Why You Should Think Creatively, Not Positively
(Re)Writing the Story of Your Life
You don’t need to “just think positively.”
But you should, no, you must, think creatively.
Before I start explaining…
My biggest heartbreak taught me that I actually don’t know how to love.
Someone wanting to take my life forced me to start living.
Being physically and emotionally isolated urged me to lower my guard and allow other humans to enter my life.
This list could go on and on...
But none of these insights came from thinking positively.
They came from thinking creatively.
Now let me explain.
I know you’ve heard it before while struggling. “Think positively; everything happens for a reason; everything will turn out well.” Most people hate hearing this when they’re struggling, and rightfully so.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to encourage anyone to indulge in cynicism. I do believe that nurturing a sense of hope for a better future, even in the darkest of times, is one of the most beautiful human abilities. But when a person hasn’t even had the chance to process a devastating loss or an overwhelming challenge that seems insurmountable, can you really blame them for not wanting to hear how they should think positively?
That’s why I say, "Think creatively."
But what does that mean? It means, more than anything, to view your life as a story.
If your life is not a story, it’s just a series of events that have no greater narrative; they have no combining thread other than being experienced by the same person.
How can you overcome any real difficulty or struggle if all of them are just isolated events? You eventually start thinking they’re not worth overcoming because you cannot assign any meaning to them. You feel like there’s no point in moving forward. How could you assign meaning to an event that’s not part of a greater story?
If you view different periods of your life as chapters of your story and analyze how each chapter is connected to all the other ones and how they influence each other, then you cannot help but notice how some of the most painful moments of your life have played a massive role in your character development.
When your life is a story, every struggle you face is not just a random event that’s bringing you down to your knees. It’s a canon event in the story called Your Life. It might not make any sense at the moment, and you may want to give up, but you won’t because your story needs to keep unraveling, and that’s what makes any struggle worth overcoming.
It is only when you actively work on connecting all parts of your life into a story that things start to make sense.
When your life is a story, you are able to come to peace with the ugly and painful parts of your past because your story wouldn’t be able to progress to where it is without them. The same goes for how your current struggles relate to the future you are trying to create.
You cannot have any moment without all the ones before it.
So, think creatively.
“All ‘it was’ is a fragment, a riddle, a grisly accident – until the creating will says to it: ‘But I will it thus! I shall will it thus!
To recreate all ‘it was’ into ‘thus I willed it!’ – only that would I call redemption!"
-Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
Thank you for reading.
Free Resources:
My free ebook: The Lost Art of Reading
Paid Resources:
The Art of Showing Up: A Clear and Practical Method for Mastering Consistency
The Gold Pill: Timeless Ideas for a Life Worth Living
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Hey man! You're my favorite online writer and creator. (Maybe, i'm not the first who have told you these before. You're natural and relatable. True life is a story, a journey. What came in the way became the way. (similar to Marcus' Aurelius quote). This dusk is important for that dawn.
The much needed atom bomb to my melancholy this morning. I found that I was remembering things in isolation so often lately, asking why they happened the way they did. By looking at "things" in isolation I removed any possibility of finding an answer. By seeing these events as part of the story, the novel even, of my life I now see things as they truly are!
Melancholy turned to joy in the same way the morning frost melted into the grass as the sun would shine through.
The quite from Nietzsche, like all of his work, cuts through the melancholy like a hot knife through butter.
Thank you