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Everything Starts with a Sentence
As a writer, I have a tendency to believe that words are everything. I’m not always wrong. One of the most important things I’ve learned over time is this: everything starts with a sentence. Seriously. Everything you do in life, your achievements, failures, fears, joys… they’re all shaped by thoughts in your mind, that is, by words and sentences.
The equation looks like this: Words → Feelings → Actions → Results.
If you’re not happy about the results you have in your life, you have the power to change at least some of them by changing the story you’re telling yourself. When you change the words that frame your thoughts, your feelings, then the way you take action will follow.
They’re all tied together.
There are a lot of people offended by the idea that we “create our reality,” which they see as a version of blaming the victim. Of course, nobody asks for bad things to happen. Thinking positively alone isn’t going to lift anyone out of tragedy. But we can (and do) create much of our reality by writing it first in our minds.
My psychologist friends tell me there are three buckets in life — things we control, things we influence, and things over which we have no control.
- What we can’t control: Random events of life — the families we were born into, hurricanes…
