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

A Life Story – For most it’s only, a Great Idea!

Everyone I tell about Create Your Life Story say what a great idea it is, then something like, ” I wish I had have recorded my Gran, she had so many wonderful experiences in her life.” Then depending on who they are, something about…

* The young kids today have no idea of how it was in my time

* I need to talk to my Dad he did…

* I’m the last person with this family knowledge, I need to get it recorded before I go

* We had better get his memories before we miss them

* I wish I had have recorded my youth, I’ve forgotten so much

* I’ve had such an amazing life, I should share it with others

* Her memory is now gone and I missed the opportunity.

I’ve heard all these reasons for why it’s a good idea to record a Life Story biography. Everyone gets all sentimental and start to talk about someone in their family who they miss and should have recorded. Mentioning some grand adventure or period of time. They talk with fondness of how they wish they had or how they need to act now but then I know they won’t.

It’s easier to do nothing, then have regret.

The pay-off for taking action

Everyone knows of the benefits later but why should they act now? I’ve been wondering why that is.

Why are there so few sites on the Internet mentioning the idea of recording Life Stories either in text, video or audio? Yes there are some but compared to Genealogy with 270 million search results, Life Stories only have 3.4 million. This got me thinking.

There are many other things we care about before we care about recording a Life Story. As an example we can search on the Internet to see how popular they are. Things like:

* Weight loss

* Dating advice

* Money in all it’s forms from a employment to gambling

* Sex in all it’s variations

* Career

* Entertainment from music and films to sports and trivia

* Recreations including activities and crafts like scrap-booking cooking and genealogy

All these activities achieve or promise one of two things

* Make life better now or in the future

* Remove a discomfort now or in the future

As an example genealogical research specifically recognises there is some missing information (discomfort) and resolves that issue with the discovery of new information (pleasure) all the while creating an entertaining distraction and recreation.

The addictive quality of many activities (as is the case with genealogy), is the more you dig, the more there is to be discovered and when you break through an impasse, the feeling of achievement is wonderful, making all the head banging worthwhile. Family can then gather around in wonder of the story that is unfolding, creating in you a feeling of satisfaction from the compliments you receive.

What you don’t get from producing a Life Story

With a Life Story you don’t get the same sense of achievement like in the world of genealogy. There is no banging your head against the wall of misinformation. You don’t have to spend hours struggling against insurmountable odds and the person is available to talk to, so big deal. There is no pay-off.

There is no sense of grand achievement! That’s actually a problem. Not having those struggles and ultimately the pay-off from overcoming them along with still having the person to talk to is an issue and a lack of motivation for recording a Life Story.

Your pay-off for recording your own Life Story

You’re aware that you have knowledge and it’s worth sharing. The difficulty is people may not appreciate it at present so you won’t have a reward for all the effort you put in.

Share all of Your Life Story in One System

A life is not one event or experience. We all have multiple events throughout our lives often recorded on various pieces of memorabilia along with our personal memories.

To share all those events with others we can tell the stories, which is what Create Your Life Story is about. But once we have the audio recorded, how do we best share it and blend it with the other things that we have?

During the process of recording a Life Story we will be digging up documents, photos, brick-a-brack, old movies and recordings, possibly even discovering people who we have never heard of before. We are on an archaeological dig, through our personal lives, much as with the genealogy of our family history. We have the information on our relatives and we have our personal story. Some of it independent of each other, some of it blended together.

In assembling all this information we are then presented with the challenge of how to present it so that others can access it and enjoy the content. In the past the audio conversation is just left on the tape to be played back at some stage. Often it’s just raw audio, without any editing or attempt to make it a more pleasurable experience for the future listeners. The documents are often collected, possibly just in a box or maybe assembled into a folder. Very rarely someone may go to the trouble of compiling the information into a book. But what about all the different types of media and the fact that they are still separated from each other.

If we can combine all the components of a Life Story, we then have a richer interwoven story, containing more than the sum of the individual parts. We can include historical and current versions of

* Documents

* Photographs

* Text

* Audio recordings

* Video and film

All these components can be combined to tell a full rich Life Story, in ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago.

For example if you were to consider some of the interactive web sites that you can find, you will see this very example in action to promote a product or service. We can do the same!

We could create text to tell the story, with a slide show of images, narrated with the audio recordings, interspersed with video content. How much richer is the experience when it’s all interwoven together to read, hear and see the story of someone’s life in front of you.

Then this can be shared with others on a web site or a DVD with additional supporting physical items such as a books.

There are many services and software solutions available to help you with achieving this. Some are turnkey solutions such as 3D Ancestry who can take your shoe boxes of stuff and combine it into a genealogical Life Story presentation that others will be happy to spend time listening, watching and reading as they learn about this Life Story.

If you’re interested in getting some help with compiling your Life Story into some sort of easily available format Jim at 3D Ancestry.com is looking forward to showing you the advantages and seeing what he can do for you.

You can see his web site at 3dancestry.com and contact him via email at [email protected]

Let me know your thoughts about privacy with this quick survey. Click Here

If you have any ideas of how to share the various parts of a Life Story or know of any similar services please mention them in the comments below.

Don’t you dare take your stories with you!

Don’t you dare, not at least consider the importance of someone’s or your own story before you start procrastinating about creating a Life Story project.

Our Life Story is something that we take for granted. Maybe we don’t think that we have anything to say and even if we do, would anyone really care.

* Sometimes the world cares because we did something amazing

* Sometimes people care in a specific area of interest

* Family will always care because it’s their story interwoven with ours

We may or may not have a story that interests the world at large but we all have an amazing story in one way shape or form but it will be lost to the passage of time unless we take the time to consider it and get it recorded in some form.

Audio recording is just having conversations and capturing the stories of those conversations. It’s something we have always done – tell stories. So why are you stuffing around? Why are you procrastinating?

I’ve given you 5 Simple Steps to Starting Your Life Story Project to get you underway but I know that there are people I meet as I’ve mentioned on this podcast episode who just don’t yet get the importance of recording their Life Story.

Don’t be like Vivian Maier and have no idea of the importance of your story and not tell us. We need you to act:

* Get a Start on Your Life Story

* Ask a family member or a close friend to help

* Approach a professional to record a Life Story for you within your community

* Tell them that you want to record their Life Story as it’s important to you

Action:

* Fill out the Survey on the post How Private do You Want to Keep Your Life Story

* Watch the video about Vivian Maier on the previous post

* Go and listen to Episode 32 : 5 Simple Steps to Starting Your Life Story Project – Today

Are you serious, or are you just a Tire Kicker? What are you doing? Let us know in the comments below!

Get more ideas from the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you get underway. 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

Get started today on your Life Story or “How to avoid the overwhelm.”

Don’t look at this web site!

Looking at Create Your Life Story for many people, with the amount of information that is now available, can be intimidating. Do you sometimes say to yourself…

* Where do I start for my own life story?

* Do I have to know everything before I start?

* Is all this equipment needed to produce content?

* I just don’t understand everything!

* How can I make this easier?

…welcome to the overwhelm.

With any new skill, task or learning it’s all too easy to be overwhelmed by the enormity of what is needed in order to achieve your goals, especially if you compare yourself with others and look at everything that is necessary to achieve all the possible results as one giant pool of information.

The answer is don’t!

* Don’t compare

* Don’t know the end result

* Don’t expect perfect

* Don’t have all the answers

Just gain what you need to know to move to the next thing, to achieve whatever it is. One step at a time, while maintaining the overall goal of creating your Life Story. This episode 32 of Create Your Life Story is all about starting today with the minimum information that you need to start producing the first results.

Five easy steps to follow:

* Download the e-Book

* Look over some content

* Listen to some podcasts

* Think of prompts

* Record today

* Detail list of steps in the “Action” below

Once you have been through the above list and done each of these items, work your way through some additional content that interests you from here on Create Your Life Story for the next part of your Life Story project.

Don’t run ahead with these steps, just do them in order to get you started, there is plenty more information here on Create Your Life Story to help you understand the subtleties of what needs to be done which you can look and listen to once you get started. Just do these few things and you will have achieved some success which you can build on.

The process of creating a Life Story project

What to do and not to do to keep you on track:

* Don’t learn everything there is to learn – Skim over the content and only dig into what you need to know now for the next task.

* Look to learn what is needed for you to achieve only the next task.

* All the information is here at Create Your Life Story for you to come back to and reference so you don’t need to learn it.

* Listen to other great audio Life Story biographies and storytelling to stay inspired

* If you’re frustrated walk away and return later – Consolidate your learning and memories while resting

* Know that it takes time but persevere

Helping you feel the accomplishment so you’re inspired to continue:

* You’re learning – don’t expect perfection

* Any content is better than no content at all

* Family in particular will love anything that is produced

* If it breaks put it down and return later – It’ll always turn out better later

* Listen back some time later to what you produce and hear it with fresh ear...

What would you do if that event happened on you?

Welcome To Episode 31 of Create Your Life Story but this episode is my story and the reason I’ve been out of the loop for three weeks

It’s been a while since my last podcast and post about the events of the impending doom of the Brisbane flood of 2011.

I mentioned the flood that was the start of what happened to me being a deluge in my home town of Toowoomba. Here is a bit of video of a creek turning into a raging torrent. After the deluge was the flood followed by the clean up.

What of the large experiences have you had in your life and what can you share with us?

In a week or so I should be back up to speed but for now I’m finalising the last of the finishing touches of returning my life to normal but if you would like to read the full story of my experience please read my story of the Brisbane Floods of 2011 on my personal blog.

Action:

* List out the big community events that you’ve experienced.

* What are you specific experiences?

* Create stories to share those stories using storytelling techniques.

What are your thoughts? Make a comment below and let us know your experiences and the big events of your life.

To give you an overview use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. 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.

Music is from

Jeremy Cohen “Rose Room” (mp3)

from “Jeremy Cohen: Violin Jazz”

(Violinjazz Recordings)

Buy at Napster

Buy at iTunes Music Store

More On This Album

Kermit Ruffins

“Panama” (mp3)

from “Happy Talk”

(Basin Street)

Buy at iTunes Music Store

More On This Album

Get your WordPress.com blog with this helpful video

The greatest thing about WordPress.com is how easy it is to sign up for an account and have your own Internet publishing tool (similar to a site like this one) in just a few minutes. You will be able to publish and start developing the skills that will eventually enable you to produce and publish your own stunning personal Life Story project on your own free web site.

Using WordPress.com for your Life Story project is…

* Free of all fees

* Fully maintained back end

* Easy to use and publish

* Well matured WordPress.com community

* Fully hosted for all time

* Stable well designed infrastructure

In just a few minutes you can start blogging on your own site today. Just watch this video and follow the instructions to have your WordPress.com site up.

In the last podcast episode How Do I Write My Story – Get a Blog we looked at what is needed and the great advantage of using a blog to help you to understand many aspects of the process of your Life Story project including developing a better understanding of your computer, the Internet and how to produce content, then have a place to publish online using your own blog as a web site. We talked in detail in Personalised Life Story Web Site about how to sign up and get a blog along with Posting Audio to Your Web Site on how to link audio so as to play on your WordPress blog.

Your computer and internet skills will develop by expressing yourself on a blog.

Note: I’ve created a fictional person for demonstration purposes with WordPress.com by the name of – Hugh Ignatius Know, He’ll be turning up from time to time.

If the domain name you would like to use is taken, use variations on the name until you find one that is available like hughiknow.wordpress.com or maybe hiknow.wordpress.com. Using the persons name or combinations of it will enable it to be more easily discovered who those who know the name, rather than using unusual URL characters or cryptic messages – Leave that creativity for the actual blog title.

As an example, my personal blog (not a WordPress.com site), URL is iankath.com but the blog name is “Iam Ian”.

How was your experience from getting a blog and what have you learnt and discovered? Please leave a comment below.

Use some of the ideas in the Free e-Book Recording Life Stories to help while remembering to fill out the initial survey before. 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

Get a Blog to Learn How to Creating a Life Story Biography

It takes time to produce a Life Story. Along the way there are many distractions. Some are from outside influences of your life, while some are due to the issues with actually creating the content that will become the Life Story. A blog can give you the reason and motivation to keep moving forward.

If you follow my guidelines there are many aspects of creating a Life Story. These are:

* Equipment and use

* Prompts or inspiration for topics

* Storytelling or conversational interview

* Editing of recorded audio

* Publishing audio

* Associated images and text

* Sharing content with others

* Storing and safe guarding data

For many of these aspects, having a blog can help you in getting over these issues sooner and easier. A blog can help you find topics for stories, share with others, get your thoughts down while helping you ask for help and becoming more familiar with the computer and the Internet in general. Even finding some audio online to share on the blog will teach editing and embedding if you want to go that far, it’s up to you.

Let’s get a blog…

Blog is short for Weblog = WeBlog.

A blog is a reverse chronological order, series of articles or posts, generally with the latest most recent at the top of the home page.

There are several free blogging platforms available including Typepad and many others with Blogger being particularly popular amongst genealogists. At present the general consensus seems to be WordPress as the stand-out superior product for ease of use and viewing with WordPress.com being the free, fully hosted service available to you.

A blog from WordPress.com is the perfect way to have a fully hosted, free blog, that is easy to use and requires minimal back-end issues. There is no need to maintain it and if you walk away for years or forever it will remain available for others to view.

Ultimately the Life Story that you are creating should have it’s own blog with a sensible URL or domain name (different to blog title) with the persons name in it. Something like hughknow.wordpress.com.

Using the persons name or combinations of it will enable it to be more easily discovered who know the name, rather than using unusual URL characters or cryptic messages, leave that creativity for the actual blog title. As an example, my personal blog (although not a WordPress.com site), the URL is iankath.com but the blog name is “Iam Ian”.

Learn through doing

Set up an additional blog to play and practice with, seperate to the blog that you are going to have for the Life Story that you’re producing.This additional blog will enable you to get the feel for blogging and help you to understand many things.

It costs nothing to have more sites and the advantage of getting a blog sooner, well before you’re ready to post the Life Story is...

How do you celebrate those special events in your life?

End of the year celebrations are the time when we often assemble with family and carry on family and famular traditions that we take for granted but what are the stories of those traditions that we take for granted?

There are many events in our lives that we can think of. Just a few of them are:

* Birthdays

* Christmas

* Weddings

* Funerals

* Coming of age – Bar Mitzvah, debutant, christenings

* College/ University ceremonies

* Reunions

* Miscellaneous school/sport/community events

The stories of these events are not so much the event itself but the differences in the way these celebration are conducted between, cultures, societies and eras.

*

How have celebrations changed over time

* How does your family do things different to other families

* What were the celebrations that are no longer around

* What are the unusual happenings within standard celebrations

Take the time to think over your life or consider the events and celebrations in your life and how they may be different to how those same celebrations may have changed since the time of the person you’re recording.

How have things changed in your life or what are the unusual things that have happened? Share your memories in the comments below.

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.

Music is from

SWING REPUBLIC – BOOGIE WOOGIE SANTA by FreshlySqueezed

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-ba8c99434e7f46340adf1f89df57d67e}

How to help someone talk about things they don’t want to

It’s an oft asked question. How do I get someone to talk and reveal something that they just refuse to talk about?

This is not just for us and our desire for the stories of someone’s life but it’s also the same for finding out who batted the ball through the window or how did the political sensitive documents come into the hands of the enemy. How do you get someone to talk about something if they don’t want to?

Ultimately, when push comes to shove, if despite the most severe ramifications, someone doesn’t want to speak, there is nothing that can be done. Secret agencies and thugs around the world have always used torture in attempts to achieve these ends and are still thwarted by people who will make mortal sacrifices in order not to reveal what they know. If in the most severe of situations people can remain silent how would we help someone to open up that we care about and don’t wish to cause distress? We can actually take some ideas from the world of espionage and psychology to help us with the winning of confidence. Whether it be when a spy infiltrates a group, or the good cop, bad cop routine or simply when someone feels comfortable enough to talk to their therapist, in each case they have been won over to revealing information to someone they trust.

Unlike the world of force, coercion and inquisition we are approaching these topics with compassion, with an interest in understanding things without causing any distress.

I’ve had the good fortune of having some conversations where people open up for the first time in their lives about topics and in my experience it will only happen if they are prepared to share and feel comfortable, particularly if it’s a sensitive topic.

There are several reasons why someone will feel comfortable to open up and share difficult to express topics.

* Comfortable with the relationship – mutual respect

* Knowing that what is said is clearly understood

* Environment that fosters memories and discussion

* Respect and non judgement

* Clear understanding of a non threatening agenda

Not all of these points need to be achieved but depending on the personality, topic and emotional baggage a variety of these will assist in help them to express the subject.

Understand and relate to the them with empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand the situation of another person, without personally emoting with the experience that they have had. To understand deeply the joy or sadness of their story, without feeling joy or sadness but simply relate to the story as if it’s being told from a film or book. You understand but are not involved emotionally. Buying into the emotions is sympathy and disables your ability to discuss the topic from a neutral point of view, whereas empathy enables you to relate and be deeply connected to the stories while still remaining on task as someone directing the conversation because your not emotionally involved.

By having and showing empathy with a person’s story they will feel relaxed and confident to know that you’re involved, understanding and non judgemental of the stories being told, helping them to open up and share as they know they are on safe ground.

How to be empathic and express it

Generally descriptions of empathy are – The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It’s all well and good to feel empathy for the story that is being told but it’s possibly even more important to be able to communicate that empathy to the other person. This will give them the confidence that you understand the emotional content of what they are saying and help them to know that they can express whatever they choose without concern.

To be empathetic

It’s the little things in your Life Story that we relate to.

Think of some great person and their story. Particularly one of those biographies where you know the back story. How they got to greatness or how the fell from grace. Consider those everyday parts of their story that is behind their greatness. Maybe Lincoln’s humble upbringing on an Illinois farm then studying law from a barrel of books that he bought, the death of his child then that of his great love. Or maybe Gandhi and his childhood marriage at 13 then studying law. It’s the everydayness of the back story that helps us to relate to them, and see them as people. Without these humble stories they might as well be Gods. Instead they are like us and we connect to their story and eventually relate in some way to their greatness.

Think of the stories that you’ve heard from someone in your family about those everyday things.  It’s the everydayness of those stories that puts so much of their and maybe your life into context. These stories often say more about what a person is really like. So what are the everyday stories?

We relate to the small things

Much of our life when considering prompts for subjects to talk about fit into three general importance groupings of life events:

* The larger than life rare events of study, business, sport, military, adventure, spiritual, travel etc

* The important marriages, deaths, births, vacations, study, career and all the things that we all do but are particularly important only to us

* The insignificant non-events that we don’t even notice but only reflect on once the time has passed

We are all interested in the huge events of a person or even a culture. These are the things that change us and our societies with stories of the individual interwoven amongst the events of a culture. But in amongst these large events it’s the individual stories that we are interested in. These stories could well interest the greater community as they put events into some sort of context by relating to the event through the experiences of an individual.

The events that we all have in common are the the stories that connect us as family but are not relevant to the outside community as each individual family group has their own version of the same stories. How much do you care about someone’s baby photos?(Come on be honest now). A standard wedding story would move into the previous category, for example, if the earth opened up and swallowed the bridal party.

The insignificant non-events is the area of a Life Story that is surprising in that it is a much richer area of stories and context than would be expected. This is where the stories of a forgotten time are hidden and often not considered when building a long list of questions and prompts. We my not consider what is the significance of the clothes that we wore to school or church but if the only time that shoes were worn was to church it says a lot about the lifestyle that someone was brought up in.

Your Life as an Archaeological Dig

Archaeologists search through all aspects of a societies remains. The obvious is the buildings where a great deal of the important aspect of a society is recorded in the methods of construction, tools, paintings and messages written on the walls.  Or in the graves and tombs where the methods of burial and the trinkets and keepsakes buried with them can reveal a lot of the culture or individual. But everything, even the insignificant things on a person can say something of the times of their life as is the case for Ötzi – The Ice Man.

The richest diggings on a societies everyday circumstances is often found in the rubbish, the trash heaps of cast offs.