Once you decide what you want to do or build or join or create , you ’ ve taken the first step in becoming a hero on a mission : you ’ ve invited yourself into a story . After you step into that story , you ’ ll exit what Viktor Frankl called “ the existential vacuum .” Life is now asking you a question that requires action to answer .
Will you decide to work remotely and take your family on a yearlong trip around the world ? Will you write that book ? Will you start a community garden ? How will it all work out ?
The story question is the magic ingredient that keeps you interested in your own life . And the action you take to answer that question pulls you out of the narrative void .
Now , you might ask what story questions are creating narrative traction in your life ?
All stories are built around the main question . Will the team win the championship ? Will the couple fall in love and live happily ever after ? Will the hero disarm the bomb ? The story itself doesn ’ t matter all that much as long as it poses a question . And that question must be so compelling that you are willing to change the trajectory of your life to make the preferred answer happen .
After we decide what we want , the next challenge is to see the ambition through to its conclusion — but seeing things through is a challenge in and of itself .
The hard thing about reading things like this is that we are inspired and feel great about life , and then find ourselves right back in the sea of distractions . A year later , we sadly realize we haven ’ t moved forward in our story .
To make a story happen , we have to get up every day and “ put something on the plot .” That ’ s the exact phrase I used while starting my writing career . I ’ d get up in the morning , go down to the local coffee shop , and “ put something on the plot .” It ’ s the phrase I used as I built my company , and it ’ s the phrase I used every morning when riding across America ( sometimes with an expletive mixed in ). More recently , it ’ s the phrase I use as Betsy and I build Goose Hill , our home that functions as a kind of mini retreat center for friends and family .
We have to keep putting a little something on the plot , day after day , if we ’ re going to find the narrative traction necessary to get us interested in our own lives .
Talking about all of these stories is easy , of course . Living them is hard .
The process of living a story ( or , for that matter , writing one ) can feel overwhelming . During Ernest Hemingway ’ s early writing days in Paris , he used to stand at his apartment window looking down over the city and say to himself , “ Do not worry . You have always written before , and you will write now . All you have to do is write one true sentence . Write the truest sentence that you know .” With that in mind , he ’ d sit down and add another line to his legacy .
The stories we live seem romantic in hindsight , but in the moment , it ’ s all work . When we are trying to live these stories we are attacked by
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