectio Divina — and this storytelling technique is borrowed from it. Now don’t worry — this has nothing to do with religion — we are just taking a cue from the Lectio Divina principles and applying them to storytelling.

You start by taking a PHOTO and letting it spark a story lurking within you. Similar to Lectio Divinia — you do this in 4 parts.

The first is to simple Observe — study the photo and allow thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, creative sparks come to you.

The second is to Ask — what does is this picture saying to you? What stories are you hearing in your head?

The third step is to Think — how does is this really relevant?...

Check out our daily Flash Briefings on Amazon Alexa, called "What's Your Story"

Enable this Skill on your Alexa device (or Alexa App) and get daily dose of storytelling tips, techniques, ideas and inspiration.  Simply say, "Alexa, Play my Flash Briefing"

Start your day with LIGHTbeamers! 

Check back to this Blog page often, as many briefings will be shared here, too!

I'm excited about producing these daily doses of story ideas, prompts, and inspirations to help you think more about "What's Your Story"

Alexa Flash Briefing: Lessons gleaned from my interview with Nyota Gordon, author of "The Unraveling of Captain Gordon"