The past couple of weeks I talked about understanding your past in order to create the future you desire. Understanding what your story has been so far helps shape the way you want your story to continue. Understanding what experiences shaped who you are today, the baggage that you carry around with you, and how that effects how you see and interact with the world determines how you will write your next chapters. It is important to understand where we came from in order to better understand where we want to go. The key to moving forward it just that, understanding where “we” want to go. “We” are the ones who get to decide where our life is going to take us.
What does your story look like? Where have you been? What have you experienced? Where do you see yourself in one year, five years, ten years, and beyond? Will you be exactly where you are today or will you be somewhere else? Will that somewhere else be better than where you are today? How will you get there? Who will you surround yourself with? What will you be doing? All of these answers come down to how you see yourself in your story.
In writing your story, you can either be a hero or victim. Being the hero of your story means that you determine what is going to happen in your life. You are an active participant, you make choices that benefit you and move you forward, you are the one making things happen. Being the hero is hard work though, it isn’t just about making decisions to take you where you want to go, it is also about taking responsibility when things don’t go well. Being a hero is about risk, it is about embracing the unknown, it is about being vulnerable. Being a hero means that you are not happy accepting the status quo and what life has to give you. Instead, life is about what you are willing to ask for and demand.
If being a hero seems like too much work or something that just isn’t possible for you, then your only other option is to be a victim. A victim is someone who allows life to happen to them. A victim is someone who believes they don’t have the power to make the life they want to happen or they feel they are not worthy of having a better life. Feeling powerless usually comes from feeling paralyzed by past experiences and believing they don’t have the strength to move out of being a victim. For those who don’t feel worthy of being a hero usually feel this way because someone in their past told them they are not worthy. But there is good news, just because someone is a victim now, doesn’t mean they can’t become a hero. Becoming a hero is about changing perspective and that takes a lot of work. The first step is realizing that no one can make you a victim, that title is given to you by you. Once that revelation is made, then the victim is on their way to becoming a hero.
How you see yourself in your story will determine what your future will look like. It will determine how successful and happy you will become. Who will you be in your story; the hero or the victim?
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