Dear 90-days-from-now Lindsay (and other Storyliners),

A few months ago, you spent 48 hours being totally encouraged. You left on fire to live a meaningful story. You had the tools to plan a meaningful life. You were surrounded by pure inspiration. Everyone around you had a desire to live a meaningful story. It was like a drug.

Then you got home, and life happened. Groceries needed to be picked up, laundry done, bills paid.

And slowly, as each new day separated you from the Storyline Conference, the high dissipated.

Sunset after day 1 of Storyline, Point Loma, San Diego

And while this feels different than any “fired up” times before, you may need to rediscover the Storyline high to stay on top of this whole dreaming thing. So as the version of you that’s still high on Storyline, here are some of the things that challenged you and excited you when you were in San Diego.

Start
Just do it. Start. Do something.

What’s that? You don’t know what you should start doing exactly? You don’t know which direction is the one perfect one? That’s okay because you’re not a fortune teller. There are 50 million right directions. Just pick one that excites you and go. You don’t need to know step 10 to take step 1.

“The only way to find your story is to start your story.” – Jon Acuff

God doesn’t plan your life
Wait, what? Isn’t that how this works? God has a plan for our lives, we just submit to Him and it works out.

Nope. We are agencies of our story. We’re working with God to make our story meaningful.

“God did not create us to lie in reaction, but to be co-creators of a meaningful life.” – Donald Miller

Suffering is only suffering without context
This one is hard, and a little mind blowing. Pain and suffering are part of the journey. Up until this weekend, you thought that the true measure of a “successful life” was finding the path that avoided the hard parts. You raced through the obstacle course without getting knocked down? You win!

Not so much.

Donald Miller explained that negative turns are the seeds that will some day grow into the fruit that will feed others. And joy is what you experience after pain changes you.

“Don’t pull out the difficult pages or paragraphs of your story, let them be part of the story” – Mike Foster

Put fear in perspective
People living meaningful life experience fear.

But fear is not the same thing as regret. And fictional fear creates actual regret. It’s easier to think God is planning out your life for you. It’s scary to own part of that responsibility. But you do. Lean into that.

“Face the fear of the moment instead of the regret of forever.” – Jon Acuff

It’ll take a long time
Leading up to this weekend, you had this fantasy about a conversation with Donald or Jon, who would say “wow Lindsay, you’ve been keeping a blog for 6 weeks? That’s amazing! I would love to read it and then help you with your meaningful life!”

Very quickly, you realized that this is not how it works. Creating a meaningful life takes a lot of work, and the work takes time.

But there’s freedom in that.

You can keep writing. You can practice. You can write bad blog posts and figure out why they’re bad. You can learn techniques and work on making your writing better. One day you’ll look back at these early posts and realize they’re not all that good. And in a strange way, that’s exciting.

What will the world miss if you don’t tell a really meaningful story?