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I’ve cried at least three times in the last four months…

The first was sitting atop the red sand dunes in Namibia. The beauty was overwhelming. I felt blessed but undeserving and wished someone was with me to feel what I was feeling. 

The second time was over something horrific. My daughter had an anaphylactic reaction to ice cream and we didn’t think she needed an epi pen. We were wrong. She almost died and it was traumatic. I still have trouble talking about it. I can barely write this without more tears.

The third was just a few days ago in a copywriting seminar. A man told a story about his quest to be a hero to his two young boys.

Hero is a word we don’t often use when we describe our relationships with others. But maybe we should. If you thought about how to be a hero to someone in your life, it would probably mean changing some things you do and say.

And that is the very secret to success in just about everything. It’s deciding exactly who you want to be in life and where you want to go… and taking the wheel. Writing the story, painting the picture.

My friend and The New York Times best-selling author Chris Guillebeau said it best when he said: “If your life is a movie, why did you put this scene here?”

Because if you don’t write your own story, someone else will write it for you. 

I struggle with this all the time. My kids want to write my next scene one way. My husband wants to write it another. And — if I let her — the persistent PTA mom at my daughter’s school would write my next scene.

So, what’s it going to be?

What scene are you going to live this week and how does it play out? Who’s writing it? Will you be writing it… or will someone else?

What can you change to turn it into a love story? An adventure? Or to be someone’s hero?

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