As a speaker coach I get to help people tell their own story. Novels teach so much about the process each person goes through to decide what they want to tell, and to whom.
When I was small, I loved books about people, especially those that blurred real life with fiction: children just like me who discovered magical powers or did amazing things with their friends. (Remember A Wrinkle in Time and The Magical Faraway Tree?) They helped me imagine what my life could be.
Of course, we don’t usually live the lives our child dreamed. When I was a twelve I wanted to be married by 25, work as a detective or actress and be very rich! That was literally the whole list.
The (more grownup-oriented) Prix Goncourt-winning novel by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr reveals more complexity about how reading helps us understand our own lives. A character in the book proposes that any version of adulthood betrays the child who dreamed of what we could be.
While I never got married, worked as a detective or became wealthy, what I actually did turned out to be far more magical and interesting. And yet it was nothing I could have dreamed up.
How does the life you lived differ from what you imagined? Perhaps you raised a child who now cares for others, created a workplace where people felt welcome, started a business with friends that changed the course of history. Or maybe you proved 60 wasn’t too old to join the circus, or you shared your culture with new generations.
Just as novels about other people spark your imagination, when you tell your story to others, they get new ideas. Through the speaker coaching process, a lot of speakers unpack what they thought life should or could have been – and then realise, “Oh my, this is actually what happened and what I have achieved”.
And this discovery allows the telling of their stories to create the possibility of new futures.
Image: Charles Parker, Pexels
STRATEGIC SPEAKER COACH RACHAEL WEST 