For Thursday, please contemplate what are the stories that organize your life today.
These are narratives that specify your long-term goals in life, and may say something about why these particular goals are worth achieving. Often the goals are implausibly good outcomes -- not in the sense that they are unrealistic, but in the sense that they can be achieved only if you make a concerted and sustained effort.
The narratives will also contain information about the known or likely obstacles and costs you can expect to have to incur to reach your goals.
The stories also contain information about the resources you think of yourself as having to meet and overcome the obstacles. These resources may be your intellect, your personality, your parent's wealth, your good looks, your intrinsic genious -- find out what you are thinking and write it down!
Finally, the stories may contain the outline of your strategic thinking on how your resources can be marshalled into effective actions to overcome your obstacles and achieve the goal.
Write about 350 words on this topic as a response to this entry, and reflect on how aware you were of the underlying story of your life.
I wanted to share with you my life story. What's yours?
Growing up, I was shuttled around by my single mom to three different continents on a yearly basis. It seemed that when I was younger, all I wanted was a "normal" life, where I could stay in one school for more than a year and make friends I could keep for the rest of my life. But the sad reality was that my mother, being a single mom had to go where her work led her, which included uprooting me where ever she went. As I hit my teen years, the years of instability led me to rebel and think I could act like a grownup and abide by my own rules. By the time I turned 16, I quit high school in New Jersey, was living on my own in Manila and started supporting myself as a model and actress. There were a few years were the only goal I had was to be able to support myself financially. My goals became monetarily rooted. When I passed the hurdle of financial woes shortly after starting my acting career, My goals once again shifted to become more career oriented. I worked hard hoping that before my current gig ended I would already be casted in the next project. When that goal was reached on a consecutive basis which seemingly made me quite bored and ungrateful, my goals were more inclined towards training myself through acting technique and study. Unabashedly, I gave up a lucrative career in the Philippines to move to New York to study at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Manhattan. After school, I moved to California and continued to audition for various projects. Then love came knocking on my door and I married the man of my dreams. Two children later, I realize once again my goals have evolved. To raise my children to the best of my abilities in a grounding environment is now my main purpose. To achieve these goals, I decided to pursue my undergrad degree so that I may be able to impart upon them the value of education that I never pursued when I was younger.
