Nothing Goes The Way You Think It Will: A Personal Post on Story, Ego and Washing the Windows of Your Soul

Nothing goes the way you think it will.

Nothing goes the way you think it will, even (and especially) when you are sure of it.

This is the illusion of Story.

You can try to tell it how you want it to go, and yet it will always, always, go how it wills.

This is the beauty of Story.

It is mystery at its finest. It is a frustrating, wonderful thing.

As my dear friend and Story mentor, Tina Overbury often says: “Sometimes you tell the Story, and sometimes it tells you.”

That is the thing with Story. It emerges from the unknown. It weaves its way through us in ways we will never fully understand, despite that we want to.

I have tried very hard to know ahead of time exactly how my life story will go. And I will continue to, at least to a certain extent, because that is fun of Story too. If you are present. If you are willing. If you humble yourself and surrender. You will get glimpses of the story being told through you by your soul.

Those glimpses will be so striking – so gut wrenchingly powerful – the truth of them will bowl you over with their beauty and leave you breathless for more.

This is why I keep seeking. This is why I keep listening. This is why I am willing to keep writing, despite that I know, I will never fully know ahead of time how the story of my life will go.

What I keep learning (re-learning) is that living your Soul Story does not mean writing out in detail a path for your life that feels good or right or even deeply authentically true in one moment in time, and trying to force your life into the shape of that pre-defined story.

This is not how it works.

We only get glimpses of our Soul Story. We get inklings. We get inspiration. We receive unexplicable signs and knowings.

When we follow these inklings for long enough, we start to get a sense of the story of who we are and why we are here. Yet we never have the whole picture.

If you think that you do (know your full story), turn and look back at the story of your life that has been lived so far. I am certain you will be able to pick out threads of the narrative you missed, contributions you made, or stories you had no clue you were a part of, until you looked back upon them.

We. Do. Not. Get. To. Know. It. All.  

Honestly, where would the fun be if we did?

If we knew it all ahead of time there would be no adventure. There would be no room for surprise or wonder or delight.

We are asked to listen to the inklings. We are asked trust. We are invited to contribute to the narrative. But we run into trouble when we try to take over writing the story altogether.

Yet we all do it. This trying to control. We become attached to things going a certain way. We try to force the outcome we (our egos) most want. We try to write the narrative of our lives in denial of the deeper partnership within which we operate.

This never works, at least not sustainably.

I have been humbled by this lesson many times. Though I am getting better at catching myself when my ego begins to run away with my story, I still need regular reminders to surrender my illusion of control, and begin listening for the inklings once again.

Recently, I created a vision for how things would look when I left my law firm. I wrote out a detailed plan for how the story needed to go. In doing so, I stopped listening. I stopped participating in the partnership between myself and my soul. I closed off the possibility of anything different than my pre-determined plan occurring.  

This is where we humans get caught up most often.

Lightning strikes! Something resonates as deeply true. We receive a message from our soul, or some other divine insight. And then we take that kernel of truth and we shroud it in additional meaning. We add labels, strategies and plans that make us feel more in control of this new truth, and therefore more safe.

In my case, all I really knew was that I needed to leave. I needed to step off the partner track I was on. I needed to walk away from my budding practice. I needed to say no to the way things were going. I needed to make space to say yes to a career from my soul.

That is all I knew.

My ego could not handle the uncertainty of that. It needed a detailed plan for how I would create stability and certainty in my soul work, and it needed it now. And so, it made one up. Some parts of my plan deeply resonated and some parts I just made fit because they fixed the “problem” of my uncertainty.

My detailed, controlled plan, did not go as planned. As I moved past the initial disappointment of that into surrender of what is, I felt peace. I realized I had been overriding my soul’s truth to a certain extent. The plan I had contrived was too simplistic. My soul wanted me to meander forward slowly, taking one deeply aligned step after another, allowing for the possibility of exciting twists and turns and new ways of being to take root. My ego wanted me to have my soul business all figured out - right now.

And so here I am learning again the lesson I have learned hundreds of times: to stay true to my soul I must surrender the illusion of knowing. I must release my ego’s claws of control, and trust that so long as I keep listening to the inklings, I will be okay. I will be held.

The question I always return to is this: am I willing to show up here, now, in this unknown, ever-evolving narrative that is my soul’s story?

Am I willing to write, day by day, the great story of my life; the story that only I can write; the story that has never yet existed? Am I willing to surrender the all-knowing narrative of my ego to the deeper wisdom of my soul? Will I humble myself enough to write a story I cannot control?

When I sit with these questions I am overcome – you might say strangely – with gratitude. I am grateful for this unique story that I get to live. I am grateful for the mystery. I am grateful for the lifetimes of wisdom I can access within my own soul. And most of all, I am grateful for the well of strength in my own heart, and that I keep finding the courage to surrender my ego to the story that my soul so deeply wants to tell.  

I invite you to sit quietly with the above questions for yourself. Take this inner reflection on regularly as a practice of washing the windows of your soul to make way for your deepest truth to find the light.

And remember. Nothing goes the way you think it will, even (and especially) when you are sure.

From my journey to yours, with love,

Danielle

Photo credit: Megan Alcock