I shared this with Praxis participants and alumni today.
Every single story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Including the story that is your life.
Learning to see, understand, and articulate your story is of incalculable value.
Where have you been? What is the meaning or theme of the events leading up to now?
Where are you? Who have you become through this process and how/why did it lead to here?
Where are you going? What’s the trajectory, or arc that makes sense out of your past to present journey, and what kind of evolution is expected next?
This is why we have you create a pitch deck. It’s not just a piece of personal marketing collateral, or a way to impress a business partner. It’s a way to examine and describe your own story to yourself.
Your story will evolve. Not just the present and future plot points, but the past too. You’ll learn to rewrite it as the arc unfolds and different elements become more and less key to the evolving plot.
This exercise in self-knowledge and self-honesty is hard. It should be hard. Much of our experience has been life just happening. But deliberate effort to see your agency in the drama, and describe the events, and see the narrative arc, and take creative control of what it’s led to and where it’s going is mentally exhausting, but infinitely rewarding.
I recommend getting a copy of the book, Get Backed, as a guide to pitch decks, reading it, and using it to create one for your own life.