How to Create What You Want in Life

My family and I were recently swimming in the ocean off Grand Cayman when my wife let out a scream.

“Something bit me!” she yelled. As we looked around, we saw a jellyfish floating away.

An hour later, she had a large, red welt on the back of her arm. She looked up at me, clearly in pain, and said with a sarcastic smile, “Will you pee on me?”

Even if she had been serious, we were surrounded by strangers, and it was not the time to attempt this supposed antidote.

I quickly looked up “how to treat jellyfish stings.” Lo and behold, the commonly held belief about urine helping to treat jellyfish stings isn’t even true!

For the rest of our trip, I reflected on the stories we tell and how they shape our lives.

Throughout history, widely held beliefs and scientific theories have influenced our collective experience. And many have proven to be wrong.

More still will be proven wrong in the future.

This got me thinking about a quality that many of the richest, most fulfilled people I know have in common.

They make up the story of their lives and become it.

After all, aren’t we all making up just about everything? Human beings are meaning-makers. Our ability to tell stories has allowed us to survive and thrive more than any other species.

But this storytelling ability can just as easily keep us trapped.

To understand this more clearly, let’s look at a few examples of commonly held beliefs that aren’t actually true.

• Right-brained people are more creative than left-brained people. Brain scans of over 7,000 areas of the brain showed that both hemispheres of the brain were equally active in both logical and creative activities.
• Blood is blue in your body. Human blood looks the same inside the body as it does outside: red. It’s a brighter red when it’s oxygen-rich, and it’s darker when it needs that oxygen replenished, but it’s always red.
• Goldfish have three-second memories. A study analyzed goldfish and whether they could tell the difference between two different classical songs. After more than 100 sessions, the fish would bite a bead associated with the correct song 75% of the time. If their memories were really three seconds, that kind of training wouldn’t be possible.
• Ostriches bury their heads in the sand. They actually lie with their head and neck flat against the ground if a predator is approaching. They would suffocate if they stuck their heads in the sand.
• Humans have five senses. Aristotle first released this theory, but it turned out not to be true. For example, we have interoreceptors, which signal when we are thirsty, when we are full and when we need to pee. There are arguably many more than five senses.

There are countless other beliefs just like this. Do a little research, however, and you find that none of them are true! Yet we believe them, and they affect our relationships with the world.

Some of our most consequential beliefs continue to change and evolve our understanding of the nature of reality and of the universe.

• We long held a scientific theory that the Earth was the center of the universe.
• We used to think continents were fixed and did not move… until the continental drift theory emerged in 1912.
• Even Einstein thought the universe was static and steady until he published his theory of the expanding universe.

And today, we have emerging understandings about nature and ourselves that continue to redefine our perspective.

In recent years, we’ve come to understand that specific breeds of mushrooms communicate. They use electrical impulses and utilize up to 50 “words” closely resembling human language, though researchers are not yet ready to directly link their communication to human speech. It is believed that the fungi transmit information to each other about injuries and food sources.

We are using machine learning to decode whale languages. “Clans” of whales in different parts of the world make different sound patterns. They are believed to communicate with far more complexity than we ever imagined.

I won’t even get into the medical and biotech breakthroughs. The advancements in 2022 alone were mind-bending.

If We’re All Making It Up Anyway…

What I came back to after all this reflection was that we are all making it up. Much of what we thought we knew in the past evolved or turned out not to be true. Much of what we know today will evolve or turn out not to be true.

We pick up beliefs throughout our lives. Many of them have been passed down… have been poorly translated… or are outright false.

But this is what is so amazing…

If we’re all making it up anyway, then you get to choose what to believe. And when it comes to you and your life, you literally create a story that you end up living out.

If you believe you are surrounded by people who are loving and generous, you are.

If you believe you can learn anything at any age, you can.

If you believe the tragedies in your life serve a purpose and are there to teach you something, they do.

And here’s the thing… this is not just magical thinking. Of course, thoughts alone aren’t going to make the stock market go straight up for the next 50 years. They won’t inflate your bank account. They won’t prevent your heating bill from going up. They won’t prevent your loved one from dying.

But they will create who you are through it all… and what it means.

If you believe you are surrounded by people who are loving and generous, will you approach your relationships differently? Yes.

If you believe you can learn anything at any age, will you take different actions? Yes.

If you believe the tragedies in your life are there to teach you something, will you seek to find the lessons? Yes.

Examine the story you’ve written about your life. That’s what it is. A story.

If there are parts of it you don’t like, CHANGE THEM. Make up a new story.

The richest and most fulfilled people I know all create their lives. It starts with telling great stories. Then they take actions that are in line with those stories. And the people they become and the lives they live are results of those stories and the actions that follow.

What story do you want to tell about your richest possible life, starting today?

Tell it.

Live it.

And watch who you become.

Be relentless,

Nathan

P.S. What did this bring up for you? Are there parts of your story you want to rewrite? Shoot me a note and let me know.