If we are fortunate enough to live to a ripe old age, I can’t imagine we reflect on our lives with thoughts like ‘I wish I had worked harder’.
The story of your life
I’d like to think we reflect on our life experiences, perhaps as a sum of its general direction with noticeable highlights (including the good, the bad and the ugly), with some appreciation of the life we have lived, who we have shared it with and the memories we have made. I imagine that to be able to do so encapsulates what it is to have been human and to have lived for as many years as we get in our lifetime.
Life unfolds differently to how I thought it would...
The odds are high that our lives don’t flow completely smoothly and seamlessly from one expected life event to the next. We all probably accept (even if we aren’t entirely comfortable with) the idea that life doesn’t always go according to plan or exactly how we think it will pan out when we are in amongst it. We cannot control everything (a subject of another blog you can read here), so it is inevitable that there are some twists and turns along the way!
Just reflecting on a couple of my life experiences and the different directions they took than I anticipated:
- I really wanted to go to university in Warwick. I didn’t get offered a place, which I am confident I would have accepted if I had been made an offer. I went to Cardiff university instead where I met my future husband!
- When I was 24 and interviewing for jobs in London, a mix up with a recruitment agency meant I missed out on a role that I had actually been offered. I would have accepted. They even sent me flowers after to apologise I recall. But as it happens, I’m glad it turned out this way. The very next interview I went for was the start of my 14.5 year tenure at the most fantastic workplace I could have imagined (and yes, I know I might have on slightly rose-tinted glasses here in hindsight – there were of course some moments that weren’t all rosy, but the overall experience was one I am hugely grateful I had).
So, my point here is – and I am sure you can reflect on some of your own examples like mine above – that it is actually good news that we can adjust and re-write our life story as we go rather than have it all mapped out in advance. In fact, that’s probably how it has to be! Would I have enjoyed Warwick university and the other role? Might I have met a different husband?! I guess we’ll never know! But I can only imagine that I would have continued to respond to each event as it happened in my life as best I could. It would be very interesting to know if I still might have arrived at being a life coach if things had been different!
What has happened so far in your life doesn't have to be what's to come
No matter what has been happening in it so far, you can choose what will come next – or at least influence the direction you will take as you choose how to respond to what is happening around you. Fancy a plot twist? Why not? New characters come in to feature? Exciting! Will they stay around or are they just a brief presence? Let’s see!
I was talking with a client about this concept of our life story and life chapters just lately – sometimes we have big chapters governed by significant life events. These might be planned and anticipated (e.g. getting married or moving home) or they may be unexpected (e.g. redundancy). And sometimes we have what I call the ‘interludes’ and the ‘transition windows’ too. These are the periods ‘in between’ – perhaps the dust is settling from one of the bigger life events, or we are considering what might come next.
The reason why life chapters and our overall life story seems like such an appropriate analogy is that just like a good novel, there's the main protagonist (ourselves), other important characters (maybe some heroes and villains!), cliff-hangers, the unexpected moments, and the good, the bad and the downright ‘what on earth is going on?’ moments. Sometimes you can foresee a chapter naturally coming to an end and a new one emerging, other times a new one starts abruptly and unexpectedly after a plot-twist! And here's the best bit - we are both author and protagonist of our life story.
How will your next life chapter go?
So, how is your life story coming along? The end of the novel isn’t written yet – and neither is it a foregone conclusion (how boring would that be?!) If you’d like support considering your next chapter in your life story and how you’d like it to look, please get in touch. Let’s see what you will write for yours next – and I bet it makes a good read!
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