This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Map Making : Change and Goal Setting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Stories, we all have them, we all tell them.
Last night while at dinner with my family we shared family “tales.” Thanksgiving provides an opportunity for family to come from near and far, to reminesce about earlier Thanksgivings. The stories of me setting the candied yams on fire, kids wandering around with black olives on their fingers, the naming of the turkey ritual…yes, stories.
We are learning more and more that the “story” we tell, the stories we tell individually or as a couple or family reveal a lot about us. Our stories AFFECT what we do, how we feel, and what direction our future will take.
There’s a folk tale that a grieving mother went to the Buddha and begged for Buddha to bring back her dead child. The Buddha agreed to do that on one condition .She needed to bring a handful of dirt from a house that had never known grief and give the dirt to the Buddha. Her child would be brought back to life. The woman agreed and went out into the village.
She returned, empty handed. The moral of the story…of course, we all know grief. Too often when we are in the process of grieving ANY transition, a death of a role (empty nest), a change in a relationship (divorce), or the death of a friend, we can become self absorbed, feel like life is “cosmically” picking on us. The story becomes one of victim (me) and persecutor (the cosmos). That’s a dangerous story to live and tell. That’s a story which will separate us from others. That’s a story which will cause us to engage in unhealthy decisions or behaviors.
What does your story tell, do you hold on to your grief? Does your grief define who you are? Do you lead with your grief?
Challenge: write the story of your life…you play the leading character…read your story. Did you place yourself in an empowering position ? Did you show yourself to be a victim?
Once you have examined your stance in life you can see where that story might need some tweeking. Claude Steiner wrote the book Scripts People Live . The assumption is that our life can be viewed as a script. We have a plot line we follow, some of it consciously, some unconciously. The point of this exercise is to see “THE MOVIE YOU ARE LIVING”
Are you living the movie you want to live? What do you need to change to live the movie that has an ending that is appealing to you? What action can you take to fine tune the script of your life?
When plagued with a choice oftentimes I think, if I had to show my daughter’s a movie of my behavior, what would I like that movie to look like?
Happy editing !
Beth
read comments (1)
November 21st, 2007 at 8:18 pm
This is pretty cool concept. Just like a movie if we don’t like the way our script is going we do have the option of making changes.
My belief is that most everything is a process, even changing the way we live our lives. So if we don’t like or are not happy with the way we are living our lives we change them, but it takes time. It takes persistence and work to make things better. At least it has taken both for me and it has been well worth the effort.
Even when it doesn’t feel like I’m making positive progress it is important for me to remember that even tiny changes are a step in the right direction.