Thread by @JeffGoins

This time of year is teeming with possibility. As the days get longer and a new year approaches, I start to wonder:
What new thing wants to be birthed in me?

Whether you look back on this past year with regret or celebration, you may find yourself looking forward to what’s to come. This is natural. Part of the thrill of being alive is the joy of remaking your life into something other than what it has been.

Many of us take this sense of exciting possibility and turn to goal-setting. There is nothing necessarily wrong with goals, but I find that many of us approach this process the wrong way.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive for personal change. By all means, improve yourself. All I’m saying is nobody ever told me I could reconsider the questions I was asking of my life.

Have you ever gotten the very thing you thought you wanted only to realize it’s not what you wanted at all?

What is all this about?

There is, I believe, a better way to live, which is to exchange traditional goal-setting for treating your life as a story.

Every story has a hero who wants something and is willing to overcome conflict to get it.

Why should it be any different with you?

What if you thought of this next year as a new chapter in the story of your life?

And if that were the case, you might consider some new questions:

1. “What do I want?” If life is a story and you are the hero, then wanting something is essential to moving the narrative forward. Your desires are clues to the next leg in your journey—embrace them.

2. “What obstacles will I face?” Anything worth having is worth fighting for, and some prizes require multiple battles. Expect resistance.

3. “How will I grow?” A character who gets exactly what he wants without struggle makes for a boring story. Your journey will be filled with failures and disappointments, all meant to change you.

4. “Who can help me?” Frodo had the Fellowship. Katniss had her friends, Luke Skywalker had his sister, a Muppet, and a bunch of ghosts. Who do you have?

Maybe what’s happening in your life is so much bigger than scratching an item off a bucket list. Maybe some great story is being told here, and it’s up to you to pay attention.