If you could choose just 6 words to make a book title that would describe your life, what would your 6 words be?
Your book will explain why those 6 words were chosen throughout the chapters you create.
As you ponder your 6 words and titles of your chapters, let them summarize how you view your life.
How was your life meaningful?
Did you do everything you wanted?
What mattered to you?
If you think about a chapter of a good book, it usually has some exciting and capturing moments to keep you engaged. Then you have the next chapter that moves on to new ideas and situations and pulls some themes from the past chapters to keep the story going.
Just like with life. Life is broken down into different chapters.
How would you define those chapters for yourself?
What are the highlights?
Who are the main characters?
What themes do you have running through?
Look at the decades of your life.
Are there ideas that weave it together?
You can only move on in the book if you are stuck on one chapter or think one chapter is the whole book. I know that, at times, weight is my entire life. I obsess over it; I beat myself over knowing better and not following through on what I know best.
But in reality, that is only one part of my life. I have two fabulous children. I have the best husband who radiates goodness and love. I have 7 grandchildren. I had a great career in education. I love to learn and teach. I see significant meaning in life. I see possibilities and joy. I love helping people be their best.
What if you could see that whatever happens today is part of your life journey?
What if you relax and know that life is full of peaks and valleys and are all important to building the story of your legacy?
Like with a book, you build on what has happened. You keep the mystery alive or solve it. You take what is there and create something more to resolve the situation.
Life is more than your hurts or addictions.
You are bigger than those setbacks.
Who did they help you become?
You don’t need to avoid any of it. Let it all be. What meaning or lessons does that situation have for your life? It could be a detail in building your chapter or your life story.
As Colbie Cailla says, “I don’t take relationships too seriously, but everyone else seems to. And when you get your heart broken, it’s like the end of the world. And I look at it as that was one moment in your life, one chapter. That person helped you grow and figure out what kind of person you want to be with in the future.”
Who are you? Why has your life mattered?
What are your chapters?
Can you see a higher purpose for your life by seeing life from a bigger perspective?
Where are you stuck and repeating the same chapter? Could using this analogy that life is composed of chapters help you move on from something that has held you back or not allowed you to see possibilities for your life?
I see how the first half of my life was spent trying to achieve and make myself a place in this world.
This last part has had me shift my focus to who I am becoming. Letting go of all the external ways I thought I had to prove myself. I’m removing the layers of whom I no longer want to be so I can live the most loving, kind, and peaceful life. So I can be healthy, vibrant, and fulfilled. And that doesn’t come from pushing, pushing, and pushing. That doesn’t come from judging and putting down others or myself. That comes from seeing the love and being loved. It’s not looking for what’s wrong but seeing
what is here from a heart of love and compassion.
One of my chapters is – to be kind to yourself as you learn more about yourself and your past ways. Allow forgiveness to free you. It’s hard to admit and accept at times.
Time to open to new chapters of your book.
When faced with life challenges, how can that chapter be about how you overcame the hurt and mishap?
As Father Richard Rohr shares, “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it – usually to those closest to us.”
What in your life needs to be seen as just a chapter rather than the “big deal” or whole of life you are making right now?
Free yourself. Allow that hurdle to be a moment in time.
Life has chapters to it. Let each one matter for the whole of your life.