When a dear friend and his partner recently moved into their new house (pictured here), his mother asked a poignant question that caught my attention like a headline in 64-point bold capital font. “Do you own it yet?”
She didn’t mean whether they’d completed the financial transaction that made them the house’s legal owners. She wanted to know whether he felt a deep connection to the place he’d lovingly labored into existence since its conception on paper fourteen months earlier.
Not yet was his answer, prompting me to ask what would it take for him to truly own the new custom-built home? It would come with time as he and his partner personalize the place with yet-to-be-unpacked treasures, cherished belongings acquired over their twenty-something years together that would transform the house into their home.
It made perfect sense. Just as he didn’t immediately own the place simply by taking residence, we don’t immediately own the authentic stories of our lives. Ownership grows through the process of adorning our lives with what we each uniquely desire, every day doing whatever we can to create the life we’d love.
As our thoughts and actions grow to more and more take the form of the life we’d love, ownership becomes second nature because living our authentic story is our true nature.
To claim the authentic story of our lives means to own it, to become one with it.
It requires fortitude to stand firm for the life we’d love, regardless of others’ opinions and desires for us, even the opinions and desires of those we dearly love.
The bigger and bolder our dreams, the more likely we’ll encounter resistance to our ownership. There may be those who fear failure for us. There may be those who choose to live smaller lives and want us to stay small with them. There may be some who want great things for us, but great by their definition and not ours.
No matter differing opinions and desires, if we paint a clear vision of the life we’d love and hold it as our unfaltering North Star, then no distraction can keep us from claiming the authentic story of our life, from truly owning it.
Go ahead, Claim the Authentic Story of Your Life. Dare to own it. It’s your very birthright.
