You are the gift

I'm getting this one to you a little late again.

I keep practicing this, the discipline of sitting down and actually reflecting, and I keep learning that reflecting is a bit of a lost art. When I make the time for it, I feel like I brush up against part of why I'm here. So even when it's late, I don't want to skip it.

This week I've got a sentence stuck in my head that I can't shake, and I want to think it through with you.

Here it is. You are the gift.

Not the work you do. Not the label you've given yourself. Not your process, your credentials, or the list of things you've accomplished. You. The person.

I'm still turning that one over, honestly, so bear with me while I say it out loud.

Here's where it came from.

Last week I hosted a story strategy workshop with a longtime friend. She's building her therapy practice and wanting to show up for her people, and she trusted me to walk her through the stories that made her who she is. That kind of trust from a friend is its own gift, and I don't take it lightly.

I won't tell her story here, because it's hers to tell and it's a beautiful one. But I'll tell you where it landed. By the end of our time together, the thing that surfaced, the truth underneath all of it, was a voice telling her she is the gift. Not her techniques. Not her training. Her.

And it wrecked me a little, because I've been circling the same idea from my own direction lately. Somewhere recently the phrase "I am the asset" came up, and it's the same thing. It's not the work. It's the person doing it.

I need to sit in that, because for 20 years I've quietly believed the opposite about myself.

I assumed people would hire me because of my tenure as a documentary filmmaker. Because of the clients we've worked with. Because of the beautiful work sitting in our portfolio. The credential. The résumé. The proof.

And here's the uncomfortable part. If the work were really the thing, I'd never have to show up as a person at all. I could just point at the highlight reel and wait to be discovered. Which is more or less what I did for two decades, and it's exactly why so many good people stay the best-kept secret in their field. We keep offering the work and hiding the person, when the person was the whole point.

I can't ask you to stop hiding if I'm still doing it myself. So this newsletter, me showing up in your inbox as a guy and not a portfolio, is me practicing what I keep telling everyone else.

Which is maybe why I did something a little funny this week.

I joined a 21-day storytelling challenge. I stumbled onto a creator named Jun Yuh, saw one of his videos in my feed, and loved his teaching and his heart for authentic storytelling. So I signed up.

Twenty years into doing this professionally, and I signed up to get better at it.

I'm a firm believer that I could do this work with my eyes closed and still have room to grow. If nothing else, a challenge like this knocks the dust off corners I haven't visited in a while. And good storytelling is one of the few things AI will never be able to fake and one of the few things that will always land with us. I want to be the best storyteller I can be, for my clients, for my family, for my friends. So I'll be sharing what I pick up along the way, so you get better at telling your story too.

That's really the whole thing this week.

You are the gift. Not the thing you make. Not the title on your website. Not the years on your résumé. You.

I'm still learning to believe it about myself. Maybe we can practice believing it together.

Let me know if there's anything I can do to serve you this week. And go be the gift, out loud, where people can actually find you.

Grateful for you,
Ryan

P.S. If you want to sharpen your own storytelling, Jun Yuh's the creator running that challenge, and his stuff is worth a look: instagram.com/jun_yuh. I've got a workshop of my own on telling your story in a way that's actually you coming before too long. More on that when it's ready.