Tell Your Story (Part 2)

Prompts to help you uncover the stories you'll want to tell

Jun 24, 2024

lighted we are all made of stories red neon wall signage inside room — Neon sign on wall reads: “We are all made of stories” Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

In part one1 of Tell Your Story, I wrote about the importance of our stories and the importance of us telling those stories.

Today2, I want to help you uncover your own stories. The stories about what lights you up. The stories that express who you are and how you show up in the world. The stories that are uniquely yours to tell.

As the neon sign above says, we are all made of stories. We are full of them.

The challenging bit can be uncovering the ones we want to tell. For this, I offer two things: 1) a tool to help you identify the moments (the stories) that light you up and 2) prompts to help you get to the details of why they do.

What Sparks You?

First, the tool: The Sparketype® Assessment

What work makes you truly come alive? What pulls you toward certain activities, while others have you dragging your feet or running away from them?

This is what the Sparketype Assessment helps to uncover. It doesn’t assess skill or ability but something much deeper — the impulse behind the effort. Or, as author and creator of the Sparketypes, Jonathan Fields describes it in the subtitle of his book SPARKED, it’s:

Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive

To be clear, the word “work” in this context does not necessarily mean that thing you get paid to do (though I do sincerely hope you find some level of enjoyment in your employment).

Let’s use a much broader definition of the term: anything that requires some level of effort.

This certainly can include the activities you undertake as part of your J.O.B., but it also includes things like your hobbies, your relationships, your involvement in the different communities or clubs you might belong to, or any way you actively spend your time.

That’s a lot of opportunities for stories, don’t you think?

Before we move into the prompts below, I will pause here and invite you to take the Sparketype Assessment at sparketype.com. It takes only about 15 minutes to complete, and your results will be delivered immediately to your email. Once you’ve had a chance to read a little more about your Sparkeype profile, come back for the prompts below.

If you’ve already taken the Assessment, grab your results and keep reading.

What Are Your Stories to Tell?

One thing that can hold us back from telling our stories is identifying the stories we want to tell, or maybe more accurately, the stories we think are worthy of telling.

I can and probably will write a post unpacking the latter part of that statement, but for now, let’s align on these truths:

You have stories to tell (more than you realize)
Your stories are worth telling
You get to decide what stories get told and to who

When I talk about telling your story, I’m not suggesting you get up on the T.E.D. stage and share it with the world. (Unless that’s your jam, in which case I say go for it!) No, let’s lessen that pressure a bit, shall we?

Let’s focus on identifying your stories; you can decide where, how, and to who you do the telling later. For now, let’s start with you as the audience.

And this is where your Sparketype profile comes in. You can use it as a lens to look at your life and uncover the stories that are uniquely yours to tell. The Maker might look at the work they do (remember that broader definition of work from above) and see it through the lens of creation, the Essentialist through the lens of finding order, the Sage through the knowledge they have to share and who they share it with, the Nurturer through acts of service.

It's amazing the stories, and the amount of them, that surface when we start to look at our lives through our own unique lens. Patterns appear, and we start to see a connective thread running through it all, helping us better understand ourselves and express who we are.

Below, you’ll find 2ish-minute recordings for each of the ten Sparketypes, along with their slogans. In each recording, you’ll hear a brief intro about that Sparketype, followed by prompts to help you uncover the stories you want to tell.

My hope is that these recordings will spark (yes, that was intentional, ha!) ideas for many stories. That they will help you unpack and highlight details that bring those stories to life, making them uniquely yours to tell.

For now, let these stories be just for you because the most important person to tell your story to is you. What you do with your stories afterward is up to you.

Prompts for telling your story

The Maven

I live to learn.

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