LIVING A BETTER STORY

That last homework assignment was a tough, but good one. It’s always scary to hear what story you seem to be playing for those around you or observers. My next assignment is to ask you what you want?

What do you believe you want in life? What are your goals? Are you a list maker or do you not have goals? If you do know what you want in life, is there anyway I can help you achieve some of that? If so, invite me in to partner with you in your story. What do you want in life?

Out of the six of you on this list, looking forward to hearing some of your responses. :-)


I’m currently reading “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” and like Rob Bell’s review reflected, this book is reading me more than I am reading it. It’s a bit haunting in a way that inspires you to reflect and examine your life. Am I living a good story? Am I living the best story possible?

I was thinking about this recently as I was sharing with my reading group a lot of recent failures. I sure do a lot of things -- I mean a lot of things that do not work out. Some of them were huge parts of my life. Some of them are huge projects that fail. The interesting thing about it all is that it’s not the achievement of a great goal that makes it a good story; it’s the attempt to reach it that makes a good story.

Did you see that movie “Friday Night Lights?” It follows the story of a football team through their season and all the setbacks and problems as they rise and make it all the way to the state championship game. In the final scenes, though a well-fought match, they lost. And some people might viscerally find that anticlimactic, but most people still felt it a great movie. The interesting part about the loss at the end of the movie is that this is a true story of a team who actually won the state championship the very next year. The filmmaker was asked why he didn’t make a film chronicling the winning season. He said, at first he wanted to do just that. But when he looked at that season, he realized there was no good story there. The previous season when they lost the championship had an amazing story even in the loss.

I’m always reminded of that. It’s not the achieving of the goal, but it’s all the things you do, how you change your life, the discipline and desire and inspiration and encouragement used as you reach for your goal. And no matter if you’ve reached it or not, you lived a better story trying to reach. You’ve lived a better story trying.