Rewrite Your Own Story

It is the 2023 business strategy session with Lisa Johnson, and a Strategy Booklet is on each seat. On the cover is a beautiful picture of her and one of my favourite quotes in the background.

One of my favourite quotes, "Rewrite your own story", as much as I like this quote, I struggled with putting it in context. 

There is always more than one story.

I know that I do not have one story, at least not one version. But the real struggle is which one is the one that I want to own and share.

When I first started to create content for my website - at least three trial versions before the current one - I drafted a few paragraphs. I asked a copyrighter to write "About Leila"/"My Story".

In that draft, I included some pieces from my childhood, why I started the business, and references to my journey and relationship with food and carb.

The facts about me, including that I never baked before the business ideas, my love and hate relationship with bread and a few others in that old version, are true. But not the full version in my own words.

An ongoing process and a journey 

It took me a while, and it was a journey. An ongoing process to acknowledge the aspects of myself that I may not be comfortable with and dare to share those without the fear of being judged or putting myself in a vulnerable position.

Fact that I never felt "good enough" and the fear of failure, social rejection and the entire "cycle of perfectionism, an unhealthy insistence on personal flawlessness". The perfectionist aspect did not give me any space to show my creativity. It also kept me from finishing so many exciting ideas that I had as a complex way of procrastination, as Sharon Saline explains it.

Female entrepreneurs stories

Starting my own business and trying to put myself out there reminded me that breaking the cycle of perfectionism is a day-to-day practice. It helps me move into another step in the accountability ladder and find a solution. This version is the story I like to own.

During that strategy session and when Lisa talked about content creation, we discussed secondary messaging. Secondary messaging and how we - as business owners - step into a journey to write and own our stories and share them with our audiences. To give them tools to "like" or "dislike" us, to trust or untrust us. Anna Payne's story of her introverted self and how owning and sharing her story helps her clients to choose her as an introvert sales expert. 

Body positivity and embracing who she is, like Jenna Kutcher, says, "I am much more than my body." 

How about you? Are you already there to rewrite and own your own story? 

I would love to hear about it.

Leila x