You are the author of your story. Don’t like it? Edit it!
How many times have you come across people who are complaining about their lives? “My life just sucks, I can’t seem to get good grades in my college!” “Times are difficult, my life is bad, I am unable to find a job for myself.” “It’s frustrating man, my boss is always on my head, throwing orders after orders. I hate my job, I hate my life!” Your answer is a most definite — infinite number of times. Heck, you meet someone of this stature almost each and every day, and there’s a high chance you yourself belong to this elite group of people! Well, if you are a member of this elite group, I have something to tell you:
You are the author of your story. And what do you do when you do not like your own story? Simple. You edit it!
“What the heck are you talking about? Story? Edit? Whaaat??”
Let me explain what I mean by the above quoted lines. But first, to make sure we are on the same page, let me tell you, by your story I mean your life.
I’ll begin with an example — my own example. I used to be an above average student while in school (at least in terms of marks received). Without putting in much effort, I used to score decently well in my exams, being among the top 10 ranked students in my class. This continued well till I got to college. Since I was accustomed to scoring decent marks without studying much, my habits didn’t change, ignoring the fact that the college was a different ballpark than school altogether. Around the same time I appeared for competitive exams. When the results came, I got the shock of my life. I scored below average in my college exams, and failed in the competitive exam. What followed was a slew of depressing, anxious days, affecting me, my health, my studies — everything. I joined the elite group. Cursed my life, cursed myself, cursed everything that came in my way. I was a mess. My life was a mess.
One day, while contemplating life, and cursing the same — staying true to my elite status — I came across some motivational quotes. One of them struck my mind. It was on the similar lines to :
You cannot change yourself, unless you want to!
This one quote opened an array of questions inside my mind.
What are you doing? What are you doing with your life? Is this who you are? Is this who you want to be? Do you want to spend your life sitting here, thinking about how you could have changed your past? Get up! Get up and change your present! Make the future tolerable, and a happy place to live in!
And that’s when it dawned on me. I had wasted a couple of weeks being the most unproductive version of myself ever. But that’s it. What’s gone is gone. It’s not in my hand, to change it, or to bring back the lost time. What’s in my hand though, is to make amends. Edit my story. No, my life doesn’t suck, it just taught me a lesson — nothing comes easy!
I changed my thinking, I looked at the negative and drew out the positive from it. I edited the story.
Sometimes by fluke I may hit a home run, but to make sure I hit a home run every time, I need to work hard for it, and make myself capable of earning that home run! I’m grateful to God for teaching me this lesson so early in my life! If, God forbid, I would have faced my first failure while, say, I was doing a business, I would be broke in no time at all! At least at this moment I can sustain myself! I am in a much better position to pick myself up and start from where I left off! I learnt the value of hard work!
What I mean to say is that life will throw a lot of lemons at you. Some stale, and some good ones! What you need to do is collect the good lemons, and make lemonades out of them. Drink the lemonade with pride — because you deserved it! You put in effort to collect the good lemons, and put in more effort to squeeze the juice out of them! On the other hand, you gotta make sure you dodge the stale lemons. You know they aren’t going to help you with your lemonade, even one stale lemon can ruin the whole lemonade. And, if for some reason, a stale lemon reaches your basket, you make sure you recognize it, and learn how to throw them out of the park — and hit a home run!
Improve your vision, improve how you look at different situations in your life. Staying positive all the time helps much more than you think. There are always two sides to the same coin. Even in the worst of your tragedies, look for the other side, you’ll find fortune there. I promise.
Pick up your pencil write your story. Keep the eraser ready. When the story starts to fall apart — use the eraser. Edit your story! :)
