23 Feb Feel like you’re lost or your life has gotten off track? How to begin again
Ever feel lost?
We all do!
Feel like you need to get back on track?
We all do (at times)!
Well, I’m happy to share this great TED Ideas article by Bruce Feiler that I think you’ll find VERY helpful …
I used to have a saying that phone calls don’t change your life — until one day I got one that did. It was from my mother: “Your father is trying to kill himself.”
My dad was a son of the American South. A Navy veteran, civic leader, he was never depressed a minute of his life. Until he got Parkinson’s.
Six times in 12 weeks, he attempted to end his life. We tried every solution imaginable, and then one day I had a thought. Maybe what he needed was a spark to restart his life story.
One morning I sent him a question: “What were your favorite toys as a child?”
What happened next changed not only him but everyone around him and ultimately led me to rethink how we all achieve meaning, purpose and joy in our lives.
It happens to every one of us at one time or another: We get stuck in the woods and can’t get out.
Before we get to that, I want you to stop reading for a second, close your eyes, and listen to the story going on in your head.
It’s the story you tell others when you first meet them; it’s the story you tell yourself every day.
It’s the story of who you are, where you came from, where you’re going.
It’s the story of your life.
What scientists have learned from a generation of brain research is: That story isn’t just part of you; it is you in a fundamental way.
But there are questions that research hasn’t really answered.
What happens when we misplace the plot of that story, when we get sidetracked by a pitfall, a pothole, a pandemic? What happens when we feel burned out and want a fresh start? What happens when our fairy tales go awry and we get lost?
That’s what happened to my dad that year, to me around that same time, and to every one of us at one time or another: We get stuck in the woods and can’t get out.
This time, though, I wanted to learn how to get unstuck.
Like my dad, I was born in the South. I went to college, I started writing; I did it for no money for a while then had some success; I got married and had children. But then, in my 40s, I was just walloped by life.
First, I got cancer as a new dad of identical twin daughters; then I almost went bankrupt; and then my dad had that suicide spree.
For three years, I collected hundreds of life stories from all 50 states of the US — people who lost homes and limbs, changed careers and genders, got sober and got out of bad marriages.
For a long time I felt shame and fear about these events. I didn’t know how to tell my story — and I didn’t want to.
But when I did, I discovered that everybody feels their life has been upended in some way. That they’re somehow off schedule, off track, off kilter. That the life they’re living is not the life they expected. That they’re living life out of order.
I wanted to do something to help. For three years, I crisscrossed America and collected hundreds of life stories from people in all 50 states — people who lost homes and limbs, changed careers and genders, got sober and got out of bad marriages.
In the end, I had 1,000 hours of interviews and 6,000 pages of transcripts. With a team of 12, I spent a year coding these stories, looking for patterns that could help all of us thrive in times of change.
Here are three things I learned…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE