Forward Story: Write the Future You Desire

people.

INTRODUCTION

I must point out as a kind of disclaimer that I am a citizen of the United States of America. Each nation and culture produces basic assumptions that contribute to the thinking and the reality of its citizens. I realize that what this book suggests may totally bewilder people in different cultures and nations. My purpose is to reach people who live in nations similar to the United States where certain basic freedoms and rights are available to all. If you live in a nation where this environment does not exist, I hope you will understand where I am coming from. This book may kindle a fire in you that you will find difficult to nurture, or one may already burn but have no avenue for expression. For that I am profoundly troubled.

WHAT IS YOUR VIEW OF THE FUTURE?

Is your future completely determined ahead of time by God, the gods, or by some force (like fate) beyond your control? Some people believe that every aspect of their lives is already predestined and determined ahead of time. They might try to act in a way to impact the future course of their lives, but it is just an illusion. Even this effort of theirs to change the future was determined before. The game is rigged. Such was the case with Oedipus Rex. The Delphic Oracle had prophesied that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. Young Oedipus was determined that this would not happen. He struggled against it. He tried to exercise his free will. But in the end, he killed his father and married his mother. It was fated. It was predetermined.

Or is your future rather an open book waiting for you, other people, or forces to shape it? Has nothing has been predetermined? Has your ending not been written? Will you decide whether you end up being brilliant or a bum? Are you in control of your life through your own free will?

WHICH IS IT – FATE OR FREE WILL?

The way you answer this question is reflective of your belief system. It is your perspective on the way things are. If I believed that your future were completely determined already, I would not have written this book. If you believe that, I doubt you will finish reading it.

While I do believe in God, I do not believe He has predetermined your future or mine in its details and exact contours. I do not think it has already been decided that you are going to be either famous or a flop. I think this will be determined by the story you write and by how you choose to live. My own faith influences how I think things are going to ultimately turn out spiritually and cosmically, but within that I believe I have been given great responsibility about how I choose to live.

If you can choose to live in a certain way, this means you have free will. You are not a captive to fate like Oedipus or unable to escape what God or the gods have decided for you. This free will brings with it great responsibility. It means that you are responsible for how you act and how your life turns out. You cannot blame someone else or just say that this is your fate.

CHANCE

I do believe that you are largely responsible for your future. I believe that having a great plan and acting within it will usually lead to the kind of future you desire. You have a great degree of control. However, there are no guarantees in this life. There is a little something called chance. It is hard to describe chance, but sometimes the coin of life ends up tails when you really wanted heads. We will speak in more detail about adulthood in a future chapter, but for now realize that if you are an adult, you understand that, despite your best planning, sometimes things won’t work out exactly like you envisioned them. Some events are out of your control. In 2011 a terrible earthquake and tsunami hit the coast of northeast Japan. The people who lived there had their plans changed or ended in that disaster. It was out of their control.

There is no real way to plan for or prevent things that are out of your control. There is no way to prevent a tsunami, tornado, flood, many diseases, or an economic meltdown of your nation’s economy. You try to avoid car wrecks, but sometimes they happen and alter your existing plans.

Even though you are not completely in control of these types of events, having a plan that you follow is still a much more powerful approach than just giving up and trusting fate or chance. Having no plan almost always makes you end up in a future that you will not enjoy.

BELIEFS AND FAMILY

If your future is not already set in stone, then neither are your beliefs, religious or otherwise. Just because your parents or grandparents believed something does not make it true. Thinking for yourself is a human right. Coming to a different conclusion than your family does not necessarily mean you are turning your back on them. It means you are exercising your rights as a person. I do encourage you to do it while respecting your parents’ rights to believe something different, too. Just as you are not required to believe everything your parents do, neither do they have to believe everything you do. Adults are responsible for their own thoughts and actions. Remember through all your growth that family is important. If you have those family relationships, they should be respected as long as they do not deny your human right to think for yourself and to develop your own beliefs.

If you do not have a strong family structure that blesses your life, the message of this book should really be meaningful to you. It is a message of empowerment in your life. It is a message saying that, regardless of what you have experienced so far, your life and the lives of your children can be much better.

If you currently believe that your life is fated and predetermined, you can change that view. I have personally changed many of my beliefs and views as I have sought knowledge and wisdom. This is part of growing, and it is what education is all about.

The rest of this book is written with the belief that you have a great amount of control over your future, but not absolute control over all the events that occur. When those crazy and unforeseen things happen, you will roll with the punches, see where you land, and then write your new revised plan. From this point on, we are going to refer to your plan as your own personal Forward Story.

TRUST ME

I am going to ask you do something very difficult. I need you to trust me even though we may have never met. You do not have to trust me much at this point—just enough to keep reading and thinking. As we go, I hope to earn more and more of your trust. Why should you extend enough trust right now to keep reading? For one thing, I am in your corner. I want you to succeed. My purpose in sharing this information is not only because it can lead you to a happy, meaningful life but also because your society needs you to be successful.

When I was younger I remember thinking that no one wanted me to get ahead except for my parents and me. That is simply not true. Think of your nation like an athletic team. For that team to be successful, each player has to make a positive contribution. If the goalkeeper does not care and puts out little effort, the team will lose. If the point guard doesn’t learn the offense and never works on dribbling, the team will fail. If the linebacker does not care about breaking up the pass, the defense will give up points. If the trumpet player never practices, the band will squeak.

The other people in your community and your nation need you to contribute. They may not come out and say it, but they really need you. All you have to do is prepare yourself to be of service, and you will find a place for your talent, your brains, and your hard work. You will be paid and rewarded for your service. If you do not do this, society will have to carry you. Being carried by your teammates because you will not help does not produce dignity. When I graduated from high school, I looked at my fellow graduates and thought that I would be competing with those four hundred people for jobs, schools, and the good things in life. That was a weak way to view things. What I should have thought is that all of those people needed me to step up and contribute to their team. We were actually teammates in a real sense, not competitors. I need you to be successful so that you can help make my team stronger. I have a vested interest in your success. That is why I am asking you to grant me just a little trust here at the outset.

Hopefully I can build it as we go forward.

WHO IS MY AUDIENCE?

The literary experts who have advised me have encouraged me to clearly identify the audience for this book. Who do I want to read it? At first I felt that I should select an age range of potential readers and write this book to them. As I tried that, though, I found myself unsatisfied with the results. My wife, Margot, challenged me to think more rigorously about my intended reader. She helped me realize that the audience for this book is not people in a specific age range, but rather people of any age who have decided that they are ready to be more serious about their lives and where they want to go. I call this process emergence, and it happens for people at wildly different ages. We will develop this idea of emergence more in Chapter 12.

I am writing to people who have made the personal decision to change something, grow up, or improve their lives. I am writing to you if you are ready to emerge into the life you really desire, regardless of your age.

For example, some people do not mature and get serious about their lives until they are in their midtwenties or even later. For other people who are much older and who matured into adulthood many years ago, they nevertheless have not truly lived in a purposeful way but are now ready to do so. In some ways I did not truly emerge until I was in my twenties. So, if you are interested in learning a practice that can dramatically impact your future, you are the audience for this book, regardless of whether you are fifteen or fifty.

Forward Story will also be of value to parents. Being a parent is one of the most difficult and challenging, yet rewarding, jobs you can ever have. We have a decorative tile at our house that reads, Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child. The path that lies ahead of our children is uncertain and cannot be controlled by us. One of the most valuable things you can do for your children is to equip them to handle whatever they encounter on life’s path. When you think of your life as a story to be written, you can chart your own course to be a great parent, and you can also learn to plant the seeds for your children’s own Forward Stories and prepare them for the path ahead as they emerge into adulthood.

It is for all of you that I am writing.

PART I - WHAT IS A FORWARD STORY, AND WHY DO YOU NEED ONE?

CHAPTER 1 - WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

It’s so important to know where you are. I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it. — Jimmy Valvano

So, what’s your story?

No. Not that story.

I am not yet interested in hearing about your history. We will explore that in Chapter 3. At this point I would like to know your story for what happens next—not just your story for tomorrow or next week but for where you plan to be in five years, ten years, and when you are old.

The fact that you are reading this book tells me that you are not just one of the crowd. You want to chart your own course and take the wheel to drive your life where you want it to go.

The problem for some people is that there seem to be a million ways to go. Which path should you take? Where do you want to end up? What should you do next?

The problem for other people is that there seems to be nowhere to go. Every road seems blocked. Every option seems bad. Where do you want to end up? What should you do next?

When I was a junior in high school, people began asking me a really hard question: What are you going to do after you graduate? When I first heard the question, I felt uncomfortable because I really had not thought about it. As I heard the question over and over I began to realize that people expected me to have some plans for what came next. It was not enough to just be a high school junior. I needed to be a high school junior with a plan for where I was going next and what I was going to be doing. I needed a story. My friends all seemed to have plans for the future. Where was mine? The pressure began to mount.

You may not be a junior in high school. You may not be in high school at all. You may not be in college. It does not matter to me where you are in life right now. One thing I know is that you need a story.

Without a plan it is easy to feel any of the following:

•Afraid

•Uncertain

•Pessimistic

•Discouraged

•Depressed

•Angry

•Sad

•Helpless

•Like a victim

With a plan it is easy to feel any of the following:

•Safe

•Confident

•Optimistic

•Content

•Enthusiastic

•Happy

•In control

Right now your life has a trajectory. A trajectory is a path, progression, or line of development.¹ An arrow shot from a bow has a certain trajectory. If nothing changes it from its current course, you can estimate where it will end up. Your life is similar to an arrow. If you remain on your current course, you can fairly accurately predict where you will end up. To put it in my preferred terms, your life has a probable Forward Story if you continue on your current path. Use your powers of imagination and visualization to help you see what your future life is likely to be like if you make no changes. Are you likely to hit your target?

You are in the midst of a narrative that is already in progress. It has a backstory, it is at a point in time right now, and you have an unknowable future. The question is whether you will be swept along by the currents or you will impact the direction that your story goes. When you think of your current life trajectory, you are immediately forced into a glimpse of the future. While none of us can truly see the future, I believe we all walk around with some sense of how our lives are going and whether we are on track or not. Of course, on track for you is likely quite different from on track for me. You cannot define my track, and I cannot define yours. This relates to ambition. We all get to have our own. The important thing is to make an honest assessment of where you currently are, what you are currently thinking and doing, and where you want to go. Are you likely to get there or not in the right time frame on your current trajectory?

The powerful thing about the human experience is that, in a free society, you possess the power to alter your course. Unlike an arrow that has been shot, you are capable of course correcting from this point forward. For you that course correction might be new education, different friends, a different job, a different career path, or a new relationship. Whatever it is, you can do it if it really matters to you. It comes back to what on track means and how much you desire that outcome.

It may be that your honest assessment of your current trajectory reveals that you are indeed on track. If so, your challenge will simply be maintaining patience and endurance. Make that a priority by keeping your eyes on the prize and working toward that future.

Is your current trajectory likely to lead to your desired outcome? If so, endure. If not, make a move. Once you begin to use your powers of visualization and story writing, you will begin to chart a new course for your life. You will alter your trajectory to more closely fit the life you want to live. In fact, something amazing usually happens. When you begin to alter your trajectory through the writing of your own Forward Story, often the future that you experience turns out to be even better than what you envisioned. Your future reality will most likely be different than what you write now, but it could very well be even better.

If you can’t see it in your head, you’ll never hold it in your hand.

-Todd Herman

When you finish this book, you are going to be able to create the most powerful tool for building a happy and fulfilling life that you possess: the ability to create a plan and follow it to success. This book is going to help you with your future.

Welcome to your Forward Story. Now, let’s get started.

CHAPTER 2 - NARRATIVE / STORY

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. — Napoleon Bonaparte

THE POWER OF STORY

We began the first chapter by asking, What’s your story?

Another word for story is narrative. A story is told by a storyteller. A narrative is narrated by a narrator. We are going to use the words narrative and story interchangeably. They mean the same thing.

A story is a very powerful tool for learning and acting. Before the inventions of writing and printing, people communicated through oral tradition, and storytelling was very important. The values of a family or a tribe were often taught through some great story of the deeds of people of old or of the gods. In fact, the storyteller was a respected person among all tribes and in all cultures. In West Africa, the storyteller was known as a griot. In Ireland, he was a shanachie. Regardless of their titles, they told stories that taught important things. Why use a story? Why not just speak the lesson, like, If you steal, you will be punished? Why not just say, Those who are lazy will have nothing? Because a story is more powerful than rules. A story can convey the rules or lessons in a deeper and more lasting way than just speaking the rules themselves.

Lynn Anderson tells a story of Dr. Scott Momaday, who, when he was a boy, was taken to the home of an old one on the Kiowa reservation:

The old one began to speak halting but spellbinding words to the boy, her tongue rich with the accents of the native peoples. She recited poems and chanted songs of the Kiowa. She told how the Kiowa had come from a hollow log in the Yellowstone River. How they became a growing tribe. She told of the Kiowa hunting buffalo. Fighting other tribes. Blizzards. The coming of the white man. She told of the disappearance of the buffalo, then the starvation. Moving south to Kansas, then Oklahoma. Finally, humiliation, deprivation. And Fort Sill…When I arrived at the house of the old one that day I was a lad, he said. When I left I was a Kiowa.²

Regardless of whether stories are told orally or are written, they have the advantage of actually being remembered. If we can remember the stories, they have the power to shape us and to actually change our thinking and our lives. Effective stories are easy to remember.

HISTORY IS REALLY STORY

I like to ask people, Do you enjoy history? Most people either hate it or love it. There is not a lot of in-between. A.J.P. Taylor said, History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past. The historian researches, reads, and thinks about some period in the past. Then he or she tells stories about that period. Some historians are good storytellers, and some are not. If you take an American history course, you will likely enjoy it if the teacher is a good storyteller and loves the subject or if the books you are required to read were written by good storytellers.

The most amazing, exciting, and unbelievable events in human history can be made boring by a storyteller who does not know how to craft a story. People who hate history have usually had boring teachers or have read boring books with boring stories. As a history fan, I would encourage you to keep your mind open about history until you have had a chance to hear some great stories about history. There is genuine power in a great story. My daughter, who did not like history in high school, became a history major in college because she had a course with a professor who loved his subject and was a great storyteller.

You are already aware of the power of story. You have sat in a darkened movie theater and found yourself choking back tears or even wiping them from your eyes. I have felt this same emotion in response to stories in books, even when I knew the book was a work of fiction.

How can it be that a movie or book that you know is fiction can create emotion in you? How can it bring you to tears or cause you to adopt some great cause? The reason is that there is power in story.

For example, read this story from the Bible. The prophet Nathan told this story to the most powerful man in Israel, King David:

There were two men in a certain town. One was rich, and one was poor. The rich man owned a great many sheep and cattle. The poor man owned nothing but one little lamb he had bought. He raised that little lamb, and it grew up with his children. It ate from the man’s own plate and drank from his cup. He cuddled it in his arms like a baby daughter. One day a guest arrived at the home of the rich man. But instead of killing an animal from his own flock or herd, he took the poor man’s lamb and killed it and prepared it for his guest.

David was furious. As surely as the Lord lives,