What happens when we misplace the plot of our lives?
In his work as a management consultant, Covey often asked his corporate clients to write a one-sentence answer to the question “What is this organization’s essential mission or purpose and what is its main strategy to accomplish that?
Every story, the moment it’s written down, will be reread,” she said. “And every rereading will be a reinterpretation. In that sense, there is not an original story and there is not an original message.
The Starrs came up with a modified three questions for their family meeting. 1. What things went well in our family this week? 2. What things could we improve in our family? 3. What things will you commit to working on this week?
After a few more weeks of equally uninspired gatherings, I called David. “You’re focusing on the wrong thing,” he said. “The purpose of the meeting is not to talk about each of you as individuals. It’s to focus on how you’re functioning as a family.” He was right. When else did we discuss this most basic thing: how we were a family. We redesigned our questions: 1. What worked well in our family this week? 2. What went wrong in our family this week? 3. What will we work on this coming week?
By picking their own punishments, children become more internally driven to avoid them. By choosing their own rewards, children become more intrinsically motivated to achieve them. Let your kids take a greater role in raising themselves.
Just as people live life out of order, they go through transitions out of order. While some people experience these phases sequentially, others experience them in reverse; others start in the middle and work their way out. Some finish one stage before going on to a new one; others move on to a new phase, then double back to the one they thought they had finished. Many get stuck in one phase for a very long time.
Primed to expect that our lives will follow a predictable path, we’re thrown when they don’t. We have linear expectations but nonlinear realities... We’re all comparing ourselves to an ideal that no longer exists and beating ourselves up for not achieving it.
The A is agency – autonomy, freedom, creativity, mastery; the belief that you can impact the world around you. The B is belonging – relationships, community, friends, family; the people that surround and nurture you. The C is cause – a calling, a mission, a direction, a purpose; a transcendent commitment beyond yourself that makes your life worthwhile.
An autobiographical occasion is any moment when we are encouraged or obliged to reimagine who we are. It’s a narrative event, when our existing life story is altered or redirected in some way, forcing us to revisit our preexisting identity and modify it for our life going forward. And nearly everyone goes through such moments.
Jung called this practice counterbalancing one-sidedness. Our lives become too tilted toward one aspect of our identity and too tilted away from others. We’re all familiar with these scenarios. We become so obsessed with our work we neglect our family; we become so consumed with caring for children we overlook ourselves; we become so focused on serving others we ignore our loved ones. The more purely one thing we are, the more in danger we are of overlooking other things.
The most healthful narrative,” he continued, “is the third one.” It’s called the oscillating family narrative. We’ve had ups and downs in our family. Your grandfather was vice president of the bank, but his house burned down. Your aunt was the first girl to go to college, but she got breast cancer. Children who know that lives take all different shapes are much better equipped to face life’s inevitable disruptions.
Chaos is not noise, it’s signal; disorder is not a mistake, it’s a design element. If we view these periods as aberrations, we risk their becoming missed opportunities. If we view them as openings, we just might open up to them. Transitions are not going away; the key to benefiting from them is to not turn away. Don’t shield your eyes when the scary parts start; that’s when the heroes are made.
The messy middle is all about what happens when we’re in the state of in between. It involves a complicated alchemy of giving up old ways and experimenting with new ones, moving beyond what’s past and beginning to define what’s coming. In butterfly-speak, it’s cocooning; in hero-speak, it’s getting lost.
Twelve-step programs have long stressed that the key is giving up any illusion of control – to admit that we’re wrong, weak, or full of it, and then relinquish authority to a higher power.
Each of us carries around an unspoken set of assumptions that dictate how we expect our lives will unfold. These expectations come from all corners and influence us more than we admit.
The number of disruptors a person can expect to experience in an adult life is around three dozen. That’s an average of one every twelve to eighteen months.
My definition: A transition is a vital period of adjustment, creativity, and rebirth that helps one find meaning after a major life disruption. But how do you enter this mysterious state? Does it happen inevitably or do you somehow have to decide? And if so, how do you do that?
We all need to be the hero of our own story.
Life is the story you tell yourself. But how you tell that story – are you a hero, victim, lover, warrior, caretaker, believer – matters a great deal. How you adapt that story – how you revise, rethink, and rewrite your personal narrative as things change, lurch, or go wrong in your life – matters even more.