Tell Yourself Beautiful Stories About You

​Ryan Holiday says, "events are objective. They are not good or bad for you. That's where we have the power. We have the ability to decide what story we tell ourselves about what's happened."

I have always believed that life is a story. I believe that today more than ever. But more than ever - I believe it's me who is telling the story, and not life. There are few greater discoveries for me to hang on to when it comes to this life of mine.

I've gone through the event of divorce the last two years. I'll be the first to confess that is not an easy event for anyone. I'll also say, I've made that event much more difficult because of the stories I've told myself about that event. Stories largely adapted from stories I've heard life tell.

Stories like divorce is a sin.

Stories like your boys will never be the same.

Stories like a failed marriage is the greatest failure you can have.

In fairness, I those are stories - opinions - judgments - I myself at times have poured into the story that life tells. I'm sorry about that. I regret it. Because I know now, better than ever, how many people incorporate the stories life tells into the stories they tell themselves.

I now know how many divorced people are living the stories: I'm a sinner. I'm a bad parent. I am a failure....

I will admit, I am a sinner. But that's a story every one of us could rightly tell ourselves. It's also a story God has said none of us have the right to tell ourselves. He sacrificed his son to destroy that narrative in our lives.

But I am not a bad parent. The minute I start telling myself that story, my boys will indeed have a dad who is far less a dad than they deserve.

And I am not a failure. In fact, I am one of the greatest success stories I know.

It's hard for life to see that some days. Because life, too often, measures success by a bank account or a status or a community. It measures success by marriage.

Too often life starts the story at, once upon a time, Keith got a divorce.

But the reality is, me, and so many of you, have stories that started long before the event life uses to measure success. And the more life tries to tell individual stories based on events and not humans, the more life puts humans at risk for telling themselves destructive stories about themselves.

I look at my story and see the number of times destruction was in that story. I look at my story and see the number of times failure was in that story. I look at the number of times I could have written 'the end' into that story - and I refused to.

Today, the only story I tell myself is 'once upon a time.'

Today, my story starts new each day. It starts with hope and love and possibility.

Today, my story is my story, not life's.

In this month of mental health awareness, I encourage you to make your story your story. I encourage you to be the story teller in your life. I encourage you to see, if you are reading this, you ARE a success story.

You have so many times risen to the occasion of your life - you have risen above the story of life - and you have created a beautiful story I for one want to keep reading and seeing and hearing.

You are the greatest story teller your life has ever known.

Please - please, tell beautiful stories.