The Perfectly Written Novel of Your Life

Everything that has happened in your life has been preparing you for who you have become. Not a single thing in your life was ever wasted or was ever random.

If you have a spiritual practice, this feels like that spiritual belief that your life has a grand design that you may or may not be aware of, but trust that it has a grand design. If you don’t have a spiritual practice, it’s ok. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if you ask yourself, “What if every aspect of my life has happened for a reason? What if I bring everything about my life into the grand design of what wants to happen next?

Your life is the perfectly written novel, written by the perfect novelist, where you as the hero have been put through all these chapters, but not a single chapter was wasted. Not a single thing was put there randomly. Take a moment to explore every element of your life until now to guide you into what is meant to happen next.

To determine the chapters of your life, divide your age by 10. If you’re 40, 40 divided by 10 is 4. If you’re 50, 50 divided by 10 is 5. And then multiply that number by 2. So, if you’re 40 it becomes 8. If you’re 50, it becomes 10. Basically, you are coming up with 5 periods of your life with each one becoming a chapter.

Reflect on each chapter of your life, contemplate this period of time, in the first chapter from when you were born on... What were the main highlights? What were the most formative aspects of this first chapter of your life? Perhaps aspects of your parenting, aspects of your upbringing? Can you identify the gifts of that first chapter that you can potentially bring into your life now, in terms of your goals and purpose?

What were the gifts in terms of knowledge that you gained? Or strengths that you built as a result of this chapter of your life that might help you moving forward. What did you learn about yourself or others or life? What is the knowledge or the strengths that this chapter helped develop in you that you can potentially bring that into your life today?

Now move through the remaining chapters of your novel... as you remember key things, explore deeper, meet those thoughts with a curious sense of wonder. What did you learn about yourself, others, life, world? Or what strengths did you grow as a result of the experiences in each chapter? Who were the key people on your journey...remembering that each person that crosses your path is there for a reason, to teach you something, to help you grow...

Now begin to ask yourself: What are the gifts of that chapter for who you get to be? The gifts of knowledge? What you learned? Or the gifts of strength and power that it helped you build? Or anything else that you get to bring into who you are and how and who you might impact.

As you finish out this final chapter, consider the past several months of the pandemic. What gifts have this time provided you? What challenges were presented and how have you learned and grown from them. How could this pandemic have happened FOR you and not TO you?

The final thing to do is to imagine yourself as an audience member watching the movie that’s based on this perfectly written novel on the screen. The hero in this movie – which is you – has been in this perfectly written novel turned into this perfectly produced movie. We just saw what this hero has gone through in all the chapters before. Everything has happened for a reason. The perfect novelist and perfect moviemaker have been preparing this hero for what comes next. And, as an audience member watching this amazing hero going through this amazing life up until this present moment, what’s your expectation of what wants to happen next?

Why have we put this hero through everything we have? It’s because this hero is getting ready for something big. Where is this hero heading? What wants to happen naturally, organically, as a result of everything that this hero has been through?

Gently let your mind percolate on what wants to happen next. Who does this hero get to be? What does this hero get to do? All of this preparation. All of this beautiful past. How does this hero step into this next chapter of what you will do? In terms of the impact you will have? All of this has been preparing you for what’s next. What is next that’s worthy of all this preparation? Of all this beautifully designed, perfectly written novel until now?

What’s the impact you will be having? Who might you have that impact on? What’s the magnitude of that impact?

- Exercise from the Positive Intelligence work of Shirzad Chamine

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I would LOVE to hear how this may have supported you!