Do You Have to Read—or Live—A Story You Don’t Like?

The answer is no.

I love stories. When I was really little, I went to bed extra early on Sunday nights and snuggled under the covers to listen to The Shadow.

Once I learned to read, I read everything I could get my hands on. I was lucky. My dad was an English professor and filled the house with stacks of books. I read a lot of books then.

And now the glory days have returned.

Having a digital reader means that any book I want is just a few seconds away. Now, I am back to reading every chance I get. I love stories. I love stories well told.

When I don’t like the story being told, I stop reading it, and if I really don’t enjoy it, I delete it.

Living as humans, we can’t get away from stories. Our lives are a series of stories.

The difference is that we keep forgetting that we are able and free to rewrite or delete any part of any life story that we don’t like.

Just as I don’t have to finish a book I don’t like, we don’t have to live out a story that we don’t like or that no longer suits us.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King said, “When you write, you tell yourself a story, when you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

Do you see it? Do you see how this can apply to our own life stories?

We have been telling stories all our lives about our lives. But we can and must take things out of the story that are not the story we want to tell.

As in all things, it is easier to see a life story when it is someone else’s.

How often have we fallen prey to talking about other people’s stories and wondered why they put up with them? Sometimes, it is out of caring about the other person, but often, it is because we all love stories.

The most gracious thing we can do for each other is not to buy into or download into our own lives—anything that does not advance a good life story, no matter whose story it is.

We can stop applying old family, heredity, or disaster stories to and about all children.

Who wants to burden them with a story that doesn’t have the best possible storyline?

Do we need our children to grow up to be just like us?

Why?

Don’t we love them more than that?

Let’s love enough to stop spreading stories of lack, greed, fear, and struggle.

Prophets taught us using stories or parables. It’s how we learn. Christ Jesus, the master parable teller, told stories about how to shift our life story.

He told stories about using our talents, being free, helping those sheep who have strayed, and welcoming back prodigal sons. Every prophet gives us stories about how to shift our life stories to ones with intelligent and love-based premises.

We are free to rewrite any life story that does not work for us anymore, even if it did at one point.

Let’s end with something else Stephen King said.

“It’s best to go on to some other area, where the deposits of talent may be richer and the fun quotient higher.”

Come on now, could that be any clearer about our lives?

Shut the book on stories that don’t work.

Rewrite the ones that need to be edited.

Delete the ones that don’t serve the good of all.

Time is a-wasting. Start rewriting now!

Every book I write is actually about how to shift your life story. However, one specifically focuses on breaking down life statements that don’t work for you: The Four Essential Questions.