Tell Your Own Story

Once again, my Twitter feed is competing who’s feeling more “unsafe” because something something Elon Musk something.

I’ve lost the capacity to care what terrible, “unsafe” thing Musk said now but I want to observe that one can improve one’s quality of life significantly by deciding right now to embrace the persona of an exceptionally lucky / energetic / resilient / accomplished individual. And one can also worsen one’s quality of life by embracing the persona of an anxious / fragile / persecuted poor bastard. Even if you do the “I feel unsafe” bit performatively, it will affect you. The stories we tell about ourselves tend to become true very fast. Confirmation bias kicks in, and we start noticing what confirms the narrative and ignoring what doesn’t.

Before any event, decide what your experience of it is going to be, tell yourself the story you have chosen in advance, and that’s it, you are in control. Everything that pushes you into the storyline where you are a miserable bastard is not your friend. Control your own story.