Connect the dots – from childhood to midlife to beyond – and articulate the story only you can tell

Lesson 5: What is your defining story [transcript]

So, hello again. I hope you’ve been having fun creating your Mills Matrix™, as we call it. 

So what you should be getting now is some of these, some of these golden threads, some of these through lines, some of the character traits that really define you. And what I would really urge you to do now is to think about that in terms of a story. Think about what you remember about other people and don’t shy away from including in that some of the things in your life which have been difficult or challenging because they really are the moments which make us who we are. And the point about this is to be able to really encapsulate all those really important, pivotal moments in your life which have made you who you are. 

So while we were filming this, I did the Mills Matrix™ on Joy Foster, the founder of TechPixies, and she told me an incredible story about her childhood and how her mother had had a terrible head injury and been in hospital for a long time and her dad had remarried. So she ended up with what she called two moms. 

And we talked a lot about how that had really impacted her work because she now helps women get back on the career ladder by giving them tech skills and things. And she really does that because she saw the effect, the incredible power of having a career, having a professional skill from her second mom, and how her first mom had really struggled in the aftermath of the head injury because she couldn’t work and she couldn’t do those kinds of things.

So for Joy, we really saw that moment of when her mother had had the head injury– Joy was very young she was only like three or four – and how that had had a really massive knock-on effect all the way down her life. 

So you may not have had something quite so dramatic happen to you, but you probably do have some really key moments early on which have a cascade effect. And that’s what we’re really looking for. We’re looking for the essence of your personality, your characteristics, the things which have made you make the decisions that you have, so that we can tell a truly compelling and memorable story about who you are and what made you like that. 

And this isn’t just an academic exercise. We’re doing this because what we’re going to do afterwards is use all these nuggets, all these stories that we’ve unearthed to create a brilliant cover letter for you, a CV, a long bio, a LinkedIn bio, an Ask Me page on your website, or just the base there are really some brilliant building blocks for conversations that you might have in a lift with somebody, or at a dinner party or when you go out for lunch. 

We’re going to furnish you with a brilliant story to tell about yourself. What I call ‘singing the song of yourself’, which is a Walt Whitman phrase, but I think really sums up that. And the reason we need it is often, by midlife, our story is quite complicated. It has lots of tendrils, it’s a bit like a rose bush, which has got lots of kind of, you know, long arms, which have got a bit out of control. And what we’re doing here is really boiling you back down to your essence: What makes you you? What have been your pivotal moments? And that’s what needs to go into the Mills Matrix™. 

So don’t, don’t make this too vanilla, yeah. What we’re trying to get here is a really kind of good, strong flavour of you, because that’s what’s going to make you stand out in the crowd, and that’s what’s going to cut through all the different things that you’ve done in your life and make you a really persuasive character. So really look through those through lines, think about your golden threads, and really think about all the way through that professional, personal and purpose and those moments that connect all three, which are the pivots. So you’ve got the three Ps and then your extra P, which is maybe your pivots when things have changed and your life took on a new trajectory, 

And what we’re trying to do here is to create a through story, a really compelling narrative about why that is. Think of it a bit like a kind of script for the film of your life. How would you sum up all of those things? And that’s what makes a really engaging story. 

And if you think about the kind of big, big celebrities or politicians that, you know, a lot of them have a really defining story about who they are. I went to interview Sheryl Sandberg when she was at Meta, at Facebook, and of course, one of the defining things that happened to her was her first husband died. He fell off a treadmill and hit his head, and he died when he was only 48.

And then she had to write, she wrote a book called Plan B about constructing the life, a different life, because Plan A with her first husband wasn’t possible because he was dead. So that’s become a really defining story that Sheryl Sandberg tells about herself. And what that shows is also resilience, a capacity to, as we were talking about, make lemonade out of lemons when bad things happen to you.

And so think about what your own version is of that kind of defining story or defining narrative about what makes you you. Because those are the kind of big things that we’re trying to put into this bio. So don’t go too trivial. Let’s really have the kind of core facts, the really kind of meaty stuff that makes you an amazing individual. 

Good luck!