Authoring a new story

Our baggage gives us a victim story where we feel powerless or a conquest story where we're driven to act like a bully. In either case, our baggage gives us no sense of being free to create a new narrative. It's only when we can separate ourselves from those habits and admit that we have baggage -- that we become capable of authoring a new story. Following the order of the bullet points I explored yesterday, here's how we can rewrite our lives and leave our baggage behind us.

• We can get out of being the main character in the new story. Our new tale can tell of other lives, journeys and relationships. It can put our character in contexts that compare and contrast us to others. We can join with others and create healthy boundaries from being taken hostage by their desperation, neediness or clinging.
• We can put our back story into a larger perspective by developing appreciation for our present circumstances and visions for our future. Our story can characterize how we've outgrown our past, changed our abilities and updated our outlook. We can look forward to being a different person, facing new challenges and looking back on our past with different perspectives.
• We can change tribes and leave their world that seemed inescapable for so long. By exploring what-if questions, we will realize new ways to act as-if something else is true. We can see where definitions of problems and possibilities are up to us. We can change the labels, categories and frames of reference we had assumed were facts of life. In the process, we will have changed our cursed fate and recurring bad luck.
• We can value our antagonist as a provocation to rethink our self concept. We can conceive of ourselves in different ways than others see us. We can claim to be unknown to them, capable of traits they never predicted and hiding talents from their cynical view. We can be glad we've have encrypted our best qualities while they were under siege. Now we can begin to try them out, put them on display and think of ourselves differently as we succeed with these new abilities.
• We can heighten the suspense for those watching us evolve. We can wonder out loud what will become of us now that we're in the midst of changing. We can play with uncertainties, unknowns and those unexpected black swans. We can disrupt the expectations, second guessing and assumptions that others have been sticking to us.
• We can introduce variety into our day-to-day existence. We can seem more interesting to follow by being more interested in exploring unfamiliar avenues. We can let others know what new things we've done, learned, thought about and tied together in our minds. We can stop depressing ourselves with inhibitions and start expressing ourselves with new convictions.
• We can circle back around to previous recollections with new frames of reference. The next time around, we can take our outlook to a higher ground. We can transcend our long-standing grudges with more empathy, compassion and forgiveness for those who did us wrong. We can see the horror with more detachment, perspective and parallel tales to tell. We can travel on an ascending spiral that revisits our past in new and better ways.

When we author a new story like this, our baggage is put to rest. We no longer feel haunted by our past or trapped by our previous adaptations to others baggage. We see our future as full of yet-unrealized potentials. We see where we're headed in a forward direction with a delightful tailwind at our backs.