Life Coaching: What’s Your Story?

You’ve probably read these or other such stories before, but have you ever thought about what they mean to you?

1944 - Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, “you’d better learn secretarial work or else get married.”
…the hopeful model persisted and became known as Marilyn Monroe.

1954 - Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired a singer after one performance. He told him, “you ain’t goin’ nowhere son, go back to drivin’ a truck.”
…the singer went on to become the “King” of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley.

1962 - four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca Recording Company. The executives were not impressed. They turned down this group of musicians, saying “groups of guitars are on the way out.”
…the group was The Beatles.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. It did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?”

1879 - Thomas Edison invented the light bulb; he tried over 2000 experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, “I never failed. Inventing the light bulb just happened to be a 2000-step process.”

1940 - another young inventor named Chester Carlson began taking his idea to some of the biggest Corporations in the country. They all turned him down. In 1947, after seven long years of rejections, he finally got a tiny company in Rochester, New York, the Haloid Corporation, to purchase the rights to his invention, an electrostatic paper-copying process.
…Haloid became known as Xerox.

Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born prematurely and her chances for survival were slim. When she was 4, she contacted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, leaving her with a paralyzed left leg. At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and finished last. For the next few years every race she entered, she finished last. Everyone told her to quit, but she kept running. Then she actually won a race. And then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.

2007 – Paul Potts was a cell-phone salesman in South Wales. Shy and with low self esteem he kept mainly to himself. He loved opera and with great trepidation he entered a contest called “Britain’s Got Talent”. When he was called to audition, he almost never went. Paul-dropped-jaws. He won the contest and sang before the Queen of England and recently released his first album. (see this amazing story at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelJrP3P7tA )

WOW! …I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but get jazzed and energized when I read these “Rocky” kinds of inspiring stories.

So what do these stories mean to you? I like to think of life as a movie “… in which you are the star, the writer and the director. If there is some part of your movie that you don’t like, get everyone together & re-write it. …it really is that simple.

If you don’t know how to re-write the story of your business or your life …go back to the dreams you once had. What was the reason you got into business in the first place? Now write them down. Here’s a hint; the reason you went into business was most likely to have a better life and your business is/was the vehicle you chose to get you there.

So here’s the million dollar question: What are you willing to do to see your dreams come true? Let me repeat that …it’s important you get this. What are you WILLING TO DO to see your dreams come true? In other words, how bad do you want it, and what action will you take to make it happen?

Let’s look forward to sometime in your near future – What’s your “Rocky” story going to be? Wouldn’t it be a kick for people to be reading your story one day?

“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.”
– Tommy Lasorda

...on your side,
Sieg