Really good things are happening in my life.

A lot of the dreams I've had for a long time are coming true.

How on earth do I write about that? Who cares about that?

According to Donald Miller's Storybrand framework, people want stories in which they can put themselves in the role of hero.

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My niece, age four, was practicing her letters. It was not going well.

“This is is the [most] tewwible W I’ve evew seen!” she said angrily, already imposing unrealistic expectations upon herself at her tender age.

This is normal behavior for a four-year-old, but it is nonetheless painful to witness. As an adult, I wish I could have helped her to understand that it’s okay to create letters that aren’t perfect—there is no reason that she should feel bad about herself. But that’s not the kind of thing you can tell somebody. They have to figure it out for themselves.

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As painful as it is to see kids dealing with academic challenges, it’s even more heartbreaking to bear witness to their social difficulties.

In a school setting, it’s very common to see kids who are unable to connect easily with peers begin to act out in unpleasant ways in order to attract negative attention as a substitute for the positive attention they crave.

When even that stops working (if it ever did), you might hear a sad and familiar line: “These kids are stupid! I don’t want to play with them anyway.”

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Transformation is an experience both magical and unsettling.

Suddenly, the world you thought you knew is remapped. Like a bougie kitchen renovation, what was once familiar is made new, and even what has stayed the same is unrecognizable in its new context. We feel so different that everything around us feels different, too.

In such a situation, we might want to start over, with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. However, this can be just as deceptive as the illusion we now believe we’ve left behind.

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In the 2006 Oscar-winning film Little Miss Sunshine, Greg Kinnear plays Richard, a washed up life coach of some kind. Richard teaches a framework called the “9 Steps” that he clings to, believing in its potential for transformation despite the fact that his own results are mediocre. Kinnear strikes just the right balance of pathos and comedy in his portrayal of a man who can’t even get himself to buy his own BS.

I really don’t want to be a Richard. I think a lot of us are afraid of being a Richard. And yet, we want to make a contribution to the world or at least share our ideas and creative work. How do we reconcile this desire with the fear that perhaps we’ve only deluded ourselves into thinking that we have something to offer?

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