How Would You Want Your Story To Go?

A few weeks ago I had the incredible pleasure to hear Amy Purdy speak. She’s a woman who embodies resilience and the power of perspective. Her life was taken from her when a medical condition caused her to get both of her legs amputated. For years she struggled to recover and restore some sense of normalcy in life. 

Then, she had a profound shift. She stopped being a victim of her circumstances and dedicated herself to making the most of it - becoming creative, resourceful, and optimistic about her future. It’s this mindset that fueled her comeback where she re-learned how to snowboard (eventually earning a silver medal at the Paralympic Games), competed in Dancing With The Stars, and is living proof that while the impacts of life adversity can be permanent, you don’t need to accept their limitations.

She says that her injury didn’t disable her, it enabled her to do things she couldn’t before. She learned to genuinely see challenges as opportunities.

The thought that initiated her mindset shift is a simple one, and it’s one we should all think about ourselves: “If your life were a book and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?”

Negative life events have happened and will continue to happen. And they can define you if you let them. But they aren’t a life-sentence. Your future is undefined and you get to play a role in shaping it. In other words, you can either allow the story to be written for you, or you can pick up the pen and write it yourself.

The story we choose to tell about our lives is everything. Things only have meaning because of the ways we choose to perceive the things that happen. Nothing is objectively good or bad, right or wrong, helpful or harmful… They just are. We run those things through our own worldview, our belief system, and assign meaning to it.

Jack Canfield perfectly explains it in this formula: E + R = O. Event + Response = Outcome.

The outcome of any event is intricately connected to our response to it. Most of the time we produce a response unconsciously, which generates an unconscious outcome… But for any event our response is within our control. This means we can design the outcomes we want to have.

Imagine that no matter what happens, you resolve that everything is always happening in your best interest. How empowering would that be?

And that’s the point. We can write our own story… All we need to do is take control of the narrative. Just like Amy did.

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