Your Life Is the One Story You Get to Write

It used to bother me when people couldn’t, wouldn’t, or even try to understand.

I thought if I just explained it better, my intentions, the mission of the business, the deeper reason behind what we were building, people would eventually understand.

A few years removed, I see it differently now.

People I worked with, people I crossed paths with, people who wouldn’t tell themselves the truth, let alone recognize it in someone else, were living inside a story that served their comfort — not their growth, and not the growth of the business.

At the time, I couldn’t really describe it.

I knew there was a gap I couldn’t close, and it was painful and frustrating not being able to bridge it.

I now understand that it wasn’t my job to make myself or the mission understandable to people who were committed to protecting their comfort.

Mark Matousek once wrote:

“If you tell yourself the truth, your story will change, and when your story changes, your life can be transformed.”

I wanted so badly for people to change their story.

I now realize the only story I am responsible for changing is my own.

Understanding that, it gets a whole lot easier to move forward without their understanding.

It’s hard for people to understand why I managed cattle differently than everyone around me.

It’s hard for them to understand a devotion to triathlon training, or why someone keeps showing up for work when they can barely walk.

And it’s hard for them to understand why someone leaves an award-winning career to do something they love and make less money doing it.

The truth is, the more my story kept unfolding, the harder it became for people who never rewrote theirs to recognize it.

Seeing me through the lens of their own comfort, expectations, and limitations, not fitting into their version of the world, it was easier to dismiss me or invent a story about me than to look inward.

I never realized that the misunderstanding was not really about me.

It wasn’t rejection.

It really wasn’t even misunderstanding.

It was reflection.

Reflection of where they were not willing to go.

Reflection of what they were not willing to see.

And sometimes, resentment for what they saw that they were not willing to do for themselves.

Understanding that, it gets a whole lot easier to move forward without their understanding.

When you get honest with yourself, your story changes.

And the more your story changes, the fewer people recognize it.

It’s not failure.

It’s freedom.

You’re not here to live inside someone else’s narrative.

You’re not here to fit into someone else’s shrinking story.

You’re not meant to be understood, especially not by people still clinging to a world you have outgrown.

Be misunderstood.

Be uncomfortable.

Move forward anyway.

There’s more to your story.

Your life is not a group narrative.

Your life is the one story you get to write.

Owning your story is hard enough.

Owning the mission when most people would rather stay comfortable is something else entirely.

Next week, I’ll talk about the cost of real leadership — and why it’s lonelier than they tell you.