“We cannot choose the events in our lives but we can choose its ultimate destiny.”
Everything depends on the story we tell ourselves.
I remember a day about 3 years ago when the situation in Venezuela was extremely bad. People didn’t have food, clothing, medicine. That time I got a call from one of my colleagues from Harvard Business School asking for help. He wanted to help his friend from Venezuela. As I was conducting workshops in Columbia, he wanted some business advice for his friend.The name of his friend was Laura, she was a single mother of 3 daughters and was in trouble with no money.
Well, I decided to help her out, took her phone number from my friend and gave her a call.
She explained to me everything about how she lost her house and money from the bank. When I got to know that she is in Columbia, I asked her to join the workshop that I had next week without paying any fee and then we will figure out what to do.
So, after the workshop, I started talking to her and after listening to all my talks and exercises she said — “I must have done something wrong or bad in my life, that is why God is punishing me. I had a great job. I had great parents, great childhood, a big house, and now I have nothing.”
She was blaming herself and thinking that there is no future for her and her kids. Her story was basically that she is finished and her life is ruined.
I said that’s right. Basically, you need to accept that you are in a pretty bad situation. You have to accept that your husband has gone. He’s not coming back.
Your house in Venezuela is gone. You may not get it back and you have to start from zero. So she went through grief and sadness for a few days and weeks.
And then I had another session with her where I asked her if she has a choice?
Well, you are the only one who can make a choice.
Either you can live the rest of your life with your kids thinking that you are finished this is the end of your happy life there’s nothing you can do and let your kids suffer.
Or you can make another choice.
You can be grateful for what you had. You can be grateful for your education, the skills you have.
You could be grateful that you’re able to see another country and be able to start from zero.
You can be grateful for this and start writing a new chapter in your life.
You can create a new story.
So, what happened to you in Venezuela? It’s not your complete story, that is just one part of the story. The story still continues until you die, even after you die, your kids will continue your story.
So, you will have a choice just like you get a pop-up on a computer, whether you want to do this or that.
And you can make a decision to live a different life. Of course, that wouldn’t change your bank balance. Wouldn’t change the situation about your legal papers in Columbia or the responses you have with the cared, but this is a beginning. If you don’t begin here, you will never.
How?
Another story, another life, and she understood and started working again in Colombia. With her degree, she got some help from friends and her mom ended up joining her to take care of the kids, and the long story she sold. She was able to sell the house.
She started a restaurant in Colombia and that restaurant become a big success after a couple of years and she was able to have her own business and really completely transformed her life by taking that decision to change.
So, we have these weird narratives or stories in life. Where life has to be one way and if it’s something else then we think that this is the end of our life.
That is not true at all.
Nothing is constant in life. Every moment there is something new happening and every moment all you have to do is decide which way you want to go and you can have a good life, a bad life or a great life. The choice is always yours.
When Addison was experimenting to invent the bulb, he failed a thousand times. When he was interviewed that why he didn’t give up? He said I didn’t fail 1000 times but leaned a thousand ways from which bulb would not work
That was his story, his narrative.
You’ve seen other scientists, other people in life, especially in the times of Corona, where they lost their job. They didn’t have much savings, and they committed suicide or people who get in a little bit of financial trouble, and they commit suicide even though they have a lot of money in the bank.
If we talk about Thomas Alva Edison, he had a choice to commit suicide. He could have given up on his lighting experiment after he tailed 10 times, and you know nothing bad with those hundreds and hundreds of people give up after 10 or 15 try they in fact, give up even after a first try.
Just like movies, a hero can do anything and a story can go in any way. Your life is also like that, like a novel. You need to start writing your novel by yourself.
You cannot change the past but you can accept it and once you do that, you can start changing the things which you can and can make a decision.
So now look at your life.
What is the next plot in your movie? Where are you stuck?
Do you want to have a good life, bad life, or a great life? The decision is yours.