Sometimes, witnessing everyone else’s life can confuse the witnessing of our own.  

It can distort our view of our wants and needs. 

Observing someone else’s ways can influence ours. 

This can be rather alarming, especially when we are not even aware that we have grandfathered someone else’s choices. 

How did that happen? 

Here is how. 

We don’t live in isolation. 

We are immersed in other people’s lives. 

Everyone you meet holds a whole world inside their head. 

They walk around with it. 

And they try to make their world right. 

More right than ours. 

More relevant than everyone else’s. 

Their way is the way. 

Guess what happens to us?

Their version of reality becomes more attractive the more we witness it. 

It is almost like hypnosis after a while. 

We are in a better vantage point to witness someone else’s life instead of our own. 

So, we want what we see and not what we have. 

It is easier to say I want this too than to ask what is it that I do want? 

Copying is faster and easier than creating from scratch. 

So we begin new chapters and lives mimicking someone else’s. (Click to tweet!)

Pretending it is our own. 

Thinking it’s our own. 

Believing it is. 

It is as if everyone is walking around with a flat screen tv broadcasting their show hoping for an audience. 

And we become that audience. 

We become the passive broadcaster of someone else’s channel. 

And the years go by and we wonder what is wrong with our life. 

The thing is, this is not the life that we created, it is the life we were shown that we could have. And so we went ahead and had it. 

The closer we got with others, the easier it was for our life to be replaced. 

Replaced with someone else’s version. 

But it doesn’t have to stay this way. 

You see, when we go through loss we have an opportunity to broadcast our own show, and live the life we want. 

When loss happens all of the close by TVs on top of people’s heads turn off for a few seconds. 

The loss is so devastating that we stop broadcasting anyone else’s world. 

The pain takes our eyes off the others. 

There is a short window of opportunity while our eyes are off everyone else’s screens to witness our own broadcast even though it is so painful. 

When my life changed in 2006 and I tried to go back to broadcasting everyone else’s version of my life it felt as if I was betraying myself. 

And I kept interrupting their streaming. 

I kept pushing them away. 

Until I could see what I could create on my own. 

From scratch. From my own head. 

My own identity.

This letter is for you if you feel like it is time to make it all up yourself. 

Because to be honest with you, that is all everyone else is doing. 

They are making it up and we go and follow their made up worlds around. 

I have stopped doing this for quite a few years now. 

I am not going to lie to you, creating an original life is not easy. 

But living inside someone else’s version of reality is even worse. 

With buckets of original content,

Christina

P.S. This week’s podcast was with Amy Ahlers, and we talked about our inner critic, our inner mean voice, especially after loss. 

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Christina

Christina

Christina Rasmussen is an author, speaker and social entrepreneur who believes that grief is an evolutionary experience required for launching a life of adventure and creative accomplishment.

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