Power Tool #9: Tell Your Story
“Stories are medicine for our false isolation. A way to forge connection and community and help shift our course . . . the seed forms of culture we carry around within us.” ~Nina Simons, founder of Bioneers
Your story is your power and your truth.
My friend, the master storyteller and storytelling teacher Laura Simms, sees stories as a path to healing oneself and the world. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, told a story that changed how Americans thought about slavery and intensified support for abolition. It became the second best-selling book of the Nineteenth Century, behind only the Bible, itself a collection of stories.
In fact, throughout the writing of No Excuses and on the 9 Ways Blog, I’ve been most inspired by the stories of women, and men. They have moved me, mentored me, and taught me. I hopes their stories do the same for you when you read them.
I’ve told my own life story so often I am sometimes bored with it, but it is always what people are most interested in, no matter what other substantive content I might think I prefer to impart.
- What stories do you tell yourself about yourself? How do they enhance or limit you?
- What story would you like to share with us today? Please do!
- How have stories moved you to take action at work, in politics, or in your personal life?
Wear the Shirt Contest Winner!
Shannon Drury of The Radical Housewife is the lucky winner of my Wear the Shirt contest. Thanks to my stellar team of interns, Gabrielle Korn and Dior Vargas for making the selection, because I love all of the photos. But I guess the rule that one should never try to compete against a small child still holds, and Shannon’s exuberant daughter Miriam in her shirt proclaiming “Feminism runs in our family” won the day.
Shannon is a writer, an at-home parent, and a community activist who has been blogging about parenthood and politics since 2006. She is a prime example of Power Tool #8: Employ Every Medium. The accessibility of blogging and social media has truly changed the political landscape by making it possible for everyone to speak at the same decibel level. Shannon writes about gender, politics, and parenting, among other topics. I’ll be sending a set of my four signed books to Shannon, and maybe Miriam will read them, too, in a few years.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest. You can view the complete slide show of all the entries here.
And by the way, though this contest is over, don’t hesitate to send me more photos of you in shirts that proclaim your convictions. I’ll keep posting them and I am sure readers of this blog will keep enjoying them. Most important, keep wearing them!
Read MoreSHE Should Talk At TED: 5 Ways to Get Started
I get so excited I can hardly stand it when I see women embracing their “power-to” leadership and using the 9 Ways power tools I share in No Excuses.
When it comes to defining our own terms and creating a movement to take action for TEDparity, my “heartfeldt” belief is that women are beyond merely offering an opinion that TED should be more inclusive. We are the majority of population, voters, people with college degrees, and purchasers of consumer goods. We don’t need to be supplicants. And for sure there are plenty among us who have big and exciting ideas. Please share yours here and on twitter @SheTalkTed and the She Should Talk at Ted Facebook page.
If you’re in NY, there’s still time today to register for and attend the TEDWomen/TEDx636_11thAve follow up round table this evening, sponsored by the New York Women Social Entrepreneurs, to discuss action steps with panelists
Read MoreDo Mainly Men Have Ideas Worth Spreading?
Since my friend Ruth Ann Harnisch told me about it a few years ago, I’ve thought that attending a TED conference should be on my bucket list. I LOVE big ideas and great speeches about them. So why did I decide not to go to one when the opportunity was offered to me to attend TEDWomen in Washington D.C. December 7 and 8?
I vaguely wondered if the TED folks thought the little women still needed a conference of their own because women’s ideas aren’t as big as men’s. Organizational reputation scholar and consultant CV Harquail raised the same concerns more powerfully in this post when TEDWomen was announced. Nevertheless, I filled out the forms and proposed myself as a speaker on the very big idea of what specifically it will take for women to “reshape the world,” as TEDWomen’s tagline proffers. That was rejected based on some pretty lame reasoning, in my opinion. Then, frankly, I got so busy with my own speeches and interviews after No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power was published in October that I forgot all about the conference and let the slot I’d been offered go.
This past week, the topic of TEDWomen and TED in general heated up so much in the blogosphere and on listservs I’m on that it came back into my consciousness. About that time,
Read MorePower Tool #8: Employ Every Medium
On a snowy January day in Grass Valley, California, 250 women packed the Holiday Inn Express conference room, the only place in the Northern California town of ten thousand large enough to hold such a crowd. Even in good weather, it would have seemed remarkable for so many bright-eyed activists from a sprawling rural area to spend a full day in a cramped meeting room discussing what they were “going to do about it.”
The “it” was each individual attendee’s passion. I’d been invited to speak about “Sister Courage” at this first See Jane Do Passion Into Action conference, organized that winter day in 2010 by Jesse Locks and Elisa Parker, a dynamic duo of young women who created the hub for activism and social change called See Jane Do. But I ended up learning more than I imparted. It was an eye-popping experience.
Read MorePopulation Institute’s 31st Annual Global Media Awards
Thank you to Peter Bruce Photo and Video for the beautiful photos from this event.
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Left: Distinguished journalist Rahul Singh has been chair of the Global Media Awards for 30 years!
Center: Population Institute president Billl Ryerson presenting the award for best article or series of articles to Steve Katz, publisher of Mother Jones magazine.
Right: Jennifer Brown accepting the award for best TV show on behalf of Australian documentary, “Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle.”
Read MoreInternational Museum of Women
San Francisco, CA Fri. 12/2 @12 pm International Museum of Women & the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
Read MoreWhat Movement Have You Started Today?
Thanks to Shelby Knox for posting this on Facebook today:
On this date in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, AL, city bus. Her arrest sparked the bus boycott and her courage fueled the burgeoning Civil Right Movement. Parks once said, “I want to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would also be free.” A beautiful goal, achieved by a revolutionary woman.
Parks helped to spark the Civil Rights Movement by this action. Over on my 9 Ways blog this week, I’m showing examples of No Excuses power tool #7: “create a movement”–with ways we can join together with others to do everything from planning Thanksgiving dinner to world-changing actions like Rosa Parks’.
Today is also World AIDS Day. It’s a good day to think about the amazing progress that has been made so that a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS is not the death warrant is was when the disease was first identified in the 1980’s, thanks to the many people who started movements large and small to combat the disease.
What movement have you created, joined, or contributed to lately? What movement do you think needs creating?
Read MoreIt Takes Persistence to Move a Mountain
Blogger Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish is an amazing woman. I was so moved by her how she used the three principles of movement building: be a sister by reaching out to others with similar concerns, have the courage to raise issues that you feel are important, and put the two together systematically to create movement. Watch the video of Beth telling her story of why and how she persuaded Brita to offer recyclable water filters to US consumers. I knew I had to highlight it in No Excuses the moment I heard about her.
What’s your story? How have you been able to use movement building principles to achieve a goal? What was the issue you wanted to take on? What was the result?
Read MorePower Tool #7: Create a Movement
In this video, women wearing their virtual shirts put their convictions into action. But they didn’t do it alone.
In No Excuses, I show how to apply movement building principles to any area of life. Those principles can be described as Sister Courage: be a sister. Reach out and ask for help when you need it. give help when someone else needs it. Have the courage to raise issues. Put the two together with action and you have a movement.
Think about it. When you needed to plan Thanksgiving dinner, didn’t you call on your sisters to help you plan the menu and distribute the workload? Those same skills can be incorporated into the workplace and in politics.
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