“I don’t know how to start my story. Where do I begin?”
It’s one of the questions I get the most. You start with a moment that made you who you are today. For a lot of us, it happens between the ages of 9 and 12. And it’s probably something that you were told you couldn’t do. Defining moments are great stories because they define who you are going forward.
Look at every great athlete, the best of all time, like Michael Jordan. He’s the best basketball player of all time so you would think his story would be that as a little kid he was just the greatest basketball player ever. Not true. Michael Jordan got cut from his varsity high school basketball team twice. Yet he ends up being the greatest player in the history of a sport. How could those two things be true? Those two things are always true because of defining moments. The moment that his high school coach cut him, he decided, “I’m going to right that wrong and outwork everybody, and I’m going to become the greatest of all time.”
You might think you don’t have one. You do, because there’s no way you got to where you are today without one. Mine happened at age 9. I tried out for little league, mainly because I wanted to play with my brother. They cut me. The moment I got that news, one of two things was going to happen — and this is true for all of us — I would either fight or stop. We quit and our hearts fill with Novocain for the rest of our lives. Or we fight.
This is what I want you to do: watch the video above and then take 5 seconds to think of the moment in your life that makes you most proud. Then, forget about it because it’s probably not a good story. Take another 5 seconds to think of your lowest moment; that moment where you looked around and there were no answers. Now that’s a story. That’s the one I want you to tell.
