5 Steps to Rewrite the Story of Your Life

How can you do this?

1. Realize that you have a relationship with your life.

Try to think of your life as a companion with whom you have a relationship. Thinking this way helps you take your life as a whole, rather than a simple series of events. It enables you to step back and view the entire canvas for what it is.

2. See yourself as the creator.

This is about being proactive, but also stepping out of the roles of victim or martyr, like Keisha and Tim, that your story so far has cast you in. It also helps to counter autopilot of Brad's going through the motions. Creating is about realizing that you have choices and actually making a choice, rather than falling into default mode. Your life at the end is the completed painting, but before that, it is ever before you, ready for you to step up and create something new.

3. Realize that life is teaching you about life.

To sidestep feeling like the victim, you want to see problems as potential lessons to learn. As the poet Rilke said, "Ultimately each one of us experiences only one conflict in life which constantly reappears under a different guise." What is your one conflict? What is it that your life and your problems are trying most to teach you?

4. Realize that you can change the story.

This is where attitude and proactivity kick in. Regardless of your story, it is still a narrative and, like a painting, it can be changed. Will changing the story bring you all that you want? Not necessarily. But can it cast you and your life in different roles that are less trapped, less stressed, less anxious? Yes, it can. Your story can become the blueprint for your life - the starting point, the vision that may or may not come to pass. But without the vision or the blueprint, nothing creative happens.

5. You need to care for the relationship.

Any relationship is capable of falling into disconnection and conflict when not nurtured, when problems are ignored, or when everyday life creates tunnel vision. To avoid this, you need to step back - daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly - to ask the important but difficult questions: How are me and my life doing? Are we on the same track? Are we moving in the same direction? Are there problems that keep us from moving forward and feeling fulfilled? This type of reflection is invaluable and necessary, but all too easy to push to the side. Don't.

To close, some expert advice:

From Benjamin Button: "It's never too late to be whoever you want to be. You can change or stay the same; there are no rules to this thing. I hope you live you're proud of, and if you find you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

From Antonio Machado: "Traveler, there is no path; the path is made by walking."