Nothing stirs the emotions quite like an individual success story. I think it is fair to say that we all love reading or listening to tales of how someone has triumphed over adversity to achieve success. Someone else’s success, after all, can be a source of inspiration for others. So what makes a good success story?
Aside from inspiring others to action, a good success story charts the history of an individual’s effort to overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. These obstacles can come in many forms, such as escaping from poverty to become a successful entrepreneur or creating new opportunities out of a life-changing experience. In any event, a good success story is one that evokes empathy rather than sympathy.
We’ve all heard of Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, and the story of how he was given up for adoption by his biological mother. How he dropped out from mainstream college education but went on to found Apple, a seriously successful company with a brand image that now spans the globe. Steve Jobs’ success has also been punctuated by numerous personal crises including a battle with cancer. Nonetheless, at no point in his life has he ever given up his goal of successfully serving others.
Steve Jobs’ success story exemplifies the courage and tenacity of someone prepared to take on life’s inequities to lead a productive and fulfilling life. Moreover, Steve Job’s success has inspired countless people around the world by revolutionizing how we communicate with each other. This is an enormous achievement by anyone’s standards.
But what about those individual success stories that never see the light of day or fail to make it into mainstream media? What happens to those stories? More often than not, those stories are lost along with the lessons that go with them. However, occasionally, a person who feels strongly enough about their personal achievements will take the plunge and write and self-publish their success story. In general, such a person will not print and publish their story out of vanity. They will write their story in the sincere hope that it will inspire others to rise up out of the mire of misfortune and to conquer their fears to live a more meaningful and productive life. One such person is my writing colleague Carole.
Carole was involved in a near-fatal helicopter accident some years ago. The accident left Carole with terrible head injuries, which effectively put paid to her career as a helicopter pilot. It was a life-changing event, to say the least, and it took some time for Carole to come to terms with the reality of her new situation.
After months in a critical care unit and subsequent years of rehabilitation, Carole began to look at other career options. She really had no choice if she was going to keep a roof over her family’s head.
In any event, Carole tried her hand at writing. At first, it was difficult, for obvious reasons, but it wasn’t long before she soon discovered a real passion for putting words down on paper. Carole loved the writing process, so much so that she decided to coach others in the art of writing. Now she has written a book called ‘LIVE YOUR LIFE BOLDLY,’ a personal story of how she overcame serious physical injury, including brain damage, to start a new career as a writing coach. Carole’s book will be released in electronic format later this year, and I would highly recommend it as a good read.
Carole’s success story is a good example of how an ordinary individual created opportunity and success out of adversity. It is not always easy to write about oneself and lay bare our most intimate details for the whole world to read. But, for some of us, writing about our personal struggles and triumphs is the only strategy we have for excising the ghosts of the past and to bring closure to events that have dramatically changed our lives.
So long as what we write does not delve into the realm of self-indulgence, then people will read what we have written. As Mikhail Lermontov so aptly put it in the introduction to his epic novel, A HERO OF OUR TIME, ‘The story of a human soul, even the pettiest of souls, is no less interesting and instructive than the story of a nation, especially if it is the result of the observation of a mature mind and written without the vain desire to evoke compassion or wonder.’
If you’ve got a personal success story to tell, then you should write and share it with a broader audience. You may have lessons that others might want to learn.
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