If You Don't Like the Story of Your Life... Write a Better Story!

When times are difficult — that is to say, when you feel like you are really struggling to navigate the world — we often feel the need to change something; change our lives in some way... so we can just feel better.

Which is a perfectly natural human response.

So if your life is like a story, we just have to write a better story!

The self-development and enlightenment business — and even pop culture, these days — uses a lot phrases like "we create our own reality."

Which — at least from where I am sitting — amounts to little more than a dressed up version of "choices have consequences" or "you reap what you sow." Which are both old truisms that have been around a lot longer than so-called "New Age Woo-woo."

I look around me in this world, and it seems we so often live by a paradigm of people either wanting to reap things they never sowed... or people wanting to reap before they have sowed. We are really not very good "farmers" or "authors" in our own lives, anymore... or maybe our capitalist consumer society has done too good a job of teaching people to "party and enjoy everything NOW" and "do the work and pay later." I see this all the time, on forums and in groups of even ostensibly "evolved" people.

But let's get back to writing a Better Story.

In order to write a Better Story for our lives, you have to know what that looks like. Simply saying "a better story" amounts to little more than saying "I want to make more money next year!" Come the end of the year, you made $28,010 instead of $27,995 for the year... and voila, "goal accomplished," but was that actually what you wanted?

Probably not...

It's difficult to Write A Better Story without taking time to identify precisely what you want that story to be.

At least, if you don't, you expose yourself to the very likely possibility that your story isn't actually what you had in mind. Choices have consequences.

Beyond that, you have to know what you truly like, and don't like... and what you're realistically willing — and able — to do to get from point A to point B.

Some would say "Yeah, but I have a pretty clear sense of what it would feel like, at the end!"

Whereas that may be true, there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes between "here" and "at the end." And you can't just ignore it.

"Yeah, but a benevolent Universe (or "God" or "The Force" or whatever) should know what makes me happy!"

In my 60-something years on this planet, I have never quite figured out what to do with such assertions... because they always have the feel (to me) of being a way of passing off accountability for our choices and actions to "something external," rather than being accountable for the fact that our action A results in outcome B.

Of course, I can only know what life feels like like by living in my own shoes.

Some would argue that "you just have to have faith!"

But tossing a handful of random seeds on a patch of dirt and then becoming all distressed and unhappy because they don't turn into the perfect field of roses you wanted — and then blaming "God" or "The Universe" for not giving you what you asked for — makes absolutely no sense to me!

Perhaps this all comes across as very "Common Sense 101," but I find it remarkable how many people I talk to expect something to come from almost nothing, or from something else, outside themselves.

Always remember that in order to win the lottery, you do have to buy a lottery ticket!

Similarly, in order to Write a Better Story, we not only have to know what that story truly is, we have to be willing to sit down and personally write all the chapters that make up that story.

Could someone/something else write the story for us? Sure... but then we must live with the likely consequence that it would no longer be the story we wanted.

We have to do the work.

Living with constant Consciousness and Mindfulness is a lot of work! And maybe part of the reason it often seems like we don't get what we want (or hope for) is precisely due to the fact that we "go to sleep" and allow external factors to not only disrupt our true story, but actually write the story for us... they way "they" want the story told, not the way we want the story told!

And it just doesn't turn out well...

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead.

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

---

Greetings bloggers and social content creators! This article was created via PeakD, a blogging application that's part of the Hive Social Content Experience. If you're a blogger, writer, poet, artist, vlogger, musician or other creative content wizard, come join us! Hive is a little "different" because it's not run by a "company;" it operates via the consensus of its users and your content can't be banned, censored, taken down or demonetized. And that COUNTS for something, in these uncertain times! So if you're ready for the next generation of social content where YOU retain ownership and control, come by and learn about Hive and make an account!

Proud member of the Silver Bloggers Community on Hive!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2025.02.18 01:09 PST
1325/2588