Create Your Life Story : Helping You Record a Lifetime of Stories

There is help nearby for your Life Story

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Your great idea of recording a Life Story requires one major achievement. You to actually do it! That’s obvious and with all the content available here on Create Your Life Story you can get the knowledge to start and complete a project but you may need more.

The help for your Life Story project

Depending on what your project is and what you intend to create will determine any help you’ll need.

If the project is about yourself you may be self motivated enough to record your stories, edit them and have them in a final form for everyone without any help or if you’re going to record someone else you may know the topics you want to talk about, feel confident to have a conversation, then move onto the editing and publishing without any outside help.

If this is the case you need read no further however not everyone can do everything and sometimes we need a little assistance.

Maybe you need someone’s help for various reasons.

* Take on the whole project from preparation to publishing.

* Record a relative for you, as you’re too close.

* You know what to talk about but you want a conversational partner.

* Help with the technology once it’s recorded.

* Transcribe the audio for use in publishing a book.

* Edit the audio into something listenable.

* Edit images with music and stories to create a digital story.

It doesn’t matter if you’re recording your own story or someone else, you may need help with some aspect of the project. Chances are the information to get you started is here on Create Your Life Story but maybe you need someone a little more hands on. By working with someone on this project you don’t have to know or do everything that’s necessary but can concentrate on what you do best and allow someone else to pick up on where you struggle.

The important thing is to get started on your project then move methodically through to completion and having help at strategic points will enable your Life Story project to avoid the stagnating that can bring on despair and possibly missing the opportunities you have. Handballing parts of the project means you’ll keep focused and have someone the help you keep moving forward.

People who can help you

We all live in communities and within yours there are people who can assist you with your project. Depending on your needs you can consider help from various sources.

* Family members

* Local community

* Friends

* Students

* Professional

Family members

Anyone in your family could be suitable to assist but the advantage of having someone at least one circle of influence away from you, like a niece/nephew, grandchild or other relative will helps to make sure that shared knowledge isn’t taken for granted and all the interesting topics are covered. Also the issues that families have tend to be lessened once you’re a little more distant.

Possibly a combination of close and more distant relatives could bring an interesting comparison of topics from the intimate to the more general and may be well worth considering.

Local community

WIthin the local community you may know people who have the skills to sit in conversation or deal with the more technical aspects of a Life Story. These people could be part of your network or within groups like...

Find something simple to start today.

The huge amount of content here on Create Your Life Story has created an issue of overwhelm for some people. I know that feeling from personal experience of starting on these projects and I want to help you.

Where do I start?

To help you cut to the chase, I’ve created this Free Quick Start Mini-Guide to Your Life Story. Not everything is here to know, but it’s a quick easy referenced overview to get you started.

More importantly, it’s designed to help you think of something today, to get you underway. Then once you’re started, it’s just a case of choosing another topic to maintaining the momentum.

The quick start mini-guide to Your Life story is…

Designed to give you an overview.

Links to valuable content to learn more.

Layout the basics of recording a Life Story.

Topics to start working on today.

In just a few minutes you’ll have an overview and possibly decide where to start.

Just click on the above image to have it downloaded to your computer now.

Depending on your browser you may need to…

PC:    Right-click – “Save Target As”

Mac: Control-click select – “Download Linked File”

Here’s another link to download the Quick Start Mini-Guide to Your Life Story.

To go deeper and discover the Single, Simple tip to do today, to start your story, check out the Detailed Quick Start Guide →

Are you fearful of telling your story, or just a little shy?

In this episode of Create Your Life Story I want to open a conversation about the reasons for people not wanting to tell their stories, particularly when they say that they are interested.

In recording conversations for Your Story, I’ve noticed several, sometimes contradictory reasons why people avoid wanting to have their story recorded.

* Private personality.

* Too long to think about it prior to recording.

* Not enough time to think about it prior to recording.

* Get bored with the idea.

And I can guess a few more…

* Don’t realise the importance of their story.

* Don’t think they have anything to say.

* Don’t feel that they can express themself.

* Don’t want to have to face particular topics.

* Ashamed of some aspects of life.

* Involved in illegal or criminal acts.

* Don’t want to spoil their projected persona.

* Don’t want to harm others with information.

I also realise that some of the stories aren’t told because of the feeling of the possible judgement by others. But have you noticed that you don’t have those same judgements of people of previous generations.

Something happens with the passing of time that removes that sting of judgment and evolves it into historical knowledge. If we consider the issues that we’re concerned about, is it possible for us to have the same attitude now of, not judging others and allowing ourselves to tell some of the more delicate stories, knowing that time will also remove any judgement?

I mention in this episode that fear is something that is always about the future and when it comes time to do the thing that we’re fearful of it’s never as fearful but often a positive experience or at least something that is just dealt with.

I also realise that there could be impacts on people who are now involved with this information, making it necessary to be careful of harming others. This is why there are often delayed release of information so as not to cause this harm but still allow the historical knowledge to be shared into the future.

This is a huge topic that I would love your advice on, to help us understand why people don’t want to share information despite saying that it’s something that they want to do.

How can we help people to feel comfortable enough to open up, not be fearful and share their stories? Please share your thoughts below in the comments, I know I don’t have the answers but maybe you do…

Interesting Links from this Post

* Grab the free Quick Start Mini-Guide to your life story, (soon to be released)

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you with your Life Story project. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of

What we can learn from Oral History and how we travel our own path.

Oral history and storytelling bookend what we’re doing here at Create Your Life Story with our family Life Stories. Oral history is academic and storytelling is theatric.We’re not exactly in either camp but we can learn a great deal from these disciplines and this episode is about what I noticed in recently attending the Oral History Association of Australia national conference in Melbourne.

Some of the things I noticed Oral Historians have a strong interest in, that differs from us are:

* Copyright and attribution

* Ethics

* Procedure

* Written context

They are after all approaching oral history with a strong history agenda, often involved with other organisations. These are fundamental differences from most people interested in family history and the gathering of individual stories for personal and family reasons. This enables us to have the agility to design our Life Stories to suit whatever we choose without the need to answer to anyone.

I did see one example of the power of using the different technologies to tell stories in non-traditional ways using artistic style in The South Sydney Project but most of interest was of a more traditional style.

Individual centric rather to history centric

It became clear to me that this larger community or societal history context, is what gives people the reason to want to record other people’s stories and the reason for the existence of oral history. This is the same for our family history life stories which will eventually be mined for information but we’re approaching this information from the opposite direction to oral historians.

Oral historians understand the topic and use the individual to find the stories of that topic. In family Life Stories we’re interested in the individual first, then along the way we gather information to possibly flush out the stories of the cultural topics, giving them a personal context.

We may end up in the same place of personalising major themes but these approaches are coming at history from opposite directions. This is the fundamental difference between traditional oral history and family history. We’re interested in the individual first and their stories only because we personally know them.

If you’re an Oral Historian what are you thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.

Interesting Links from this Post

* Genies Down Under

* Oral History Association of Australia

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you. Just sign up for it in the side bar form →

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in

Remember the groups of people and the stories of shared lives.

We all live in different communities that change over time. Some we leave some change but all are filled with the people who we share our lives with, forming the stories of our lives. What are the stories of your communities through your life?

Look at the communities that you have around you. They start with the largest of the macro and move to the smallest and most intimate micro but all are communities of the interests in your life.

* Global

* Country

* Regional

* Local

* Cultural

* Personal Tribe

* Greater Family

* Intimate Family

* Self

You have differing relationships with each of these groups and many of them overlap, sharing many of the same events and people.

Today we have online communities both with social networks and on virtually every web site on the internet.

* Facebook

* Google+

* Twitter

* Forums

* Every online site

Most web sites have some form of community through the use of forums to comments on the posts.

Look at your online and offline communities. All those groups that you’ve associated with in your life that you can tell stories of.

All those communities are part of you life.

* Childhood friends

* School

* Social

* Education

* Sport

* Work & Career

* Hobbies

Take some time to think of the communities you’ve associated with during your life.

Action:

* When you think of these communities who do you remember?

* What did you do?

* What were your experiences?

* What are the specific stories that you can tell of these times and communities?

What stories do you remember from communities you’ve belonged to. Let us know in the comments below.

Interesting Links from this Post

* Genies Down Under

* Social Voice Project

* Oral History Assoc of Australia

Get your free copy of the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you with your project. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have,

Make your Life Story more than the sum of the parts

Once you start digging into it, your live can seem like an archaeological expedition. There are just so many things that you can start to bring to surface to help remind you of your life story. Just some of them are:

* Photos.

* Documents.

* Journals & diaries.

* Films & videos.

* Audio recordings.

* Bric-a-brac and souvenirs.

Dragging out all these things as reminders and prompts of your Life Story are fine but what is there amongst these things that you can use as part of your story, in ways that maybe you’ve never considered. In amongst all the ‘things’, in you life there are the components that make them up, that can be used for various other applications.

Nowadays you have the ability to break apart, then mash back together, in different forms, all the components of these things in your life. To make something different, more engaging and entertaining in ways to tell the stories that wasn’t possible even just a few years ago.

From the list above look at each of the different things that you have then break them into all their components of:

* Text.

* Still images.

* Moving images.

* Audio.

Now look at the ways things could be converted or deconstructed into the components that they are made of.

In the case of film and video there is the possibility to break it into:

* Moving images.

* Freeze frame static images.

* Text on scenery or signage.

* Strip out the audio.

Documents can be broken down to:

* Actual text.

* Images on the document.

* Images of the written text.

* Graphics from within the document

Even the text itself can be seen not only as text to refer to but as an image of that text.

All of these component pieces can then be thought of as separate parts, of what can be combine to form something entirely different to it’s original form.

In the case of film or video, you could strip out the audio and use it as a component within the audio Life Story or turn the audio into text and scroll it across the video to present a reinforcement to the audio of the dialogue.

You could take a document and while showing it as an image, narrate the text in relation to where in the story you are.

Within a story there could be mention of a time and by including an image of a journal entry you can show the relevance to the whole story as an historical event.

Really there are an infinite number of ways to go about deconstructing and recomposing the information that you have. It’s possibly the most creative thing that you can do and one that, with some thought, you could discover a whole new world of possibilities to explore.

You have five senses that potentially could be creatively used. What are the images of the items from you life?

Where is there sound or where can sound be recreated using the information from a piece of content?

What written text is there and how can it be used as it is or by converting it into different media?

Action:

* Collect together everything that you have that tells of this Life Story.

* Look at each piece and see what are the components that make it up.

* Consider each of the components or each piece.

* Where can each of these components be recombined with other components to make something different.

* Look past the obvious.

What bright idea do you now have to use something in a different way? Let us know in the comments below.

Oral History shows the professional methods to a Life Story

Creating your own personal family history, Life Story will utilise some the methods of various different techniques of human communication. In the past we talked about the skills of Storytelling and how to get across the story with the emotional impact that we want. The other discipline that is most relevant and balances storytelling is Oral History.

Oral history is…

…study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews, …with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record.

We can use some of the academic and quantifiable techniques that are used by oral historians to help us form and organise how we approach a Life Story.

What is Professional Oral History?

To help us understand exactly what oral history is and the attitudes of the professional approach to it, we have a conversation with Associate Professor Helen Klaebe from the Queensland Institute of Technology, Creative Industries Faculty.

Helen takes us through the similarities and differences of the oral historian approach to what we’re doing with Life Stories, which as she mentions is one in the same anyway. Family Life Stories are part of oral history, it’s just the motivation for recording the stories that may make it different. Oral history in our context is primarily family history but it could also be community, company, local, regional, national or even global history.

Helen has recently be awarded a Queensland Smithsonian Fellowship, to evaluate in the US for four months, the public programmes that incorporate oral history and ways to make sure that communities get the most out of the monies that they have available.

As Helen mentioned some of the points to remember are:

* Have general knowledge about the topics to discuss

* Know your agenda for recording this Life Story

* Reference to the needs of the listener

* Respect the needs of the interviewees

* Archive an unedited raw version of the recordings

* Mash-up the digital information to suit your needs

What I noticed the most from talking with Helen is the similarities rather than the differences of what we’re doing and that of the world of professional Oral History. At the end of the day it’s all storytelling about a persons experiences and life. The only difference is what will happen to the information that is gathered but the process in collecting it is fundamentally the same.

What do  you think of  the professional approach to Oral History?

 

There are more ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help Just sign up for it in the side bar form and also be on the news letter for more information on the upcoming live broadcast on 17/18 September.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in <...

A simple tool to discover the topics of your Life Story

and a different way to share the whole of your life in one view!

Today’s episode of Create Your Life Story is full of listener feedback about how their individual projects are developing including a conversation with Paul Harbath about his personal Life Story project and the use of a novel prompt to both inspire him to discover the topics to talk about and a way of sharing his Life Story with others.

Paul takes us through setting up his Life Storyboard from a collection of images that made obvious the important parts of his life and how it’s shown to others his life in one quick and easy way. Then through visually connecting with the images to sync to the audio of him talking about his life he has a blend of images and audio to tell his story.

Surprise discoveries from your own life

Paul also reveals what completing this project has meant for him and how it’s made him more purposeful for the future and helped him appreciate how wonderful life has been to date and what more he can look forward to in the future.

Listen to Paul’s introduction of his Life Storyboard

What I learnt from Paul as some of the advantages of using a Storyboard are

* Alternative way or publishing a life story

* Discovering and remembering things of your own life

* Whole of life in one view

* Self evident what to talk about

* Reflection can put you on purpose for the future

Action:

* Collect a few dozen images and look at them.

* Is there a theme or topic that you may have forgotten?

* When you see you whole life in one place does it seem any different?

* What stories do you feel inspired to talk about when you reference to the images

Have you been surprised with what you’ve discovered as you’ve been working on your project. Share your comment below or via audio on Soundcloud

Interesting Links from this Post

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you with your project. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or

Your infatuation will cause them to open up

Great storytellers can draw you into their world of interests but most people need someone to be a provocateur to help them express themselves. That’s your role! It’s never an interview but a directed conversation where you keep the conversation on track through engagement.

But how to engage them?

It’s all about them!

If you’re interested in them, they’ll know it and want to tell you the stories. So your number one priority, is to be interested. No! More than that, you need to be fascinated, enthralled, infatuated in them and their story.

In this episode of  Create Your Life Story I’m reverse engineering my naturally recorded conversations from my other podcast Your Story. As I looked at the best of other interviewers and what I do, I’ve realised a few things that will help you engage with the person you’re recording, to help them to open up and express their story better.

For your sake you have to find that, “Something”

Andrew Denton from the ABC’s Enough Rope once mentioned an interview with the Danish Royal Couple, who he admits he’s not particularly interested in. He engaged in the interview but it failed because he hadn’t taken the time to find that “Something”, for him to be interested in.

You have to find Something, that you’re fascinated in. If you can’t find it don’t start until you have. It may only be a small glint in a huge mullock heap but it’s that gem of interest that will provoke the questions and keen interest to dig further and develop a great conversation. While on that journey you’ll inevitably find other topics of interest but you need Something to get started.

Everyone has something fascinating about them which you have to discover to be interested in. Then they’ll know it and tell you everything. That’s the secret!

To break it down just a little, here are some of the many aspects of this:

* Humility – It’s not about you

* Show keenness to hear their opinions

* Shut up – It’s still not about you

* Remain actively engaged with non-verbals – Body language

* Show that you’re thinking and absorbing what’s being said – Body language, facial expressions.

* Proof of listening – Being able to pick up where you left off

* Sensible thoughtful questions based on what they’ve said

* Challenging questions to ask deeper questions

* Challenge by playing devils advocate – “Some people would say…?”

* Show respect for their opinion

* Show that you’re interested – everyone wants to be interesting to others

* Mention that you’d never thought of a new concept

* Mention that it’s some interesting information that you can now explore

* Want more information

* Don’t bluff interest – If you try to fake it they’ll notice

* If it’s boring you, stop and find the interest – if you’re bored so will the listeners be

* Laugh when appropriate

* Keep verbal sounds to a minimum – for the sake of the listener

* Repeat their point (shows listening) and ask a de...

One sentence to sum up your philosophy on life

Push, pull… Fight, kick and scratch or just let it be and do as you like, or not! How do you do this thing called your life?

If you’ve had the good fortune to raise children you’ll sometimes find yourself sharing your beliefs on life. What it means and how to have the best life possible. Particularly for your own children and grandchildren. This of course, is to help them with their life and hopefully give them the leg up to have a life better and learn from your own life experiences. You have thousands of experiences on how to live a life but if you had to dig deep, and think of just one, what would be your single, take away, philosophy, that you’d want to share with others as your philosophy on life.

Step 1 – Why we share our philosophy of life

While some people never share their attitudes, others are all too happy to tell you how they lived their lives and in their opinion what you could learn from their experiences. Ultimately we’re saying these things for selfish reasons.

Consider for a moment  your motives for sharing your philosophies on life.

* To be seen to be helpful

* Explain our motives

* Justify our mistakes

* Help them to learn from our experiences

* Be remembered

Some of these reasons are to help people while others are to protect and justify what’s happened in the past. Either way it’s the way you see yourself and your life. Take some time to reflect on your motivation and what’s the single most important attitude that you think is important to living a life. I’m avoiding using adjectives to describe the way you may see life but they could be terms like Good, Family, Respective, Happy, Empowering, Powerful, Dominant, Honorable, Successful, Memorable, Courageous, Calm, Nurturing… and the list goes on. It depends on the way you see it but what is the (                    )Life that best represents your philosophy of your life.

Step 2 – Your attitude and philosophy to life

The adjective that you put just before the word life is the lock to the door that is your philosophy. Now what is that philosophy? Consider the (adjective) Life,that you now have in mind as the way to live life and flush it out into a statement. A few simple ideas.

* Always be happy

* Strive for excellence

* Family is all important

* Respect others

* Take what you can get

* Money is your only friend

* Never stop moving

* Always keep learning

* Life is nothing without health

* Once you get power fight to hold it

A lot more and longer personal philosophies on life are at ISO Personals

Step 3 – The proof is in the story!

It doesn’t matter if people agree with you or not. This is the way you see the world! It’s your philosophy based on your experiences and the ideas that you present through your stories, tell a lot about who you are and your philosophies of life. With these ideas in mind, there are very specific moments where you know that this attitude has played out in your life to be reenforced from experiences.

* Where were you?

* Who was with you?

* What did you intend to do?

* How did events play out?

* What was the end result?

* What did you learn?

* What would you do differently?

* Has this lesson been reinforced again and again?

* How have you changed because of it?

Not only is this relevant to the big, whole of life philosophies but it’s also about the smaller things that you’ve learnt from life.