Stop Performing. Start Living.
“Stories begin when things change.” - Unknown
You are the hero in your story.
Think about the characters that resonate with you when you watch a film.
The story is only interesting when we follow a character who is driving the journey forward with their decisions.
Even if those decisions are irresponsible, crazy, and illogical, we watch.
There is something about watching someone who plays by their own rules that is cathartic and awakens something inside of us that wants to live life in that way.
Despite the obstacles the character inevitably faces, they adjust, they take chances, they never give up.
If they did that would be a terrible movie that no one would want to watch.
Similarly, if the character moves through the story being a victim, showing no sense of agency, the movie falls flat.
Those characters don’t inspire us and we don’t root for them.
Think about Jim Carey in The Truman Show. He started off as a victim to his circumstances.
A character in a grand production where every element around him was there to ensure he stuck with the program and kept the status quo.
Once he decided to challenge everything and do exactly what he wanted to do, that’s when we started to root for him.
It wasn’t easy for him to break free of what society laid out for him, but against all odds he took his life into his own hands and went forward with a nothing to lose attitude.
He decided to stop performing and to start living.
Are you still performing?
Are you living your life in a way that doesn’t allow you to be your true self?
Are you free to be who you really are with the people in your life?
If you lost it all would these people still be around?
Would they check on you?
Would they bring you soup if you were sick?
When are you going to stop performing?
When we tell our stories from the perspective of they did this to me, or they did that, we stay a victim.
You are the hero in your story.
When you change the perspective from this happened to me to this happened for me, to teach me something, you take your power back.
That is the story worth watching.
What if you decided to approach life with a nothing to lose attitude and go for exactly what you want out of life.
Didn’t work out before? Who cares? Try again. Keep going until it does.
Now is the time to get back focused. The story isn’t over. Your life is still in production.
There’s a point in every great tale when the character faces seemingly insurmountable odds, and we don’t know how they’ll ever make it out.
Do we turn the movie off at that point? Of course not. We keep watching to see how it will play out.
Don’t turn your visions off if you’re at the point in the story where all odds seem to be against you.
This is where your story gets good.
You are the hero and you are counting on you to figure it out.
It may take some time and you may have to start over more than once, but life is not about the destination it’s about the journey.
Embrace the journey. You will meet characters along the way that will give you wisdom, you will grow, you will change, you will laugh, you will cry.
That’s all a part of the story.
“Life is like a photograph, we develop from the negatives.” - Dr. Jack Kruse
Every hero has a plan that doesn’t work out, they face some sort of death, then they reemerge, born again.
The credits haven’t rolled yet. So what are you going to do next?
You are the hero. The pen is in your hand. Write the twist they never saw coming.
