EXERCISE: Scraps from the Past

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 23:58:15 -0400

I found a sheet of paper with four lines on it, and wasn't quite sure what to do with it.  Then I decided it made an exercise for the writing tribe (that would be you!)

No idea why I wrote this note, but... (I'll annotate as we go along)

Warren Buffett (maybe I saw him on the tube?  Magazine?)

Integrity, intelligence, energy (three nice words.  I'd guess he was talking about how important they are :-)

Who would you most like to be like, admire?

Who would you least like to be confused with?

(AHA!   Two guiding light questions.  So, here's your exercise.  Answer these questions.  Who would you most like to be like, who do you admire most?  Who would you least like to be confused with?  Then compare and contrast and play all those pondering games that help us to understand our own thinking.  What is it that makes these two differ in your perception?  Where are they similar (or even the same)?  Go ahead, give it a try, you can show us why these two are guides for life.)

(For bonus points, mix in Integrity, Intelligence, and Energy.  Who knows, maybe your two poles of like and dislike exhibit some characteristics related to these words?)

Write?

EXERCISE: Who Am I?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:22:18 -0500

Based on The Story Factor by Annette Simmons, p. 8-11...

Annette suggests that there are six types of stories that "will serve you well in your efforts to influence others."

The first is "Who I Am" Stories.  "The first question people ask themselves the minute they realize you want to influence them is 'who is this person?'  A story helps them see what you want them to see about you."

She starts with a lengthy story borrowed from Robert Cooper, about his grandfather and his heart attacks.  The punchline (well, one of them, at least) is 'My grandfather said to me, 'Give the world the best you have and the best will come back to you.'  Then his grandfather said, 'I have asked myself -- what if every day I had refused to accept yesterday's definition of my best?  So much would have come back to me...to your father...to you.  But now it won't because I didn't.  It is too late for me.  But it's not too late for you.'  I held my breath along with everyone else there at the somber power of a man's regret at the end of his life.  'It is too late for me.'  Our common humanity means that we, too, will die.  Every person in that audience had a flicker of awareness toward our own deaths and potential regrets."

"Personal stories let others see 'who' we are better than any other form of communication."

"Personal stories allow you to reveal an aspect of yourself that is otherwise invisible."

"I have seen many leaders use the power of a story of a personal flaw to great effect.  The psychologists call it self-disclosure."

Who am I?

What a simple, yet difficult question!  Should I talk about years of work in software development?  Or about the wonder of meeting my wife, and the glory of being loved?

What about 8 years in Japan, with 5 being as the only foreigner in a Japanese company?  And no, unlike others, I was not teaching English -- I was doing strategic planning for the president for one year, then business development (setting up new teams to do workstation/LAN software development in C and X-windows).

Or maybe the last 8, almost 9 years at MIT?  First running an operations group, then building a new center, and now, well, we're figuring out just what I'm doing?

Who am I?

Or what about tink?  The character who grew up while I was living in Japan, with once a day connections to the network, and then picked up writers when it fell of the nodak system and moved it to mit?  The simple truth that I had gotten very upset about nasty things being said about Mike, and then realized it was some other guy -- so I picked a name from the software I was working with that day (tinkerbelle, an X-windows package that chased your mouse with a twinkle) and then made it my own over time.  And at least when someone writes to tink, they almost always mean me!

Who am I?

When a writer acts as narrator, spirit behind the characters, the spinner of destiny and tosser of dice in life, all those bits and pieces that make a story ring with truth -- who are they?

Who are you?

Please to meet you.

Tell us a story.  Short, long, true, or maybe a bit of a fish tale, but tell us a story that is you.

write!

(say, did I mention that there are six types of stories?  I'll tell you about the rest soon...)