All righty, so this is the second blog entry. It’s actually number three. But the second of my actual quotes that I’m using so the quote today that I wanted to talk a little bit about, says, you to, at every waking moment, are living the story you choose to tell yourself that gives coherence purpose and meaning to your existence. I really love that quote, hopefully, it doesn’t sound too wordy. But the reason why I selected this quote is first and foremost, I love stories. When I was back in school, I actually took a class on a form of therapy that focuses on storytelling, it was called Narrative Therapy. And if I remember correctly, the premise is basically people will tell stories as if, and no stories they tell, can be a therapeutic device, meaning when people tell a story, what’s important is that story that you’re choosing to tell at that time. And that place often is not just random, it’s coming from somewhere. So when you’re still in that mind, you may not be telling the story. But when you are reminded of something and you’re going through a story or a scenario in your mind, oftentimes it’s therefore a purpose. So what I wanted to do, and why I’d like this quote, is to focus on just the mental health aspect of our stories and how we can view life and how view in life as one unfolding story, with many, many chapters, however you want to break it down, can be extremely helpful from our, from a mental health perspective. And in this case, one thing that I like is, when we view life as or our lives as an unfolding story, think about the fact of when you’re reading a story, or you’re hearing a story, or watching a movie, oftentimes, what you’ll find is that, that as the story unfolds, the choices that are made, and the things that happen, lead to certain outcomes. Now those outcomes may not be what were anticipated or what were wanted. But nevertheless, they were what they were, and the story unfolded in such a way. So what happens is when we look back on our lives, and we tell ourselves a story, what you can do from a mental health perspective, is look and maybe dissect or break that down a little bit, to say, Well, I remember that phase in my life, and the choice that I made. And think about it a little bit and think, what was the outcome good or bad. And just think about, one thing that I find very helpful is, rather than thinking of the story, or its outcome is good or bad, right or wrong, rather than looking at it from a perspective of, what did I learn? What was the takeaway, and when we start looking at life, from that perspective, that we can learn from and understand a little bit better from our choices, then when we’re going through difficult times, that we don’t know the ending of, we can recognize the fact that you know what, even though I don’t know what the outcome is, I have faith that I will be able to learn from this experience. And even if it’s a painful and something I don’t ever want to experience again, that is a life lesson. And when we do that, that kind of saw at the front end, when we are at the end of this quote, and we say you to every waking moment or living that story. That’s the what I just talked about the latter part, when you are pulling out lessons learned, and what can I get out of that experience, then that fulfills the last half of that quote, which is it gives us coherence, purpose and meaning to our existence. I believe that our life unfolds in a way that all those May at the time seem kind of hectic or kind of chaotic. I feel if we take the time to reflect on our lives, and how it’s unfolding. We can get a perspective on life. That gives us a sense of purpose and meaning and it’s not incoherent. Rather, it is one great story. So my challenge for You today, if you have a chance to listen to this is the following. I believe that your life and the experience that you’re having is serving a purpose. And as you go through that, one thing that’s important to realize, and this is something that I haven’t touched on, but I’m going to touch on here is that you have choices, you have options to about your story. With that said, there are aspects of our lives. There’s a concept that I really like, that I may bring up again and again, but I think it’s important is that in the Serenity Prayer, we’re asked to be able to identify those things that we can change, and those things that we may need to accept. When we look at our stories. And as we’re trying to make it through our story. One of the one of the ways to go forward is to say, is I’m facing a decision that I have to make or as I’m living my life, what parts of this do I have to accept? Or can I accept, and what needs to change? And really, then what you can do is, once you start getting this idea of these things, I can change these things I can accept, then what you start working on is as in the Serenity Prayer, you start developing the wisdom, or the understanding how you personally choose to know what to change and what to accept. The more to come on that that’s there’s a lot around there’s a lot to unpack about this idea of changing and acceptance. But remember, your life is a story. As you will come to understand and appreciate your individual story. It will give you purpose and meaning. As you see the themes running through your life. Take care of yourself. Be good yourself and we’ll talk soon