I do my best story-thinking when I’m out for a walk. It is also the time when I’m prone to wax philosophic.
The other day my brain latched onto the saying, “You are the author of your life,” and I really started to think about that. Of course, I approached it from the perspective of story-telling, but it gave me real pause because I had never really looked at my life that way before.
We all want to be the heroes of our own stories, but what do we really do about it? For example, I regularly write about a character who, when he sees something wrong, goes out and does his best to fix it. I know I’ve said he is the person I always wanted to be. So what’s stopping me? Fear? Uncertainty? Dread? (FUD-factor for those of you familiar with it)
None of those things should be a deterrent. They only actually are if I let them be.
So, I started thinking about my own story. How it starts is out of my control. In fact, everything to this very moment has already happened so, rather than dwell on mistakes, I should look back and learn from them so I don’t repeat them.
That’s great, but where do I want to go? What do I want to do? How do I want to be remembered?
That is where being the one in control of my own story becomes key. That begs the question: what do I want my story to be? Adventure? Romance? Mystery? Horror (definitely not!)? Perhaps a combination of several of these and many I haven’t mentioned.
And, what am I going to do about it? In a story, I create plot lines and fill those in with actions that will complete them. How will I do that with my life? Planning is equally important for both. I should be able to, by-and-large, plot out the next couple steps of life.
I say all this knowing that I don’t control everything about my life. Health can change. The interactions with others is always a question mark. But, and this is the big BUT (no, not big butt), if I have sense of what I want to achieve I can build a plan to get there.
So, what about you? What story do you want your life to be? Are you prepared to rewrite some of your own personal script to get you there?
Whatever you decide, I wish you the best.
