Often, when our lives shift or hit a major turning point, we suddenly find ourselves in a new role as the messenger.  It is during these life experiences that we are forced to dig deeper.  Our reality, as we know it, changes and we see the world differently.  We realize that sometimes our biggest fears can materialize and that, when they do, we can survive.  Upon learning the tools of how to get back on track, we often become so inspired by what we’ve learned that we feel a responsibility to deliver our message to others that are going through the same life experience.  This concept continues to fascinate me and was on my mind when I came across the book, The Millionaire Messenger.

Brendon Burchard, author of The Millionaire Messenger, tells us the story of a near-fatal car accident that changed his life.  This major turning point led Brendon to ask himself three questions: “Did I live?  Did I love?  Did I matter?“ After pondering these three questions, he stumbled upon a messenger on television (Tony Robbins) whose message was simple: You have unlimited personal power to live the life you desire and make a difference, and I can help you. Brendon felt empowered to read and listen to the messages of other self-help and business world gurus including David Bach, John Maxwell and Seth Godin.  He began wondering — if they could deliver such important messages, why couldn’t he?  He devoured all the knowledge he could about becoming an expert.

Brendon discovered that members of the expert community focus their efforts in two ways: first, relating with their audience to gain their trust and understand their needs and ambitions. Then, creating useful information, content and products that add value to their audience and teach them how to live a better life or grow their businesses.

During Brendon’s inspiring two-year journey, he reached millions of people with his message and earned over $4.6 million teaching others how to improve their lives and share their own message. I was so inspired by this book and its message that I read it twice.  The information is so accessible and Brendon inspires you to believe that anything is possible.  It’s all about knowing your message and putting it into play.  It’s about serving others and creating purpose.

I recently read another book that delivers an equally powerful message but from more of a spiritual perspective.  It’s called, May The Angels Be With You: Access Your Spirit Guides and Create The Life You Want by celebrated psychic, Gary Quinn. Similar to Brendon, Gary also uses his life story to move in this new life direction.  Gary recounts the incredible story of how he first discovered his own angelic messenger in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at a crucial turning point in his life.  He tells the heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring story of how he struggled with his psychic gifts as a child and then, reconnected with them as an adult.

Gary shows us how to believe in our own possibility by introducing us to the idea that we are each surrounded by a number of angels.  Everything we need is around us.  We just need to learn how to draw from it.

When I reflect back now on my own turning point, I understand that the universe giving me a nudge was the best thing that could have happened to me.  It pointed me in a more authentic direction.  It led me to write my book, Story Line: Finding Gold In Your Life Story, which also came from two pivotal life events in my story. It also led to creating a six-figure business from scratch that is all about serving others and helping them to attain their dreams.  It provided me with a platform to deliver my teachings about “developing from within” and “finding gold in your life story.”

Our major turning points in life have a purpose behind them.  It is our job to seek out the message and accept our role as the messenger.  In doing so, we may find that we can turn tragedy into triumph and find our life’s calling in the process.

Your past, with all its beautiful and haunted memories, is written in your mind. What if you could learn how to access your past and “re-truth” it? In other words, what if you could re-write your past? Would you find this liberating?  Your past and learning how to mine it is what connects you to your calling in life.  No matter who you are or what business you are in, your story is what connects you to others.  Understanding your story is key. By creatively reflecting, analyzing, understanding and recasting what happened in your past, you can become more empowered and fulfilled in your present.

My publisher, Michael Wiese Productions, recently introduced me to John Schuster, author of The Power Of Your Past: The Art of Recalling, Recasting and Reclaiming. They felt that John and I would have a lot in common because of my book, Story Line: Finding Gold In Your Life Story; in it, I teach writers how to mine the gold from their pasts and fictionalize their truth in their writing. I was immediately fascinated by the concept of John’s book.  I could see the connection in our themes.  My book explores how to look into your past, draw from your emotional truth and fictionalize it in your writing while John’s book delves into how you can actually ‘extract’ those truths from your past.  I was particularly intrigued by his concept that you can “re-truth” your past.  John writes, “Once you begin to ‘re-truth’ your past with balanced and thorough reflection, you are more free to choose a future that you want, not the ones determined by your compressions.”

John explains, “Society and its institutions, and your specific interaction with them—in the form of taunting fraternity brothers, an aunt who taught you how to garden, a lifelong friend who has always gotten who you are, a boss who demoted you over a mishandled project—all these and way more evoked and compressed you into the current version of you.  Let’s more thoroughly check out your interaction with those surroundings with specific methodology.  We want to fully understand our essential gifts on the plus side, and we want to re-do our less than useful ways of being and doing on the minus side.”

Most of us are afraid to go into our pasts in any real way. We distract ourselves in the present.  We hide some of that discomfort through success and achievement, thinking that the higher we climb up the ladder, the brighter the light shines on our present and the more our past can be forgotten.  Yet, being in touch with ‘what was’ can mean everything to us in authentically creating ‘what is’.  When we understand who we were, we have a much better understanding of who we are now.  When we take the time to look at our pasts with the wisdom that we’ve gained from it, we can recast and “re-truth” it in a way that further connects us to our true destiny.

Sharing pivotal life moments is a huge part of what I do.  In consulting with writers, I find that when I show them how far I am willing to go into my emotional well, it helps them to do the same.  By engaging them in this process, I know that they will find and enhance their voice.  What John’s book did for me was to give me a much wider array of stories to draw from in my own past.   He helped me to see the value in stories that I had forgotten, suppressed or just no longer saw the value in.  He awakened me to more of that which is inside me.  By doing this, I am able to teach writers how to go further into their pasts and see so many of their life experiences as universal and rich with true potential for emerging in the present and connecting them to their genuine possibility.

I’ll end with one last quote from John’s book. He writes, “If we think about our past from the factual level only, we are like a Cyclops with one eye—we see just the facts and only the facts, and miss the depth of perception that comes with being bi-ocular….” He provides a solution to this by writing, “If we raise our thinking, however, and go at our past from multiple levels and with both eyes, our recalled yesterdays are a living 3-D movie from the emerging truth of who we are, what we are becoming, and where our commitments can take us.”

I love this book.  I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in better understanding the past through a clearer vision so that creating the future will come from a more authentic place

Where is our gold when it comes to telling strong stories that connect us to our audience? How do we learn to tell stories that touch our spirits and make our hearts come alive?  Compelling stories often come from a truthful place that lives and breathes inside the emotional well of the storyteller.  Your emotional well is your gold when it comes to bringing your truth to the page and learning how to fictionalize it.  This is not about coming from an autobiographical place.  It is about coming from an authentic place, connecting with your life experience and bringing your voice into your characters.  History has shown us that rewards come to those gifted writers who know how to delve into themselves and bring their truth to the page.

An excellent example of this is the Oscar-nominated film The King’s Speech and its writer, David Seidler.  As a child, Seidler used to stutter.  When I watched this film, I felt more emotionally connected to the plight of this character than any other recent film’s protagonist.  I was totally mesmerized by this character’s journey.  When King George VI (played brilliantly by Colin Firth) approached the microphone, I felt his fear.  I could feel it in my throat.  I rooted for him.  I wanted him to arrive at the ‘light bulb’ moment by doing the work with Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush).  I related with his sheer terror.  Having personally experienced the challenges of public speaking and learning how to move past the fear as millions of us do, I wanted to see Prince Albert (on the road to becoming King George VI) succeed at his speech.  I was on the edge of my seat because I could relate to and connect with his experience.  The fear of failure, another life experience that drives most of us, was conveyed flawlessly in this film.

Discovering that David Seidler personally experienced stuttering in his childhood helped me understand why he was able to hit a pitch-perfect portrayal of this character.  He drew from his own personal well of experience and emotion and brought it to the page.  This allowed the audience real insight into the vulnerability of the film’s central character.

This concept is something I explore heavily in my new book Story Line:  Finding Gold In Your Life Story. The book is about learning how to add fiction to your truth.  It is also about learning that the stories we experience in our own life have tremendous value.  They happen for a reason.  And only by doing the challenging emotional work, do we gain the tools to move past the pain and then pass our stories onto others.

In Elizabeth Edwards’ memoir Resilience, I found that she dug deep into her emotional well and came from such a raw and real place.  She writes, “Each time I fell into a chasm – my son’s death or a tumor in my breast or an unwelcome woman in my life – I had to accept that the planet had taken a few turns and I could not turn back.  My life was and would always be different, and it would be less than I hoped it would be…. I learned that I was starting a new story.  I write these words as if that is the beginning and the end of what I did but it is only a slice of the middle, a place that is hard to reach and in reaching it, only a stepping-off place for finding or creating a new life with our new reality.”  Think about the words “…an unwelcome woman in my life” and “it would be less than I hoped it would be.”  These are powerful admissions and they prompt an emotional experience that millions can connect with.

Resilience reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.  The King’s Speech is an Oscar nominated film.  Both stories come from a place of truth and conviction.  Both writers draw from their emotional wells and bring their truths to the page, giving their audiences a chance to really see them in their stories.  I encourage you to draw from your emotional well in your writing.  You never know what can happen.