Control Your Narrative

Your life is a story, and you are its main character.

It began when you were born, is happening now, and ends when your time here is up.

While your early years were dictated by what your parents wanted for you, eventually it was time for you to take the reins of your life, whether you were ready for it or not. That meant making your own decisions and taking responsibility for things. It’s a scary transition, and one where we all make a lot of mistakes. Becoming an adult is hard.

Since we don’t really know what we’re doing, we look to our past and the people around us to inform our decisions. We’d rather not think for ourselves and risk failure.

This results in a life that is dictated more by others than ourselves. We find ourselves in a situation that falls short of our ideal vision of a great life, creating a sort of void. We feel stuck in it and are afraid / don’t know how to make a change.

So instead of doing something about it, we do the most unproductive thing we can, complain.

If we’re one of the lucky ones, we rise above the excuses and become the author of our own story, dreaming up possibilities for ourselves and making attempts to turn them into reality.

We take control of our narrative, turning the life we have into the one we want.

I’m far from an expert at controlling my own narrative, but doing a lot of thinking about it and starting to go after my writing dreams has put me on the right path. And I’d love to help you do the same. Here’s a framework for how one might start taking charge of their life story:

1. Recognize that it’s possible to control your own narrative.

Everyone can dictate their own path if they care enough to want to do so. It’s not just reserved for “chosen” people. Forget flying by the seat of your pants and coasting through life based on what others want for you. This is your life, and you need to lead it. As one of my favorite content creators Chase Jarvis says, “If you don’t write your own script, someone else will write it for you.”

2. Believe that you’re capable of being someone who can control their own narrative.

Notice that I didn’t say that you have to believe that you will successfully execute on all of your desires. Realistically, you won’t. Everyone can’t have everything.

What I am saying is that you need to realize that you can become someone who figures out what they want out of life and then takes intentional action to move towards those things. Literally, “I want X and am doing Y to try to get there.”

Again, anyone is capable of doing this, so you better believe you can!

3. Self-reflect.

Now it’s time to craft your baseline vision for your narrative. You need to answer questions like, “What do I want out of life?” and “How do I want my story to play out?”. Open a Word document or grab a piece of paper and start writing down what comes to mind. Don’t overthink it, just let the words flow. Spend 30 minutes brainstorming with yourself.

Once you have a solid list of ideas, do your best to prioritize them. What’s most important to you? It’s okay to cut some too. Your narrative is starting to take real shape.

4. Dive deeper.

Your list of “wants” will probably be pretty high level at this point. It’s time to get into the nitty gritty. Elaborate on each item by getting as specific as possible. Why do I want X? How do I go about getting X? This stage might require a little research depending on what your “wants” are.

When you have a more clear understanding of what your “wants” are, it will be easier to set goals to move closer to them. Keep asking yourself, “What’s one thing I can do today to bring me closer to X?”.

5. Take action.

This exercise is meaningless unless you take tangible action towards what you want. That’s really taking control of your narrative. Think about the daily habits you need to put in place to do this. Look at your goals every day. The most important thing is that you’re moving forward in some way. That’s what the journey is all about and will make life worth living.

Controlling your narrative is a conscious choice. If you don’t craft the life you want for yourself, life will just happen to you. In the limited time I have on this planet, I’d rather spend it pursuing the things I want that will maximize my level of happiness than reacting to what comes my way. And I hope you do too. It’s time to write your own script and move closer to the ideal vision of yourself.