Donald Miller's Blog, page 64

Becoming A Great Writer Starts With This Practice

Aside from a hawk I accidentally shot out of the sky with a BB gun once, I’ve never gone hunting.

After seeing that first sentence written out, I guess it doesn’t even count. I think I’d like it, though.

Friends of mine who are hunters describe most of the experience as being ready and waiting in nature. They’ll wait hours, days, and even entire seasons before they finally have a kill. If you talk to someone who is not a hunting enthusiast, they might dismiss this as “sitting around in the woods.” And on paper, they aren’t too far off.

*Photo Credit: Oleh Slobodeniuk, Creative Commons

I think I get it though. It’s not just “sitting around in the woods” that feeds a hunter’s spirit. It seems to be about devoting all of your senses, time, and anticipation to one single thing. It is filled with purpose and intention. It’s waiting for an unpredictable moment that can’t happen by accident. It requires being there to meet it.

I see writing in the same way.

I see it as being ready and waiting for an unpredictable moment. The opposite of this would be filling my days with other work, objectives, and priorities and expecting a great song to just fall on my lap.

That’s like expecting a 12-point buck to just walk by me on the street in the same moment that I happen to have a loaded rifle and a clear shot. That’s just silly. Not to mention, I’d probably get arrested.

If you want something, you’ve got to put yourself in position for it. (tweet this)

I don’t think great writers or hunters are lucky. Aside from being gifted, it is their devotion over time that has made them great. And to those who insist they’re lucky, I’d argue that they’ve devoted so much time to “the hunt” that they’ve literally put the odds in their favor.

I try to put myself in position to encounter great songs as much as possible.

For me, this means looking at life through a scope; zeroing in on stories, truths, feelings, and sounds that I find inspiring. I take shots at them by free-writing, singing gibberish in search of the right emotion, and discussing & developing specific ideas with other writers, etc.

And if I hear a rustling in the bushes a hundred yards away, I stop what I’m doing and go over there. Most of the time it’s just the wind, but other times it’s what I’m looking for. It’s all about staying hot on the trail.

I love being in this position as I’d imagine a hunter enjoys being in the wild.

The scenery of writing is possibility, and the feeling of it is like walking somewhere no one has ever been. And while most days I don’t come home with a song worth repeating or anything to hang up on the wall, I do have the satisfaction and the thrill that comes from having been on the hunt.

NOTE: Camo apparel is optional, but not recommended.

Becoming A Great Writer Starts With This Practice is a post from: Storyline Blog

The Truth You Don’t Want to Know About Writing a Book

The edits came back last month on my newest book and I was thrilled.

The changes weren’t going to be too difficult and most of the feedback was positive. I figured I could set aside a few mornings, wrap up the book and send it in.

But that’s when I was reminded that writing a book, unlike writing a blog post or a sales email or just about anything else requires direct and focused attention. A book is like a two year old in that way. You just can’t take your eyes off it to do anything else or it’s going to get into trouble.

Sure, I set aside a few mornings but I’d sit there looking at the manuscript unable to get my head back into it. Then, I’d make one edit only to create a domino effect throughout the rest of the book. I did this a few times before I started to believe the book was a total disaster and would probably never be published. Then, I broke the news to Betsy.

*Photo Credit: Randen Pederson, Creative Commons

Babe, I’ve got to get a cabin. I’ve got to get my head back in this book and I can’t do it running my usual schedule.

Betsy obliged. She had a friend coming to town and was going to be tied up anyway. So I rented the cabin and Lucy and I hit the road.

My first night in the cabin went terribly.

Once again I couldn’t get my head inside the book. It all felt like fits and false starts, as though I couldn’t land a point. The second day felt the same. In fact, I started wondering, once again, if I’d only fooled myself into thinking I had something to work with. I talked with Betsy that night completely defeated. It’s the worst book I’ve ever written, I told her. I don’t think it can be fixed.

That night, though, I slept twelve hours. I woke up starting to feel a little refreshed and half willing to dive back into the book. And because I’d been away from people for 3 days now, and because I’d gotten enough sleep, and because I wasn’t answering my phone, I finally found my way back into the book. I could clearly see it’s flaws and, even better, I knew how to fix them.

Is getting away to work on the book fun? Absolutely not. It’s mind-numblingly lonely work and half the time you’re battling the demons in your own head.

But it’s necessary. You don’t come in and out of a book the way you can any other project. You’ve got to live inside a book, set up camp in the book, sleep inside it, go for walks inside it and you can’t under any circumstances come up for air otherwise you’ll have to go through the reentry process again.

I can’t tell you how many people I meet who want to write a book in their free time.

But here’s the reality — a book will demand your all. That great line won’t come to you on a schedule (though you should keep one anyway) it will come to you when it wants and you have to be sitting there when it arrives or you’ll miss it.

If you’ve got a book brewing, rent a cabin. I know you have kids and a job and can’t afford the luxury and I’m sorry if that’s true because the reality is it probably isn’t true. The cabin I’m staying in is a dump and I’m busier than anybody I know but I’m still convinced it’s the only way to get the work done. There’s nothing luxurious about it.

Betsy and I call my writing sessions the “coal mine” because often that’s what it feels like, going into the coal mine of our souls to find the words, polish them and set them on the page so it looks like they were born there.

Every writer hides the dirt. It gets taken out with the trash, outside a cabin, deep in the woods where the words were.

Best to you in your writing.

The Truth You Don’t Want to Know About Writing a Book is a post from: Storyline Blog

The One Thing We Need to Organize is The One Thing We Overlook

I’m not the hardest working person in my industry, not even close. I don’t get up at 5:00am to bike 30 miles. I don’t drink wheatgrass everyday. I don’t put in 60 hours a week at the office.

I’m ambitious, sure, but my goal isn’t to be the best, or even the most successful. My goal is to have staying power. Through rain, sleet, and snow, I aim to outlast everyone.

In doing work that matters, longevity is the ultimate aspiration. Because it is in decades of work that you’ll have the most impact.

*Photo Credit: Tanti Ruwani, Creative Commons

My simple solution isn’t revolutionary, but it’s a lost art in our modern world:

Commit to Ordering Your Private World.

Our “private world” is the world outside of work. It’s family time, it’s gardening time, it’s lounging in sweats in front of the television time. Our private world is a world of rest, reflection, prayer, and of Sabbath.

Want to do work that matters your entire life? Order your private world.

From Gordon MacDonald,

“There is a temptation to give imbalanced attention to our public worlds at the expense of the private – More programs, more meetings, more learning, more relationships, more busyness. Until it all becomes so heavy that we teeter on the verge of collapse. Fatigue, disillusionment, failure, and defeat all become frightening possibilities.”

Ordering your private world means scheduling rest and reflection in the same way you schedule meetings and events.

To order your private world is to tell the rest of us that you’re in it for the long haul.

You’re not going away. You won’t get burned out. You’re here to outlast all of us.

Most importantly, ordering your private world is the intimate connection to the Creator. To stray too far into a public world disconnects you from the life force who put you here in the first place. Our private world should radiate influence to the outside world, rather than letting the outer world influence us.

This quote changed my life forever,

“When I get home after a long day, I go to the chapel and pray. I say to the Lord, ‘There it is for today, things are finished. Now let’s be serious, is this diocese mine or yours?’ The Lord says, ‘What do you think?’ I answer, ‘I think it is yours.’ ‘That is true,’ the Lord says, ‘it is mine.’ And so I say, ‘Listen, Lord, it is your turn to take responsibility for and direct the diocese. I’m going to sleep.’” – Cardinal Dannels of Brussels

The final four words of that quote hit me like a ton of bricks: “I’m. Going. To. Sleep.”

This is about spiritually as much as it’s about biochemistry.

Physicists understand energy as the capacity to do work. Like time, energy is finite; but unlike time, it is renewable. Yet, taking more time off is a foreign concept for most of us. The Atlantic Reports that Americans have the worst work/life balance in the entire world.

Did you know:

• More than one-third of employees eat lunch at their desks on a regular basis.

• More than 50 percent assume they’ll work during their vacations.

• In a study of nearly 400 employees, researchers found that sleeping too little — defined as less than six hours each night — was one of the best predictors of on-the-job burn-out.

• A recent Harvard study estimated that sleep deprivation costs American companies $63.2 billion a year in lost productivity.

• The Harris Interactive found that Americans left an average of 9.2 vacation days unused in 2012 — up from 6.2 days in 2011.

The list goes on and on…

You start small to order your private world.

I don’t do emails on the weekends. Nothing is too important that it can’t wait until Monday. I’ve promised my wife that I’ll only do 4 weeks of international travel per year. Could I buck those rules and do more, raise more money, be more successful? Probably. But I wouldn’t make it through 2014 with my life intact.

Is your goal flash-in-the-pan success? Great. Work yourself to death, don’t sleep, burn out, and accomplish nothing.

If your goal is long-term impact, order your private world.

The One Thing We Need to Organize is The One Thing We Overlook is a post from: Storyline Blog

How Art Has The Potential To Change The World

Good art enters the soul, appeals to the heart, and makes new ideas plausible.

I don’t remember the exact time and place I first heard the statement above, but I do remember my first experience with the transforming power of art.

When I was in my 20’s, shortly after the Iraq invasion of 2003, I spent a day at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, enjoying the art and a day alone with my wife.

Rounding a corner down one of the hallways, Kim and I stood in front of a large Middle-Eastern quilt stretching almost the entire length of the wall. It was big. It was colorful. It was captivating. And it was half-covered black with oil.

*Photo Credit: g.sighele, Creative Commons

Upon closer inspection, each of the squares on the quilt represented cultural centers and places of interest in Iraq. Some of the images were recognizable, but many were blacked out completely. The oil splatters symbolized one of the great tragedies of war: the destruction and abrupt halt of cultural advancement and art (nobody builds libraries when your country is being invaded). The fact that oil was used to represent the war signified clearly the author’s opinion about the war.

My wife and I stood speechless in front of the powerful imagery.

In that brief moment, my personal views on the war began to change. Or at very least, in that moment, I opened my mind for the first to an argument against the war I had never considered before.

Art entered my soul, appealed to my heart, and made new ideas plausible. Art changed me.

Art has a unique ability to impact our emotions and change our worldview. It is indeed very powerful. And because of that, it is important to always weigh its impact on our soul and our worldview through a personal connection with God.

In college, I studied Film Appreciation.

Or more accurately, I should say I enrolled in a Film Appreciation course to score an easy A. The class was wonderful, one of the highlights of my college career—the fact that I got to watch movies in school sitting next to my future wife was an added bonus.

During the class, my professor said something unforgettable.

It was simply this, “Every story is told with an agenda.”(tweet this)

Sometimes, the motivation of an artist is nothing more than to provide beauty, joy, or laughter into our lives. Other times, the art is specifically created to move my emotion, appeal to my heart, make new ideas plausible, and shift my worldview to align with the artist.

For this reason, we must treat it with great respect.

Poetry and story and music and dance and paint can widen my horizons. It can introduce a view I hadn’t considered and steer the course of my life in new directions. Make no mistake: I think this is valuable. Art has opened up the eyes of the world to great injustice and inconsistencies throughout history. And as an artist, I hope my words will have that same positive influence on others.

But within the beauty and world of art, there is also danger.

Not every artist, storyteller, and filmmaker has God’s agenda in mind—or even our best in mind. And given the power of art to change us from the inside-out, our filters must become even more important.

Truth must always be weighed against the eternal truth of a living God. As we seek to live a life fully committed to Him, it is important for us to keep God as the ultimate source of Truth in our lives.

Art is wonderful. Art is powerful. But all lasting truth begins and ends in God alone.

How Art Has The Potential To Change The World is a post from: Storyline Blog

What’s the Danger in Categorizing People?

More often than I prefer, I find myself in a conversation with somebody who thinks they know me.

Most recently, it was with a stranger who’d read a couple of my books. Passively, they began talking about the dangers of post-modernity and the emerging church.

It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

While I listened and partly enjoyed the conversation, there was personal tension. The tension was that I was having a conversation with a person who, having never met me had already summed me up. Little did they know I’ve never read a book about post-modernity, do not identify with the emergent church and honestly have no idea what they believe.

To be fair, I don’t identify as a conservative or a Calvinist or anything else. I’ve never read a single book trying to figure out what category I fit into. And to interact with somebody who tries to put people into categories in order to understand them is, well, tiring.

*Photo by Brendon Burton, Creative Commons

It’s not only theological categories, it’s social categories of rich or poor (I make a good living but choose to live very simply) and political categories of liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican (right now, I’ve voted for an equal number of Republican and Democratic presidents and I won’t be fenced in or loyal to a party) and even categories like dog person or cat person (I happen to own a dog but I like cat videos on YouTube).

In the desire to be understood and relate to people, we can actually make the mistake of identifying with these categories. I assure you, the possibility of you authentically lining up with a certain political party or even a theological doctrine are slim to none. But the temptation is overwhelming. If we identify ourselves as belonging to a category, we can enter into quick, empty exchanges in which we weed people in or out and are in turn weeded in or out. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it.

What you lose when you let people categorize you is threefold:

1. You lose your understanding of yourself. You become somebody you may not truly be in order to be understood. You overlook aspects of a “category” that don’t fit you because, well, you’d rather be understood.

2. In exchange for being understood, you are in fact misunderstood. If you identify as a Democrat (which is ridiculous because parties evolve in order to become more populist, just like an insecure kid in Jr. High) then you’ll spend hours trying to justify aspect of the party stand that you don’t even understand. And the reality is, people will think you believe things you really don’t.

3. You lose your true search for self. Accepting a category is introspectively lazy. People are, by nature, walking talking paradoxes. And so are you. Accepting a category means no longer looking for real answers and an identity that is true to who we are.

 

The point is, you really can’t categorize anybody, and any attempt to categorize another person is socially lazy. Categorizing people, in the worst instances, devalues them, and in the best instances is creates a false understanding.

If we really want to know who somebody is, we will simply have to get to know them.

And in doing so we will find out that people are, in fact, complicated. Not only are people complicated, but they change, they evolve based on circumstances and experiences.

One of the amazing things about Jesus, to me, was he categorized nobody. Everybody He met was an individual.

The masses saw a tax collector, but Jesus saw a man in a tree just trying to get a good look. The Jews saw a swath of people who were beneath Him, but Jesus saw them as Gentiles, and the true future of Israel (that’s you, a non-Jew who is a member of the nation of the real nation of Israel, not to be confused with the country).

Jesus was able to wine and dine with people as they really were, themselves, and He was able to get to know them free from the entrapment of social categories. We are all lucky to have Him as a friend.

The truth is, you are not a category, you are a human being. Don’t let anybody fence you in.

What’s the Danger in Categorizing People? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Sunday Morning Sermon — Don’t Let Busyness Steal Life’s Beauty

Life is busy, and it is easy to lose sight of what really matters.

I have a hard time slowing down. There always seems to be a hundred different excuses to keep going, to push forward.

In this video from Soul Pancake people are asked what it means to be “lost in a moment”. Many of them recall the last time they have been “lost in a moment”, and something beautiful is revealed to us: life is beautiful when we have to ability to recognize it.

Here is my challenge to you this week: lose yourself in a moment. Don’t let the busyness of life steal your ability to appreciate the beauty around you.

Sunday Morning Sermon — Don’t Let Busyness Steal Life’s Beauty is a post from: Storyline Blog

A New Perspective Could Be Sitting In The Seat Next To You

What Interesting People in Your Life are You Ignoring?

I recently traveled to Israel and Turkey. I was away for two weeks and saw many famous things: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Mt. of Olives in Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, the Wailing Wall. But what I’ve thought about most since returning from the trip is not these sites, each incredible in their beauty and in their stories, but a conversation I had with the guy next me on the plane from New York to Jerusalem.

I never talk to people on planes if I can help it. I like to read and be myself and ignore the fact we are sharing an armrest. But this is harder to do on ten-hour flights and when I made a comment to my seat mate before I had even buckled my seatbelt about our misfortune of being on the very last row of the plane, I knew I had opened the jar of potentially a lot of conversation. In this case, I’m glad I did.

*Photo Credit: Robert S. Donovan, Creative Commons

Besides the fact my seat buddy was Jewish, about 20 years old, and had just gotten out the Israeli army, we had a lot in common. Our fathers, we discovered, are in the same line of work. Sort of. His dad is a rabbi in Jerusalem and an author of theological literature. My dad is a pastor and also an author on religious matters. We both had experienced doubts and questions about our faiths growing up. His had led him down a path of appreciation but non-belief. Mine had, by a miracle, led me to more of an assurance in my Christianity. We had both traveled a little and wanted to more.

We like reading and learning and our families.

The conversation went on for hours. I had made all of these plans for my ten-hour journey. I was going to write some blog posts and do some freelance work and read a novel. None of it happened. My plans were disrupted by getting to know another person.

Somewhere in the middle of our flight, my friend (he felt like a friend at this point) said that before I had started talking to him about our last-row woes, he was about to start a movie on his laptop and put in his headphones. He said he was so glad he didn’t. We always have a choice, he continued, to either look up and talk to the person next to us and risk the vulnerability, or we can keep looking down and miss out on a bit of richness life was trying to offer us. I think he was very wise for a young person, and very right.

Because I got to know this local Israeli a little, I was able to see my trip through a slightly broader lens. I appreciated things more. I didn’t see the people there as “us” and “them” like it can be so easy to do when touring outside your own country’s walls.

We had found common ground in the air, and my trip was enriched because of it.

I would have missed this if I had been my typical, anti-social self on that flight.

I wonder how many interesting people we’ve missed out on getting to know because it was easier to not say hi, safer. I wonder what people are in our lives now, waiting to be acknowledged, waiting to broaden our perspectives.

A New Perspective Could Be Sitting In The Seat Next To You is a post from: Storyline Blog

How to Lead People Past Anger and Hate (New Study Suggests We Were Born With Prejudices)

Paul Bloom, professor of Psychology at Yale University has been studying the moral life of babies for many years and has recently discovered that, perhaps, there is evidence children as young as six-months old have biases against certain people.

Who are they biased against? They’re biased against people who aren’t like them.

*Photo by Avec Un, Creative Commons

The experiment went like this: Bloom and his associates would offer a child either cereal or crackers and note their decision. Later, the researchers would set the child in front of a couple puppets and the child would watch as the puppets chose whether to eat cereal or crackers, too. Later, the child was offered the chance to hold one of the puppets. Around 87% of the time, children would choose the puppet that picked the same food they’d earlier chosen. In other words, children were most comfortable with the puppet that was most like them, that had their tastes and perhaps their way of seeing the world.

But this wasn’t the part of the study that was the most disturbing.

As the experiment went on, the children were given the opportunity to cause pain to the puppets who had not chosen the treat they had chosen, and an uncomfortable percentage of children chose to do so. Not only did they want puppets who shared their interest to be around them, they wanted puppets who didn’t share their interests to suffer.

As children grow older and gain more life experience, these statistics thankfully change. Children learn caring, empathy and generosity later in life. What allows them to make this moral progression? Life experience. When a person has their pre-programmed defense mechanisms rewired by interacting with people who aren’t like them, they begin to see the world differently and they no longer want “others” to suffer.

Nevertheless, when we’re talking about ethnic differences, political differences, class differences or theological differences, we can easily see the same temptations playing out in adults.

Why are we so threatened by people who are different than us?

Perhaps because we can predict the behaviors of those who are like us and the “others” are less predictable, making us feel less safe. And when somebody makes us feel unsafe, we feel more safe when they are made week through, perhaps, suffering.

These biases have both local and global implications. And those implications are sad and dangerous. It is very easy to get a large mass of people to believe an entire “other” group of people are evil, as long as the majority have never had personal experience with them.

So how do leaders guide others in evolving from primitive ways of seeing “others” to more accurate perceptions that most people share the same fears and hopes? The best way to lead people through this evolution is to guide them through a diversity of experiences and stimulation. The more diverse, the better.

But this is a paradigm shift in leadership.

Where before, we might try to convince people to remain objective about various positions, it’s much more effective to introduce people to a diversity of “others” who share commonalities. In other words, when somebody finds out a Democrat loves the same flavor ice cream, or an Arab is afraid of the same kinds of spiders, the effect may be much greater than that of a long, drawn-out debate.

It’s more effective to introduce others to the aspects of their “enemies” lives that are like theirs. And until these aspects are seen, many people will continue to demonize the “other.”

Want to curb racism? Take your team to meet with a diversity of ethnicities.

Want to fight classism? Take your team to meet with a diversity of class representatives.

Want to fight political partisanship? Allow your team to interact in a real-life situation with people of various political persuasions.

Want to end theological fights? Don’t talk theology so much as befriend people who have various opinions.

Even bringing up these ideas will cause a sense of tension for some. We want to know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is.

There are certainly people in the world who do bad things.

I believe there are even cultures who are worse for the world than others. But what this research reveals is that what we often think of as “bad” or “wrong” is really just different. What would happen if you found out the people you think are evil are in fact a lot more like you than you thought? And what would happen if they found out you were a lot more like them, too? The more common ground we can find with others, the easier it will be to rewire ourselves away from our propensity to demonize and hate.

As leaders and people of influence, it’s important we lead people past and through their internal wiring of fear into a more truthful perspective that all people are made in God’s image. Are there bad people? Sure. But they are the rare exception.

To read an article explaining part of Paul Bloom’s research at Yale, click here.

How to Lead People Past Anger and Hate (New Study Suggests We Were Born With Prejudices) is a post from: Storyline Blog

Not “Letting Go” Could Be Damaging Your Relationships

I failed at Lent. The past few years I’ve observed Lent in various ways: going off social media, not judging my husband’s slovenly man cave, and tackling my biggest most besetting sin, the DWR: Driving While Righteous. It’s easy to get outraged on the LA highways; people drive like there’s no god to judge them. I take up the slack, waving a finger at people who are on their phones, or texting, or trying pass me in the emergency lane.

But each Lent I’ve sensed God waving his finger at me: let it go.

And I have. But three Sundays before Easter, some idiot passed us in a curved tunnel at 80 miles an hour, then cleared the tunnel and swerved from the left lane into a right-lane exit. Not a minute later, a bozo in the right lane cut everyone off with a left turn. I’m sure there’s some Francis Schaeffer illustration about how the whole “God Is Dead” thing has finally trickled down from the philosophers to the culture to the drivers. But me? I was driving like the Buddha.

*Photo Credit: Prayitno, Creative Commons

That afternoon, one of my dearest friends came over. CJ and I have a long history: roommates, best friends, a falling out and a long rapprochement. We repaired our friendship, and I would never want to repeat the same mistakes. She’s far too important to me. CJ and I ran some errands. As I got off the freeway a large Mercedes started tailgating me. It attempted to pass me on the turn. Now on the street, the Mercedes sped ahead, cut in front of another car and made a sharp turn right. The same direction we were going.

There was the jerk, idling at a light, and we were headed for the left-hand turn lane.

“Please, let his window be down,” I said out loud.

It was. I rolled down the passenger-seat window and leaned over CJ to look at the driver. It was a young man with two women in the car. A rosary hung from his rear view. I asked him if he drove that way because (insert something Seth Rogen would say in a Jud Apatow movie.)

“Are you having a good day?” he smiled. Yes, until he pulled that stunt. “You have a great car and lovely women in it. Don’t jeopardize their lives or mine. Kay?”

“Your light is green,” he replied.

We turned. CJ laughed nervously.

“I’m so sorry, CJ. That was not cool for me to do.”

Her laughter died down. “I’m just afraid you might say something like that to me some day.”

BOOM.

Far worse than breaking my Lent promise or chewing out someone I’ll never see again or ruining my own peace of mind, my righteous indignation hurt someone dear to me—someone whose friendship has been long in the making and repairing. And now I have to regain her trust.

I went to Good Friday knowing full well what sin I had to leave at the Cross. The Cross absorbed it and I’m forgiven. But it costs someone something.

What’s that pesky sin or character defect you hold onto?

What has it cost you in terms of relationships of peace of mind?

Is it worth it?

Not “Letting Go” Could Be Damaging Your Relationships is a post from: Storyline Blog

Why Your Weakness Gives You Strength

If it weren’t for Professor Xavier, the X-Men would be a bunch of dysfunctional deadbeats living in fear and isolation. It wasn’t until Professor X sought them out, looked each of them in the eye, and convinced them that the very characteristics they hated about themselves actually had the potential to save the world, that they began to step into their true identities as super-humans.

What draws our souls to superhero narratives like X-Men? I believe it’s because they all carry a common theme : that the more adversity someone faces, the more they are able to positively influence their environment for good.

*Photo Credit: DieselDemon, Creative Commons

I believe this theme transcends fiction. There are countless real-life examples of this playing out in individuals and communities everywhere. Brokenness will always be a willing canvas for beauty. Yet for some reason, it’s still easier for us to believe in a less wondrous outcome, one that takes our negative circumstances and simply neutralizes them. We’d rather hope the gang member just end his life of crime than dare to imagine him becoming a devoted father or running for city counsel.

It’s simply safer not to get our hopes up.

Instead, we focus on what we can control. We focus our energy on placing a band aid on the scar with the expectation that the body will heal (bringing a negative situation back to neutral). What the superhero narrative declares about life, however, is that the scar itself actually makes the body stronger (the negative creates a positive).

Our own stories reflect this truth. Often, we see our failures as liabilities, things to be forgotten, edited or removed all together. If it were up to us, we’d tear out every page in our story that represented the negative parts of our life. In short, our shame makes us terribly boring authors.

What if we decided to step boldly into the reality that our weaknesses give us an unfair advantage? Have you struggled with sobriety? You have a unique opportunity to connect deeply with others who also struggle. Ever felt abandoned? You’re probably better at creating community because you know exactly what people need.

I know this is easier said than done.

It’s a constant fight I have but thankfully others have come alongside me to remind me of what’s true. They’ve been voices of clarity and wisdom when the villains are running rampant.

So allow me to be your Professor Xavier for a minute. Your story is your gift that you bring to the world. Please don’t censor it. Instead, bring it with boldness to the people that need to experience it most. The most powerful words we can say to each other is “me too.”

Why Your Weakness Gives You Strength is a post from: Storyline Blog