Life is Not Personal

When you live as a designer of life, a funny thing happens.  Life suddenly is not personal.  What I mean is you’ve been living your life … well … your entire life.  It’s yours.  It’s personal or at least, it certainly seems personal.  People do things to you.  Bad things happen.  Good things happen. You win some.  You lose some.  And through it all, there’s a lot of emotion.  You’ve made decisions about yourself and who you are.

So how can I even remotely suggest that life is not personal?  Well, first of all, when I say life’s not personal, I’m not saying that you can’t or shouldn’t experience emotion.  I’m not suggesting that you won’t show your love (or anger) for people.  This is not about you living some stoic life experience devoid of the wide range of human emotions and experiences.

Instead, when I say that life is not personal, I’m pointing to all the drama and meaning that we add to life.  I’d like you for a moment to imagine life minus all the narration that is added to it by your inner voice.  You can even try an experiment.  For one day, try walking around turning the mute button on and off for your inner voice.  Really imagine you actually had a remote control that controlled your inner voice, and you could turn it off and on at will.  From time to time see if you can mute your inner dialogue about what’s happening out here.  I’m not saying think differently about it, or think positively about it.  Mute it!  All the concern, drama and story that you add to life gone.  “She’s so insensitive.”  “I’m never going to be able to pay these bills on time.”  “Where are we going to get the money to pay for Josh’s braces?” “I’m so happy they are coming for dinner on Sunday.”  “Why the hell is he so negative.”  “When am I ever going to find more time?”  Imagine all of this added commentary has vanished from your life.

And now imagine, if you weren’t spending the vast amount of your time stirring things up with the little drama in your head, what would you be spending your time doing?  Think about it.  If all the extra added reporting simply didn’t exist for you anymore, or at the very least, you could mute it, what would be left to think about?

Do you see it?

Yes!  What would be left is designing your life.  Instead of spending your time commenting on the life you have, you’d spend your time creating the life you want.  You’d spend your time like a designer asking questions like, “How do I design my relationship so it works?”  “How do I create my job so it’s rewarding for me?”  “How do I build a life that really fulfills me?”  A conversation for design is a conversation to build something.  It’s not about commentary, narration, opinion, or judgement.  Certainly, you can have an opinion about what you’re designing, but that is not a design conversation.  From the perspective of design, life is not personal.  You build things.  You create things.  You design your life.

This is not something new for you.  You’ve been designing pretty much your entire life.  Your life right now is a result of design.  The only thing that slows down the process is the vast amount of time spent on the commentary of what you’ve designed.  The time spent arguing for or against something.  The time spent wishing that what you designed wasn’t so.  The time spent pining for another life.  All of those things live in the realm of commentary and they make life seem very personal like “What’s wrong with me that I keep ending up with this result?”  We make the results we produce in life personal rather than just getting they are function of the conversation we are engaged in.

So you still might cringe at the suggestion that life is not personal.  Just remember, until you croak, you have no choice about whether you design your life.  Even if you say, “The hell with it, I’m not designing my life,” that’s an act of design.  You cannot escape it.  Perhaps arguably you cannot stop your mind from vomiting commentary and opinion about your life.  The one thing you do have choice about is where you put your focus.  Which conversation is going to win in your life?  Will it be design?  Or will it be commentary?

So if you still cringe, just remember, the concept, “Life is not personal,” is not true.

I designed it.