#186: Your Story Matters

Welcome to the author audience show the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience. Change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Your story matters. Yes, your story matters. Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I am the owner of authoraudienceacademy.com and trainingauthors.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. And in this training, I just wanted to talk once again on this topic of how your story matters. I already did a previous podcast, a previous training on this topic, but I just feel like it's so important we could do another podcast on it, another training on it. And I was recently reminded of the movie Freedom Writers. If you're watching me here live or on YouTube or my blog and you've watched the movie Freedom Riders, just share with me in the comments. Say, yes, I watched it and it is a great movie. If you haven't watched it or if you haven't watched it for a long time, I recommend re watching it. You can watch it for free if you're an Amazon prime user on Amazon prime video. And I saw someone actually on the airplane. I was headed out to Asheville for an artist mentorship weekend and I saw the person next to me. You know how sometimes you just look up out of the corner of your eye and I saw them watching that movie and I was like, oh, I've got to watch that movie. I just got. I knew I. And God put it in my spirit. Watch the movie again. So on the way home from the Mastermind, I on the airplane, I had downloaded that movie from Amazon prime and I watched it on the way home and oh my goodness, I was so inspired in it. There's a teacher that she's teaching in a rough, rough school, I think it's in Los Angeles. And the kids that she's teaching are pretty much meant to drop be dropouts. Like there's like no hope for them, pretty much. And it's almost like she's just babysitting. But she determined that she was going to teach them and she was going to teach them to write. And what she did was she bought them all individual, just simple composition notebooks. And she gave them one assignment. And that assignment was to write something in that notebook every day. It could be something about their life, it could be something about something that happened in the past, something that's happening today, but just something. They just had to write something in there and she said, you don't have to show it to me. I just need you to at least flip through so I can see you did it. If you want me to read it, put it in this shelf over here in the room, and I will read them what happened when I was. By challenging her students to write on a consistent basis, developing a daily writing habit and sharing their story, transformation began to happen. And I don't want to spoil the movie for you. It's an amazing movie. I mean, just miracles began to happen, all because they began to simply write out their stories on a consistent basis. A journal, those journals ended up getting published. And I think it was a book called the Freedom Riders. And this movie is based on a true story. And it's so inspiring. And you know what? Your story matters. You may think, but, Shelley, I don't really have a story. I don't really think anyone would want to hear my story. Well, Revelations 12:11 says, we overcome the enemy by what? The blood of the lamb, which is the blood of Jesus. In the word of our testimony. We overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. When we share our stories, when we share our testimonies, not only can it inspire, it can encourage, it can help someone else going through that time, but it has spiritual ramifications. And one way to get really good at telling your story is to develop a consistent writing habit. And that's what I teach inside my writing challenge, writingweek.com and for those of you that are here right now inside this challenge of writingweek.com I want to tell you that developing a consistent writing habit is powerful. What you're doing this week is powerful. What you're doing this week may change the trajectory of your life forever. I don't know. Only God knows. The kids in that class in the Freedom Riders movie, writing on a consistent basis, sharing their story, it changed the trajectory of their lives forever. Most of them went on to make something of their life to graduate from high school. That in and of itself was a miracle. Many of them went to college. It was incredible just by developing a consistent writing app. Now, there was a lot of other things going on that was happening to really influence these students. But I really believe that the foundation, the core of what made that transformation was sharing their story and writing it out on a consistent basis. And, you know, there is power in hearing someone's story, being encouraged, being inspired. You know, I share my story very often. I share it in almost every one of my books. There is some part of my testimony in There. And many times people will come up to me and they will say, shelley, I've never told anyone this before, but after hearing your story, I feel safe to share my story with you. For the first time. I'm telling somebody this. In James. It talks about, confess your sins, one to another, so that you may be. What? So that you may be healed. You know, and when we share our stories and when we're vulnerable, that breeds vulnerability. And then they may be sharing stuff with us, and that may lead to healing for them. I mean, there are so many things that can happen when we're willing to share our story. Now, I'm not saying you have to share all your dirty laundry. I don't do that. I don't share all the details and all of the stuff. I share enough so people know what I went through. And then I focus on the hope and the healing that I have found in Christ. I focus on the other side. You know, like, there is hope, there is healing. You can get to that other side. But whatever your story is, I encourage you to share it. A very practical thing that I recommend writers do is to have some sort of list of different stories from your life. Some can be small, some can be big. Some can be funny, humorous stories. Some can be just something really unusual that happened to you. And personally, I have my list in Google Documents, and I do it in Google Docs because I can have that on my phone, my iPad, my computer, and it all syncs. And you could use Evernote, you could use Trello, you could use pen and paper. But start a list of stories. For instance, I twirled with baton when I was little and I was in a parade. And in that parade, I performed flawlessly, except I dropped my baton one time. The one time I dropped my baton was when the paper took my picture and they broadcasted my one failure, my one mistake to the entire city, my entire life. At that time, I think it was seven or eight, seven years old, I think. Well, I share that story with authors and writers, and I share that in my email, autoresponders and on my blog post. And I share that story. And then I relate it to how sometimes we can have defining moments in our lives that lead us to perfectionism or to performance or to feeling like we never want to fail, we never want to mess up again. So some of your stories could be something like that, and then you relate it to something you're teaching, something you're sharing. You know, I teach authors. And yet you would think, what do all these stories have to relate to authors so much. When you really start thinking, you know, you can find so many ways to hook in stories. You can use stories in your books, which I really highly recommend you. You share stories in your books, your blog posts, in your social media, in your videos, in your emails. Integrate your stories in all of these ways and it draws people in. Why do you think movies sell so much? Movies sell because they're a story. We just recently watched the movie. I can only imagine. Incredible story. It wasn't corny, it wasn't contrived. It was an authentic real life story and it drew me in. I was crying and it was like, whoa. That taught me a lesson that someone preaching to me or teaching to me probably couldn't have taught me as significantly. So are you getting this? Are you getting this that there is power in sharing your story? If you're getting this, just type yes in the comments. As you develop a consistent writing habit, you know, writing your story, coming out from behind the screen, allowing people to get to know you and, and how much you allow people to get to know you is up to you. But as you're developing a consistent writing habit, as you're sharing your story, I just wanted to share one other little thing with you today as encouragement and that is the power of gratitude. If you know the power of gratitude and you've seen it in your life, just type gratitude in the comments. Gratitude is powerful. I wrote an entire book series on it. It's one of my best selling book series and it really changed my Life back in 2012, I think it was. And what I did was I did a 21 day gratitude challenge. And you can read my book if you want, the gratitude Journal about the process that God took me through and what he did. But I, on the other side of that 21 days, I was a different person. But as you're writing, as you're embarking on sharing your story, as you're getting ready to share, I encourage you to actually begin thanking God for the words. Thank you, God for the writing I'm going to get done today. Thank you, God for the writing I'm going to get done tomorrow. If you're part of my writing week challenge saying, thank you, God for the writing that I'm going to accomplish by the end of these seven days. Thank you for all that you're going to say through me. Thank you for using my voice to impact this generation. Thank you, God, for what you're doing in my heart as I write these things down on paper. And thank You, God, for what you're doing. Thank you for what you're going to write through me. Now I was kind of starting to repeat myself, but can you hear the power of like, thank you for what you're going to do instead of being like, oh, what am I going to write? Oh, I have to sit down and I'm going to write. And I don't know, and I don't know if I should say that. And I don't, I don't even know if I'm spelling this right. And does this sound dumb? Oh my goodness, did I say that wrong?

And then you get stuck and paralyzed versus God. Thank you for the creative flow that you're giving me right now that's flowing through me. Thank you, God, for giving me the words to write. Thank you, God, for what I'm going to Write tomorrow at 2 o' clock when I sit down to write. You know, you scheduled it on your calendar. Thank you, God, for the words you're going to give me tomorrow when I sit down to write. Thank you, God, for the creative flow. Thank you, God, for your holy spirit. Spirit that's with me right now that you're writing through me. You are the writer. I am simply the pen. Can you feel the difference between the anxiety and the fear and the focus on self, the focus on us versus the focus on God? So as you're writing, I encourage you. Your story matters. It matters. Your story matters to you, matters to your family, but it also matters to many other people that God wants to use your story to impact. There's power in developing a consistent writing habit and there is power in gratitude. So I hope that you apply these simple, simple things to your writing and that you see a creative flow come through you. And if you're interested in learning more about my Writing Week challenge, you can check it out@writingweek.com and I will see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Author Audience. I would like to invite you to attend one of my free trainings on three proven book writing formulas every nonfiction author needs to know. This is a fun and fast way to write a nonfiction book, but also a book that you're proud of. Plus, I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First, you'll get my 10 nonfiction book title templates and you'll also get my ebook titled Brilliant brainstorming. It's a 28 page ebook and both of these bonuses are yours at no charge. Just for joining us for the training, you can sign up for my free training by going to shellyhits.com formulas. That's ShellyHits. S h e l l e y h I-t z.com.

This training and the two bonuses are free, and I would love to help you write your next nonfiction book.

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