What is your life’s epic story?

Steve Donahue

Steve Donahue, an internationally known author and motivational speaker, spoke at this summer’s National Pest Management Association’s (NPMA’s) Academy event about “Creating a Vision.” Donahue places great importance on creating your “epic story,” and he began his keynote session with his own epic story of crossing the Sahara Desert.

At a certain point in his journey, the paved road ended, Donahue told attendees. He made the comparison to that road just ending to start another road was much like how life can be: You are on a certain path and then it can suddenly end, forcing you to evaluate decisions and create a vision of new ones. This furthered his thinking about how mountains and deserts were two of the most powerful symbols we have across cultures, and how throughout history, we have used these symbols to illustrate the values and teachings of the paths we take in life (business and pleasure). Mountains have clear peaks, and identifiable routes where deserts don’t; this closely resembles life. We can get lost, we can get stuck, the journey seems endless, and then we find our way again. We sometimes struggle in times of change or ending roads and having to cross new ones. Our “deserts of change,” as he referred to them as, help us to define potential and vision.

Donahue said this could make you ask the questions: How do we make plans that keep changing? How do we set goals we won’t know how to reach if we are on a different “map?” All these questions apply to your personal and professional life, and he loved the idea of creating an “epic story” for yourself and your business. “Be epic,” he told the crowd.

In his book Shifting Sands, Donahue points out that life would be more fulfilling if we stopped thinking about everything as a goal to achieve that just required a map to get us to the top. Instead of following a map, follow your personal compass. Discover your direction and embrace each step of the journey as you create your own epic story. With life and business, he said, we all go through transitions and change; it becomes how you embrace them that make the epic story you will create along the way. Therefore, you create the vision you want to implement.

CLARK is general manager of Dugas Pest Control of Baton Rouge, La., and chair of the National Pest Management Association’s Leadership Development Group. TESH is sales and service manager of Pest Management Systems, Greensboro, N.C. Contact them via PMPEditor@northcoastmedia.net.