The book aims to help you find meaning in your life.
Nothing new until now.
Except Donald Miller is an expert in storytelling. And that’s what he’s sharing.
How to write your story in such an interesting way that you will fight to live it.
The book becomes an easy read and turns the technical part (the life plan) into something fun and interesting.
I’ve been using a life plan for 7 years. My fear before starting: “What am I going to learn about this subject”.
After a few pages, I couldn’t put it down.
I highly recommend it.
In a story, there are (almost always) 4 characters.
The victim has the impression that there are no solutions, only problems.
—Why me?
The villain is bitter, seeks to lower the other, and (often) lives revenge against those who have hurt him.
—How am I going to make them pay?
The hero. He transforms himself by trying to get what he wants.
—What’s interesting about this difficulty?
The guide. He helps the hero to transform. He has often lived a life filled with experience, pain, and success. He finds meaning in helping others.
—How can I help you?
How does this relate to my life story?
What role do you want to play?
We are all a part of these four characters. But which one do we want to live more intentionally?
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. —Viktor E. Frankl.
And it’s this response that divides the hero from the villain, or the victim.
They all face problems, but they choose to respond differently.
The villain seeks revenge. The victim asks why me.
The hero uses the problem and the pain as a way to grow. He is in transformation. Every mistake makes him stronger.
Logotherapy, the author’s inspiration.
The author is inspired and marked by the study of logotherapy. A philosophy created by Viktor Frankl in the heart of the darkest period of our history. The concentration camps.
Viktor lost his wife pregnant with their first child, his parents, and all his relatives. And despite this horror, he found the strength to give meaning to his story. He survived this dark period, became famous through his book Man’s Search for Meaning, and has marked the lives of millions of people. His theory, we all look for meaning in our lives.
A paradigm that changed Don Miller’s life.
Perhaps the single greatest paradigm shift I’ve had as a human is this idea: I am writing my story and I alone have the responsibility to shape it into something meaningful.
But what if I’m tired of my life?
That’s the beauty of a story. No matter where you are, you can edit it. The author tells his.
“FOR AN UNFORTUNATE NUMBER of years, I ignored the idea my life could be better. I rejected the idea I needed to create structure and a rhythm. And ignoring those ideas cost me a great deal. I’d say ignoring the fact I needed to take control of my own life cost me an entire decade of personal progress
Our stories are often pre-written. School, marriage, children, career, and then…nothing.
It’s up to us to write the rest.
“Midlife crisis happens when the cultural scripts end but we fail to write a new story for ourselves”
The hero always wants something. And this is certainly the most important question to ask.
What do I want?
There is no story if the hero doesn’t want anything.
When the cultural script stops, it sometimes feels like we want nothing.
But do we want nothing? Or have we not taken the time to think?
- What do I like?
- What do I enjoy doing?
For the author, the worst thing that can happen to us is to stop being passionate about our own story.
And he likes to use “what if” as a trigger for ideas that might excite him.
Often the question that comes up is:
What if this wasn’t the most important thing in my life?
It’s not so bad, each adventure makes the hero grow. And as he moves along, he takes more and more pleasure in living his story. With each journey, he clarifies a little what he wants.
The 4 steps proposed by the author to build his life?
You can download it here for free, the tools to guide you to do so.
1/Eulogy
An exercise I discovered in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey”. I understood it but never put it into practice. Until one day I found a guide through the book “Living Forward by Michael S. Hyatt”, a blueprint that guided me step by step in building this document.
For 7 years now, I have been refining it. This document is the backbone of my life.
And today Don offers me an opportunity to enrich it through the concept of “story”.
Whatever method you use, the important thing is to do it. It’s an exercise in living.
The author describes it this way:
- “A Eulogy Allows You to Look Back on Your Entire Life, Even Before It’s Over”
- “A Good Eulogy Talks About Who and What the Hero Loved”
- “A Good Eulogy Helps You Find Narrative Traction”
I don’t believe writing down a vision for your life creates any sort of magic in the universe, but I do believe it sets a general compass for your subconscious
2/Vision
He offers a 10, 5, and 1-year document.
My favorite part of this document:
- The place where you write your age. I put my current age and my age in 10 years. It reminds us to wake up now and not in 10 years…
- The two things I do and don’t do every day. What are your two dominoes that make all the others fall?
One of my major goals is to grow my coaching business. So here’s what I do every day.
- Write every day :
- I love to do it.
- Develop my thinking.
- Develop my coaching practice by bringing leads
- Connect with people every day
- Love people. Love to connect.
- Develop my coaching practice
3/Goal setting worksheet
A worksheet that allows you to clarify each of your goals. The author has up to 10 goals but reviews three a day in his routine.
4/Daily planner
A sort of daily checklist, prioritization, and reflection that keeps you on track.
I like this question that Don asks in this part of the document.
“If you could live this day over again, what would you do differently?”
After creating the first 3 documents, the author revisits them every day by reviewing his daily planner.
For my part, I’ve been picking and choosing from the documents to personalize my approach. I am constantly looking for simplicity because it’s what allows me to last. And this is one of the great qualities of the author. His writing and his tools are simplified to the maximum.
Conclusion
Despite my knowledge of the subject, I have enjoyed and learned a lot.
I’ve already started to integrate and apply some elements of his method to improve my own. The analogy of creating a story makes the book very interesting.
Writing my eulogy 7 years ago changed my life. The author tells with great skill how it impacted his own. And it may well change yours.
Write your story and live it with intention.
Related articles:
How to build your life plan?
8 Habits To Grow Your Career. What I’ve Learned In 20 Years And After Reading Over 300 Books.
Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins
2021, A year in reading. My 8 books to implement new ideas in real life.
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