Creating your best life

What does it mean to create your best life? 

We are the authors and creators of the story we live in. We decide what to do with the materials we have and we bring new elements to our lives through the choices we make. Some of us were given a mom and a dad who were both actively in our life, some of us are given a manipulative mom and an alcoholic dad, some of us are given no mom or dad but rather a grandmother that did the best she could. Some of us had an easy time at school and for some of us school was where we encountered painful situations or treatment. These elements of our past are the raw material we have to work with now.

Our childhoods lay a foundation and then we must decide how to take that raw material and create something with it. Before we realize that we are the creators and storytellers, we often see what we were given and believe there is nothing we can do with it, it's just "stuff that happened to us". If we had a traumatic childhood, our raw material is painful. We can easily and automatically look at what we were given and see only what is missing, what others got that we didn't, and all that we wish was there instead. There can be a deep well of pity we feel toward our misfortune. With that well of sadness we begin to unknowingly create our life: choosing friendships, choosing intimate relationships, deciding what we do for work, allowing others to treat us in certain ways, deciding what we must be worth, choosing the lens we use to look at each day, etc. If we had a positive childhood, our raw material is quite different. We can easily and automatically look at what we were given and think this is the normal standard for everyone and we begin to unknowingly create our life. We get to make the same choices of friendships, intimate relationships, work, how we allow other to treat us, deciding our worth, and choosing our lens. 

Whether we are given painful raw material or pleasurable raw material, until we realize that we are the creators of our story, we make unconscious decisions often believing things are just happening to us and we are going with the flow. What else can we do? We make lemonade with our lemons right? Or fruit salad with our fruit? 

What would the story look like if we chose very intentionally? What if we spent time sifting through the things and the people in our life and asked ourselves, "Why did I (or do I continue to) choose this"? and "Does this bring me joy"? What we once chose is not what we have to continue to choose. It may have served us well when we chose it? It may have been a choice we made when we were a different person, had different circumstances, or different skills? We are not bound by who we were and what we chose. Today, we can choose differently.

The story you create for yourself is between YOU and YOURSELF. When you have allowed other people's stories to affect your opinions of what you have, it only served to put you in a state of competition and comparison. That is a hard place to come out of. It doesn't really matter what someone else has, it only matters what you have, what you gather, what you decide. You are the author of your story.  

Everyone's journey to self-creation will look different. Some will have road blocks to remove before they even get started, but everyone will discover road blocks along the way. These roadblocks are the ways of thinking that keep us stuck and beliefs that we feel must be followed because they are the only way or the right way. All of the roadblocks we face are the parts of us that stop us from becoming more joy-filled and from living our best life.