Rewrite Your Life One Scene at a Time
When you rewrite your life, you can think about it like a movie. It’s filled with many scenes or stories that make up the journey of your life. Each of the scenes goes together to make you who you are today.
Some of the scenes were positive and others were negative. Some may have even been traumatic. And they all contribute to what you believe about yourself today, and how you live your life.
The great thing about it is that even though we have specific experiences that made up the scenes of our lives, we can use our creative license to rewrite those scenes and give them a new ending. That ending can teach us the truth about ourselves instead of the lies we were left with.
Does Rewriting Your Life Discount What Happened To You?
It absolutely does not. The pain was real, the experience was real, the hurt was real. However, it did not convey the truth about yourself to you. It conveyed someone else’s truth on to you.
For example, if your mother or father yelled at you growing up and told you how stupid and incompetent you were, is that your stuff or theirs? It’s theirs. It was coming from their pain and their lack. You are not stupid or incompetent, but that’s what you might believe from these scenes in your life.
Another example. What if you were sexually abused like I was. That would have given you a whole set of beliefs that weren’t true: you’re worthless, unlovable, to be used, to be abused, only exist for someone else’s pleasure, are never safe, and can never let your guard down. But is any of that true? No.
So What Does It Mean To Rewrite Your Life?
When you take the director’s seat and rewrite an experience in whatever mode you choose, your imagination can bring in a person or set of people that can help you learn the truth about yourself where you believed a lie. Or you can come into that experience as an adult who has the power to protect and rescue. Or you can change what happened to reveal the truth.
You see, your mind cannot tell the difference between reality and the imaginary. So your power to rewrite these scenes with a different ending has the effect of changing your beliefs about yourself, others, and the world. Then, the trauma in the experience is removed and you will find your power. That scene will no longer trigger you, but rather when you think about it, it will reinforce the truth.
My favorite way to rewrite is to rewrite with God. His power to speak the truth to me through visualization and my imagination are nothing short of miraculous. Sometimes he’s not involved directly and it’s just me as an adult confronting something. Other times he’s doing something or saying something. But it’s always what I need in order to heal.
You can choose whatever way works for you. Healing is an individual process.
Rewriting Your Life Can Make Something Beautiful
By rewriting that scene you can assign responsibility where it is due, let go of what wasn’t actually yours
Even in the ugliest scenes in our lives, there is beauty to be found. The beauty is in finding the truth about yourself and then letting that affect your present and future. Even more beauty can be had when you share what you’ve learned with others, because by experiencing that scene you can identify with others who have also experienced it. There is nothing more comforting than being understood by someone who truly knows what you’ve been through.
You Have the Choice to Rewrite Your Life
You have a choice to rewrite your life or leave it as it is. What I’ve found is that we really don’t leave it as it is because we are either growing and changing for the better, or we are regressing in a negative direction. If you leave your past alone and don’t make peace with it, it will eat you alive, come out in maladaptive ways, and stunt any positive impact you could have on the lives of those around you. So making a choice to rewrite your life is a choice to move forward and grow.
Give Yourself Time to Adjust as You Rewrite Your Life
One thing to keep in mind about the journey of rewriting your life is that you don’t want to do it all at once. Just like when a movie is made the director works on one scene at a time, you also need to take things one scene at a time.
This is because our mind and heart can only handle so much change at once. We need time to process what we’re rewriting and let our body settle into a new level of understanding. We need time to find a new normal. This process can be draining and be a bit like having surgery – only it’s emotional surgery. We must give ourselves time to rest and process and make changes between our editing sessions.
In summary, rewriting your life is not going to happen overnight and it may not be easy. In fact, I’ve spent the last 10 years doing it and from my experience, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It is also the most rewarding thing I have ever done, both for myself and those around me, and now I get to share what I’ve learned with other hurting people in the world.
Here’s to rewriting your life one scene at a time.
Links to Other Pages About Rewriting Your Life
There is Hope in Rewriting Your Life
How It Feels to Rewrite a Scene
