Step Inside Your Story
When life gets particularly snarly, I have a bad habit of digging in with my brain. How can I fix this?
It’s easy to do for someone like me, someone who trusts her head more than her body. Someone who has relied on her brain for getting through the struggles … someone who has hardened her heart in response.
This morning, though, I was reminded of an incredible truth:
The only way to live our stories is to be in them.
I immediately thought - “Crap. I’m definitely sitting on the outside.”
We get so busy thinking about our lives we often forget to be in our lives. We forget that failure and fault are necessary evils on the path to joy, and if we really want something then we have to get back in the arena and fight for it - most often with time, space and attention.
Sometimes, though, the hardest question is the most simple: what is worth fighting for?
Do you know what’s important to you? What’s important to your story?
I want to be clear here - we’re talking about your story - just you. It’s easy to identify things that are important that revolve around others. But can you find at least one thing that’s important to you that involves only you?
There.
Start there.
Yes, it may feel selfish and awful for a while as you bravely and cautiously sneak back into the life that’s been escaping - and probably torturing - you. The energy you gain from putting yourself back into your life, though, that has the limitless ability to set the rest of your heart on fire. To pour into that empty cup.
To bring you back to life.
“When I see people stand fully in their truth, or when I see someone fall down, get back up, and say, ‘Damn. That really hurt, but this is important to me and I’m going in again’—my gut reaction is, ‘What a badass.’”