Natalie's Storyline

Wanting to help people to move from just writing on a wall to actually going after their dreams and ambitions, we encouraged people to engage in the Storyline process. The goal of Storyline is to help people create life plans that give them personal vision and clarity by focusing on a meaningful life rather than just a productive one. Here is one person's experience going through the Storyline process.

Want to take the next step in your story? 

http://storylineblog.com/starthere/

 

Natalie is a recent graduate from Kettering Fairmont High School and today (August 30) is currently moving into her dorm room to start a new adventure at Eastern Michigan University with a full ride athletic scholarship. This summer, not only did she follow through with what she wrote on the Before I Die wall to sky dive, she engaged in the Storyline process and this is her story:

"The Storyline process is unique. You start off by looking at the major turns in your life. You see how each negative had a positive outcome...every single time. Storyline makes it clear that the negative is still a negative and we shouldn't try to make a negative turn positive but rather see what good comes out of the bad things. I like that. It's more like just accepting that there is bad, but showing that God uses the bad to bring out good. This is shown in one of the modules that you make a time line of your life. It is neat to see the pattern of bad and good. It was encouraging to see that with every bad turn that has happened, there was good that surfaced. 

Next you look at the roles in your life. Storyline has you focus in on the 5 main roles in your life. Then you write down your ambitions for each one and how you are going to get to that ambition. Not just by writing down your goals, but HOW you will do it. This was a really helpful because it allowed me to think deeper about each part of my life and how you could improve each one. Also it has you identify the conflicts that may or may not happen so that you can prepare yourself for them. 

Lastly, it has you picture climactic scenes. This exercise is extremely helpful. Unlike a goal, by picturing a climactic scene in your brain, it has a way of connecting to you more. For example, if you want to lose weight, a goal may be a certain amount of weight lost. However, a climactic scene would be picturing yourself finishing a 5k and hugging all your friends and family and them being proud of you.

My favorite module was the negative turns. It really helped. You are always going to go through something hard where you don't see how it is going to be good. But seeing my timeline and how EVERY negative had a positive outcome made it easier to go through the hard because I knew that something good would come out of it. It helped me to see my life as a bigger picture.

I found it very helpful to go through this process with someone else. First of all, you get to know that person better which is always a cool thing to grow closer to someone. Also, it is helpful to have that second set of eyes and ears to hear and help you out when you get stuck and to see things differently than you do. Also, it makes it a commitment. You are more disciplined to do it because you are committed to meeting up.

Storyline has helped me tremendously. I loved the process and it really does help you to clarify what you want out of life and how to make the best circumstances and the best out of every situation that comes your way. The biggest thing is clarity.

I would definitely recommend Storyline, it was such an rewarding experience. It was so cool to just focus on your life and break it down. Not too often do you get to analyze your own life in such a positive and helpful fashion. I would recommend it to people going to college or about to go through a change. But really anyone can benefit because everyone is always going through trials and everyone is always trying to improve their relationships and themselves.

Responses in Pictures for Bacon Fest Weekend

Bacon Fest Weekend Responses

Love Bacon? Well we hope you didn't miss the Bacon Fest held at the Fraze. Record numbers showed for this inagural event and the Before I Die hit a record number of responses in 

TWO days - 105!!! 

1) Be a good mom
2) Be remembered as a lovely person
3) Live in Cape Town, S Africa
4) I wanna do hoodrat stuff
5) Teach someone how to Dougie
6) Walk the Appalachians
7) Meet Boooooosh
8) Drive a golf cart into a lake
9) Take a golf ball out of a gator's mouth and live
10) Go backpacking
11) Live to see 2100
12) Meet Amber
13) Save a life
14) Find a way
15) Reach Nirvana
16) Be Super G
17) Learn to sail
18) Catch a 20" trout
19) Forgive my ex-wife!
20) Travel all over Europe
21) See Vegas
22) Live on a beach
23) Be a pro football player
24) Go to Vegas
25) End human trafficking
26) Write a book about myself
27) Get my parents back together 
28) Have a baby and get married
29) Ditto
30) Love and be loved unconditionally
31) Have my kids buy me a house/condo in HH
32) Move to the beach
33) Have a lesbian wedding
34) Take my wife to Hawaii
35) Play college football
36) Relocate
37) Live
38) Married with kids
39) Get a horse
40) Marry Erica
41) Help others
42) Be charter captain
43) Live in Italy
44) Make a difference
45) Train Dakota
46) Save the Earth
47) Inspire others
48) Have a family
49) Help as many people as I can
50) Live in Eurpope
51) Travel the world
52) What good is gold and silver if your heart is not there?
53) Be with my faith
54) Live in California
55) Italy
56) Drive my 69 Cadillac from Chicago to LA
57) Money
58) Travel the world
59) Beat Alter
60) Fly fish
61) Meet Roger Walters
62) Go on a family road trip
63) Operate a bulldozer
64) Eat more bacon
65) Learn to swim well
66) Marry Greg
67) Run an Iron Man
68) Join the Marines
69) Dance with strangers
70) Go to Australia
71) Live
72) Travel the world
73) See my daughter again
74) Keep my daughter living only with me
75) Shoot my age in golf
76) Get bacon
77) Get my back to be pain free
78) Live to be God's servant
79) See my family
80) Be a "Mimi"
81) Pay it forward
82) Love more
83) Spend more time with my daughter
84) Write a book
85) Change someone's life
86) Own my own house
87) Have all my dreams come true
88) Meet Joss
89) Destroy all anime
90) Own a historical home
91) See the world
92) See Texas Tech win a national championship
93) See my children happy and successful
94) Bacon Fest rocks!
95) Bungee jump
96) Sky dive
97) Live on Tybee Island
98) See my boys as grown men, happy and settled
99) Be happy
100) Lick that guy's beard
101) See the world
102) Go to Australia
103) Figure out his name
104) Travel
105) Drive to California and up the coast

Following through with the Before I Die Wall

This week, three college students not only wrote a bucket list item on the Kettering Before I Die wall, they followed through with it! Below you will find their stories on what it meant to share their dreams with others and making it happen.  Our hope is that their stories will inspire you to follow through with something you've been wanting to do! Why wait? 

Natalie's Story:

I wanted to skydive because it's just one of those things you gotta experience before it's too late. Also, I was scared of it! I mean, who isn't scared of jumping out of a plane? But that's just another reason why I had to do it, because I was scared. AND IT WAS AMAZING!

Sean's Story:

As a student helping to build the ‘Before I Die’ wall I became very interested and attached to the art project and concept. I have visited a few times and written a few ‘bucket list’ dreams on there. One of the dreams I had (along with many others) was to go skydiving. So with this, Rachel, Natalie, and I started talking more and more about this dream that we all seemed to share. After a few brief text messages we scheduled ourselves an appointment to jump out of an airplane at about 12,000 feet on a standard Tuesday afternoon. Before hand we all went to the wall and wrote in large letters with our three individual varying pieces of chalk ‘GO SKYDIVING!’ Two days later, we jumped. The experience was so incredible and surreal and one of the best moments of my life! It was a great time and I recommend it to all! The wall has really began to inspire people and has launched into an awesome project and actually fulfilling one of the goals was even more awesome! Just because you want to do it before you die, doesn't mean you have to wait until you’re almost dying. Do it tomorrow!

Rachel's Story:

"There goes your friend," The man in front of me said.  And I looked up to see that it was very true, Natalie was gone. She'd literally fallen out of the plane with only a parachute, an instructor, and the hope of reaching the ground alive. And the most terrifying part was, we were next. We were 12,000 feet in the air above Middletown in a small airplane, and the only way back to the ground was jumping. How did we get ourselves into this?

I feel like skydiving is a pretty common adventurous and reckless part of most people's bucket list. There's the song about "skydiving and Rocky Mountain climbing" to "live like you're dying," and Natalie, Sean and I all had it included in our lists, but how many people actually go?

Being the adventurous, slightly insane college students that we are, we set a plan in motion to jump out of a plane. You never know when will be your last opportunity to do something

My friends and family were skeptical when I told them I planned on skydiving before returning to college in a week. But they underestimated our ability to make things happen when we make up our minds. We went to the Before I Die wall to write "GO SKYDIVING." Then signed up to skydive the following Tuesday.

It turns out it is fairly simple to skydive. You can sign up online up to a day before, or simply walk in to the Start-Skydiving building in Middletown, Ohio. After initialing about 20 spaces and signing our lives away if we were to die, we watched a short video about what we were about to do, then walked over to the hanger where the instructors were folding up parachutes and preparing the next group of jumpers.

The instructors were super casual, as if flying up 2 miles into the air simply to go 140 mph back towards the ground was anything but an absolutely terrifying and dangerous activity. And for them I suppose it is: one of the instructors had jumped over 9000 times.  We slipped into our extremely fashionable blue jumpsuits and were strapped into the climbing-like harnesses by the instructor assigned to us. With barely any time to fully process what we had gotten ourselves into, I found myself walking across the runway to a tiny plane with 6 other first time skydivers.

The plane flew off into the sky, and the landscape spread out below us. It may not have been the Grand Canyon or Pacific Ocean, but there is something incredible about flying over the place you grew up when someone points out Dayton or Kettering, and you have bird's eye view of your hometown.

Suddenly the door was flung open and one of my best friends was gone. Oh no. Rachel this was not a good idea, this was not a good idea....

Then Sean jumped out, and soon it was me waddling towards the gaping doorway, strapped to my instructor and seeing the cornfields spread out far below me. "Want to do a flip?" my professional asked. And I said sure, at that point, why not?

So there I am, back-flipping out of the plane with wind rushing towards me as I hurtle towards the ground. I couldn't hear myself scream as wind rushed past and I put my arms out and arched my back like I was instructed before the fall. It is surreal as we free fell back to Earth. There was no time to be scared, and we were going too fast for my stomach to even drop. I was really doing this!

I felt a jerk as the parachute caught and we slowed to a serene floating still so far above the ground. "The parachute opened, that's always a good thing," said my instructor joking with me. And I could only smile, as I took in the view of everything around me. One of my other Before I Die dreams is to become a pilot; to fly. And this was the closest I've been to actually flying, just us and a parachute thousands of feet in the air.

When we reached the ground I ran over to Natalie and Sean, and we all hugged yelling, "We did it!" A huge rush of adrenaline had convinced us that we were unstoppable. Smiles were plastered to our faces for at least the next hour as we excitedly relived our experience to my sister and Nicole who had come to watch.

We had done it. A truly crazy endeavor. We had faced any fear we had, and lived to the fullest extent in those moments as we fell from the sky; powerless over our futures, simply depending on a large piece of fabric to preserve our lives.

It is a day I will always remember, after all, how many afternoons of my life will I get to spend jumping out of a plane with two of my best friends?

Responses in Pictures from Art on the Commons and Festival of the Vine

Responses after Art on the Commons and Festival of the Vine

This was a big weekend for the community of Kettering with two popular festivals going on at the Fraze Pavilion. With both of these events, it allowed for the wall to be bursting with responses! On Saturday, the Festival of the Vine allowed people to spend their Saturday afternoon strolling through the "vineyards" of Lincoln Park, sampling wines from all over the world. On Sunday, the Art on the Commons celebrated its 25th year and hosted over 100 artists from Ohio and surrounding states to display and sell their fine arts and fine crafts. 

1) Be free
2) Meg and I (Darby) see and do amazing things
3) Forgive my parents
4) Have a pet sloth 
5) Ride in a hot air balloon
6) Be happy
7) Inspire the world
8) Be all I can be!
9) Be humbled, grounded and one with everything
10) Go skydiving
11) Visit all 50 states
12) Be at peace with myself
13) Pet a penguin
14) Sleep under the Northern Lights
15) Be a rockstar!
16) Exceed new career goals
17) At least once make my wife happy
18) Make my husband happy
19) Travel the world
20) Be remembered
21) Buy a ferret and name it Tampan
22) Go camping
23) Change the way the world works
24) Find my love
25) Find someone to tell everything to
26) Play beach volleyball in Long Beach, CA...with my bro, too
27) Love myself
28) Learn to play the guitar
29) Bring more magic into the world
30) Make my footprint with art
31) Buy a cat
32) One lap in a Nascar
33) See my children and grandchildren be grateful/productive members of society
34) Go to Australia 
35) Pet a shark
36) Live life to the fullest
37) See my kids graduate college
38) Grow taller
39) Forgive myself
40) Learn at least 5 different languages
41) Go Skydiving
42) Make peace with my sister
43) Travel in space
44) Be a molecular biologist
45) Go travel through space
46) Hi Kate!
47) Love selflessly
48) Visit every continent
49) Hike the entire Appalachian Trail
50) Love the skin I'm in
51) Write a book and get it published
52) Make the world a little better
53) Have a pet ostrich
54) Live in Ireland
55) Send my parents to Ireland
56) Be in 2 places at once
57) Reflect the Spirit of God
58) Be loved
59) Be more grateful
60) Continue being happy
61) Travel the world
62) Enjoy today
63) Get my art out in the world
64) Travel all over Europe
65) Meet my life goal
66) Shower in a waterfall
67) Ditto
68) Have a big family
69) Eat Ritters
70) Hear the voice of God
71) Chill with Willie Nelson
72) Train a pet cheetah
73) Love endlessly

Responses in Pictures July 28-31

Responses after The Eleventh Hour/Streetcorner Symphony Concert

1) Go to Nevis with my whole family

2) Marry the woman of my dreams (Keralyn Bates)

3) Visit all 7 continents

4) Have the perfect hug

5) Be a grandpa

6) Be an Orange

7) Be seated in King's College Chapel, Cambridge, England on New Years Eve.

8) Have the perfect kiss

9) Talk to a medium to talk to my great grandma

10) Help others who need it

11) Put a dent in Peter Bonavita's car

12) Meet Jesus

13) Travel to all 50 states

14) Finish South Campus!!

15) Graduate Law school and pass the bar

16) Help the Earth

17) Fall madly in love

18) Visit Germany- The Homeland

20) Go on a safari

21) Star in a movie

22) Help others

23) See Jack Johnson

24) See Tesla

25) Swim in the English Channel

26) Get a hole in 1

27) Walk a dog that doesn't yank my arm off

28) Tip a server $100

29) Go to a sleeping with Sirens concert

30) Become a grandma

31) Do the Hollywood 16 High skateboard

32) Forgive and Heal

33) Visit Africa and do mission work

34) Take a trip to Azoros

35) Renew my wedding vows

36) Go to Australia

37) Be a skate-rat

38) Be that 'cool uncle'


39) Watch my kids grow old


40) Go to Disney World

Video of Responses for the First 10 Days

This video captures the responses the wall has received in the first ten days to the tune of Train's "When I Look to the Sky". Some responses will make you laugh while others will make you reflect and on your own life. Below you will find lyrics to the song and how it applies to the Before I Die concept.

Train - "When I Look to the Sky"
When it rains it pours and opens doors
And floods the floors we thought would always keep us safe and dry
And in the midst of sailing ships we sink our lips into the ones we love
That have to say goodbye

And as I float along this ocean
I can feel you like a notion that won't seem to let me go 

'Cause when I look to the sky something tells me you're here with me
And you make everything alright
And when I feel like I'm lost something tells me you're here with me
And I can always find my way when you are here

And every word I didn't say that caught up in some busy day
And every dance on the kitchen floor we didn't dance before
And every sunset that we'll miss I'll wrap them all up in a kiss
And pick you up in all of this when I sail away

Whether I am up or down or in or out or just plane overhead
Instead it just feels like it is impossible to fly
But with you I can spread my wings
To see me over everything that life may send me
When I am hoping it won't pass me by

And when I feel like there is no one that will ever know me
There you are to show me 

How the song correlates with the "Before I Die" concept

What's so wonderful about music is that it speaks to people in many diverse ways and on different levels. While the band Train's intention of the song was to encourage those serving in the military and those they love, many people find this song comforting after the death of a loved one. Either way, the song is talking about a loss of a someone they love and care about. This song brings comfort and hope to listeners as they realize that they aren't alone in their time of loss. The Before I Die wall concept works to bring people together to help them realize that we aren't alone, just like this song.