My good friend Ryan Fletcher runs an amazing company called Impact Club.
Impact Club’s premise is that storytelling is paramount to growing any enterprise.
Wanna grow a business? Tell effective stories.
Wanna grow a non-profit? Tell effective stories.
Wanna grow a chess club? Tell effective stories.
There are three ways that humans consume stories. They read, they listen, and they watch.
Without readers, listeners, or viewers stories are worthless.
To be effective, stories require an audience.
Fletch, as I like to call him, is right. Telling stories and building an audience is paramount. Sounds simple, but there’s more to it than just putting words on a blog.
Although I didn’t meet Fletch until I was in my late 40’s, I would consider him one of my most influential mentors in life. He’s the character who is most responsible for me becoming a storyteller.
It was his storytelling that brought me into his realm. I started reading his blog. Listening to his podcast. I ordered his book. I became a fan.
Over time I joined his community of entrepreneurs and storytellers and I grew. I started writing with the encouragement of the community. Eighteen months later I published my book and started my podcast. Ultimately I opened my own Impact Club, a charity based storytelling club.
As Fletch’s community grew, he took the company in a different direction. He understood that in order to be successful entrepreneurs we needed to be strong in mind, body, business, and relationships. To address that need he started Story Athlete and GRIT which were challenged based groups that strive for transformation.
The goal of those groups is simple–Lead a challenged based life and grow together by improving daily and overcoming our lesser self.
At first I loved being a part of Story Athlete as I am obsessed with personal development. We pushed ourselves to write everyday, to eat right, and to workout twice a week, which he dubbed “the 12 minutes of death”.
During a 30 day stretch, I found the workouts to be more and more difficult. Not because they were, but because something was going on with my body–something was wrong.
I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.
I tried to write but I couldn’t focus. I stopped writing. I stopped doing my podcast. I was letting my community down.
As I watched the others doing their daily writing, and their regular workouts it only made me feel worse.
Physical challenges had morphed into mental challenges. I began to feel like I was going to fail. I didn’t trust myself to commit to anything because I didn’t know how I was going to feel from day to day.
Ultimately, I left the group because I wasn’t getting benefit and I wasn’t contributing. My health, or lack thereof, only caused doubt.
Since I left, I haven’t totally figured out my health issue. At first I thought it was possibly mold exposure. Or diet. I thought maybe I had fibromyalgia.
I made some changes and for a while I felt better.
Until three weeks ago.
After the holidays, I committed to getting back on track. After three weeks of regular gym visits, writing regularly and getting back to normal, I hit a wall.
I feel worse than ever.
It’s like I have massive headache only it’s over my entire body. Literally.
Hands, feet, joints, back. Every major muscle.
Each morning, I don’t want to move. When I do get moving, I can’t focus. Constant, chronic fatigue. By early evening, I only want to go to bed.
Friday night, on Valentines Day, it was the worst. I went to bed at 7:00PM.
Now what?
It’s time to solve the problem.
When I rebooted my blog, I was in the midst of dealing this pain. Going to doctors, getting blood work, trying to figure it out.
I decided to write about Mind, Body, Spirit, because I know that health in these three categories is essential to fully realize our potential.
I sincerely believe God wants for us to experience peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, and tranquility–also known as shalom.
With this in mind, as I search for answers, I’ll keep you posted.
Fletch would be proud of me today. The lesser self didn’t want to write.
Shalom.
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