Stories

We look at stories as the cumulation of our lives past, present and future.

We think that stories reflect our path and our experiences.

The limits, failings, successes, tragedies, traumas, hopes, dreams, loves and fears. I would venture that most feel like my father once told me, “Life is mostly negative with a few highlight moments that makes the disappointments bearable."

The first line of Scott Peck’s great book, "A Road Less Travelled," starts with the sentence, “Life is difficult”. That is the frame of a book about finding your way in this world.

We have been inculcated with rules of behavior, laws to stay within, expectations of success. Interestingly, these are almost all external issues. Over time, trying to meet these expectations exhaust us. Depress us. Make us feel unworthy. Always in comparison to some extrinsic bar.

More to do's - often an endless list of expectations.

These expectations and comparisons cause us to feel separate. We lose our connection.

We feel like we are in a cell without the ability to get ourselves out. We learn there is a right and wrong way to do everything. Color within the lines. Earn your future. Score higher on our tests, regurgitating facts that will change in the future. Act a certain way. Dress a certain way. Think a certain way.

All the same in search of the elusive golden ring.

We have lost the magic many of us experienced as children.

What if we have this exactly backwards?

What if our stories actually drive the experiences we have, and not the other way around?

There is plenty of data that looking through a lens of positivity, gratitude, love, purpose and abundance lengthens our life. It is the most resonant thing that keeps us healthy.

What if our story provides the lens of our life? Positive or negative, scarce or abundant - what if it is our choice?

From quantum physics, there is ample data to suggest we create with our universe (see wave-particle duality). What if our deepest thoughts, emotions and feelings actively create the world we experience?

If true, wouldn’t most of us change our story?

Albert Einstein, our greatest mind, said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle”.

Henry Ford, one of our greatest innovators, said, “Whether you think you can or if you think you can’t, you are right”.

Since the stories we tell ourselves and each other create the limits we live our life by, then maybe expanding what we believe is possible in the best possible way may be the very thing we need to change our lives and world.

Maybe we are the jailer for our own cells. Limited by our inability to see something greater. Maybe mastery is not only about 10,000 hours of practice, but maybe it is about focusing on a certain storyline for a long time. Maybe that is what drives our success or failure.

Belief. Faith. Trust.

Flow, the highest human function, is a releasing event. Moving with the current of our lives. In the present. In the now.

Without a storyline, but following the very foundation of the unfolding of our life and our world. Adopting the story of the timeless creative energy. Tuning into the magic of the universe.

Maybe education allows one to expand their story and their possible.

Maybe beyond education is moving beyond the need for a certain story, but the adoption of archetypal stories that have been handed down from generation to generation.

We call it history.

And like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Perhaps we have always had the magic inside us to go home as soon as we realize we do.

As soon as we can tell that story of ourselves and each other.

Almost heaven.