Coaching Monday: Those stories we love to tell

Someone asks us "Can you tell me the story of [blank, insert here what is relevant to you: your life, your career, your brand, your relationship, your summer holiday, your hobby, your adventures]?" and the magic can begin...

​The stories we tell again and again, those are the ones we remember and that shape not only our memories and our past but also our thoughts about ourselves and who we are, about others, and about the world we live in. 

[Among my favorite stories: How I adopted my cat Kim,

my first winter in freezing cold Berlin, 

and how I learned to bake farinata like a pro]

Those stories, no matter the topic or circumstances, become a sort of invisible archive easily accessible to us, a mind palace that we keep visiting in order to share our stories with others, reflect on what happened before, understand what's happening now, and guess what is "therefore" going to happen next. 

We are the stories we tell, and those stories are our past, our present, and our future.  

"Which of your stories do you love to tell again and again?"   

                                                    

Tags: Coaching question, Self-coaching, Self-awareness, Self-reflection, Personal storytelling, Personal brand

What to read next:

Coaching, reloaded - Coaching question of the day #38. - Your memories

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Collecting "Le petit Prince" - A big thank you to all the special, incredible people that are playing the game with me, year after year

"Now I always have a look around, when I am in some new place. Somehow, he has become my new habit", he says.

And I just melt.

This very good friend of mine is talking about looking for new, exotic editions of "The Little Prince" for my collection while traveling and/on being abroad for some time for whatever reason, and knowing that he remembers me and my special game makes me feel seen, loved and appreciated.

Collecting the book has been a serendipitous idea, something that I would not have expected and yet kept me company all these years, almost fifteen years by now.

And now, after so many years, my collection looks like this:

[My collection of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

as it is in June 2020: over 100 books 

in around 70 languages and dialects]

According to the most recent data, the book has been translated into more than 350 languages and dialects worldwide.

Singleness made in Berlin - #8. You spent too many years flirting in German, when... - Reprise, Feat. the auto-pilot mode about tattoo questions

"Is the purple tattoo on your left arm a new one?" he asks, while I am not looking at him, absolutely absorbed in reading the menu and looking for something to eat that could be keto-friendly.

I look up, a little bit puzzled. Our eyes meet.

I have been knowing him for over two years, now. It's quite strange that he never noticed that one.

Still, since I am absolutely used to any kind of questions about my tattoos, I roll up the sleeve of my black blouse a little bit more, I show him the full purple tattoo he is referring to.

[So many tattoos ago, so many haircuts ago...

That's me, ladies & gents, in 2016.

Can you spot the big purple tattoo on my left arm?]

And here we are: I explain that nope, it is a very old one, only purple ink and no black lines, I've got it myself when I completed my magister degree in cinema history and yada yada yada.

Auto-pilot mode about tattoo questions, welcome at the dinner table, just take a seat and enjoy the evening with us, wouldn't you? What can I order you? Some bananas, maybe?

Singleness made in Berlin - #7. One single smile, no strings attached, is enough to...

The blond, tall, handsome guy that is about to cross my path on the street while I am going to work is looking at me.

I'm wearing black shorts, black ankle boots, and a purple tank top. I have my pin-up sunglasses on and my indigo blue hair is incredibly curly today.

And now, ladies & gents, he is going for sure to react to me like most people do and like at least fifty people already did today, right?

We all know that this is what is going to happen, right?

[Are you able to smile at strangers,

to make the first move, to go all in,

no strings attached?]

Wrong.

What a slice of cake has to do with bad questions and purple boxes and how you can keep your emotional freedom, no matter what

I am sure that you are like me and that you like to think that people are good, that they have good intentions, that most of the time misunderstandings get in the way and if someone offended you, they didn't mean it badly.
Like Jeph Jacques says:

You ought to expect better of people. It encourages you to be a better person yourself. 

And yet there are those people.

[Simply adorable and yummy Purple picnic treats 
for a birthday party. And yet... 
a lot of gluten in it, unfortunately

Image credit: Juniper Fancy]

The ones that keep asking me year after year when I will spend my holidays in Italy even if I keep saying year after year that I am up for discovering new places I have never been to before...

Why one should go all in, while being heavily tattooed, and the kind of questions about tattoos that are pure gold

From a technical and medical point of view, tattoos are... scars.

While getting tattooed, one allows someone - hopefully a good tattoo artist, though! - to create a special kind of wound while putting specific colored pigments under the skin with needles, either manually or with the help of a tattoo machine. 

Wounds turn into scars and scars make you tough. 

Aisha Tyler

Over time, that wound is going to become a scar... sometimes a wonderful one, sometimes a gross one, for sure one filled with colored pigments: a tattoo.

[One interesting example of the kind of tattoos I like the most: 

Black ink Polynesian tattoo in the Marquesas Islands style]

Of course tattoos are way more than just a simple scar. They are part of important rituals in some cultures, over the centuries they had (and sometimes still have) a healing function in other cultures, they provided information about the roles of each person in a community or tribal society, they are a way of modifying the body, they marked and still mark a special kind of hierarchy in jails all around the world... and so on.

Mood: Time Travel in Purple Feat. "my" wedding dress and the best white edgy wedding dress ever

To be honest, I have to say immediately that, of course, in comparison with the main characters of Four Weddings and a Funeral, I am just an absolute beginner. 

And yet, about eight years ago, I reached that "wedding age", in which one starts to get at least a couple of wedding invitations every year. 

If you are going to reply that you started going to weddings when you were six, please stop. That is not the kind of weddings I am talking about.

I am talking about the weddings of your friends, of your schoolmates, of your ex-boyfriends, of your flatmates, of your colleagues... Weddings of people in your age or even way younger than you. 

[The amazing cast of Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) 

by Mike Newell, from left to right: 

Kristin Scott Thomas, Hugh Grant, Simon Callow, 

Andie MacDowell, Charlotte Coleman, John Hannah, James Fleet]

Yes, exactly that kind of weddings. Glad that we are on the same page, now.

Mood: Closing Time, one more time, or When you know that it's time to say goodbye

Sometimes it is very hard to say goodbye. 
Goodbye to someone, goodbye to something... goodbye to a job, to a place, to a habit. 
Goodbye to a time. Goodbye to the old-you and welcome to the new-you.

[Time is ticking...

Even if sometimes it hurts to say goodbye]

But, for the same reason, if you find it so hard to do, it's because most of the time you really have to do it. You have no choice, no alternative, no time to lose any longer. You deserve something different and you have to accept it.
It hurts, most of the time, if not always. But you have to. Anyway.

I don't have problems with smoking, and you?

I've talked a little about smoking yesterday.

As you can deduce by reading my post, I don't like smoking.

And I definitely don't like people who literally smoke on my face as this should be normal or kind or just acceptable. If you want to smoke, as far as I'm concerned you're free to do it: it's your body, not mine, and they're your lungs, not mine.

But not on my face. If I would like to smoke, probably I could do it by myself, don't you think? It should be not so hard to understand, maybe. Maybe I'm wrong and it is terribly hard to understand. But as far as I'm concerned... this is not my problem.

Finally, a cinematic tip: Thank You for Smoking by Jason Reitman could be an interesting movie to watch.

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Just sing it! Sing what? But 'Azzurra', of course!

In Italian, my mother tongue, Azzurra is a very particular and unusual name.

It's absolutely not a biblical or otherwise religious one, it's definitely not a traditional one, it's not even featured in the calendar with all Catholic saints and literally means 'azure' or 'light-blue'. Or, to put it better, 'something female which color is light-blue'.
Yes, you got it right: my name is actually not even a proper name. It is an adjective instead, because Italian adjectives change on the basis of gender and number, like in many other Neo-Latin languages.

[Not only Paolo Conte and Adriano Celentano sing Azzurro...

there is also a peculiar cover 
by the famous German punk band Die toten Hosen]

All my life, I've been asked a lot of stupid questions about it and in particular, if my name does come from Adriano Celentano's song 'Azzurro' (written by Paolo Conte) or from Lucio Battisti's song 'Acqua azzurra, acqua chiara', both very popular in Italy and, I've lately discovered, in Germany too.

I'm mad about Goethe #1.

Was immer du tun kannst oder wovon du träumst - fange es an. In der Kühnheit liegt Genie, Macht und Magie.
(Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832]

I'm dreaming something. And I'm doing it. It's hard, difficult and very exhausting. But there's nothing better. And I don't want anything else but it.