Tell me a good one
Tall tales only
Elementary schools and libraries often schedule story time. The excited youngsters gather round while some adult with a lovely voice reads a book aloud sometimes even turning it to show the pictures. The participants learn what reading sounds like so that they can replicate it. It can be entertaining if there is a satisfactory ending, and it doesn’t go on and on. Adults have their own unacknowledged version of this event. Adults have their own stories. Rightly so. This should be encouraged. Not just because it puts them in a better light but because everyone at some point in life should understand that they become responsible for their own story. No one else’s version is a personal truth. In fact, everyone else who wants to conjure up a story about another human is just creating fiction. The only person who will ever know the truth about life is the person living it. On the surface, this sounds empowering. Until you really start to tell yourself the truth about your life without embellishment or judgement. It is your story. Owning it eliminates all of the other versions. More importantly, telling your own radical truth allows you to examine the patterns of life that have designed it. Once you start to put together the pieces of your own puzzle that fit together without pressing on them so hard they bend, you really see the whole picture. Linking the moments when you lived at your best with how you want to create your future provides a clear picture of the process to do so. Hanging your head with those times that you let yourself down opens up the full memory that made that occur to duck it next time around. If you really want to know who you are, tell your own story. First, to yourself.
Stranger than fiction
Option #1: Write down your story for today.
Option #2: Can you read your own life?
Option #3: What is going to happen in the next chapter of your life?
That’s it. After you choose the option that best describes the true story of you, take a few minutes to describe why you chose that option and what action, if any, may come next.
