Your Problems Aren’t Your Problems v2
@October 17, 2024 6:19 PM (EST) – @October 17, 2024 7:07 PM (EST)
@October 17, 2024 8:12 PM (EST) – @October 17, 2024 9:18 PM (EST)
The One Thing
Weave in the lessons throughout your story. And in the later chapters, weave in stories as evidence for the lessons.
- Pause the story to speak to your reader. Use “you,” and make declarative statements or commands, or pose questions.
- This conveys the idea that the entire story is relevant to your reader, and it prompts them to apply it to their own life.
- Here’s a paragraph from the section below that you could bring up and weave right into your story (soon after you introduce “the outside-in paradigm”):
- Consider having a more specific “Practice” or “Takeaways” section at the end of the chapters. In this case, it would be “Create a Freedom Log.”
The problem with the outside-in paradigm is that it never fundamentally solves the problem of creating enduring well-being and fulfillment. At best, it seems to provide temporary bouts of well-being while failing to address the challenge of being easily perturbed.
Feedback
- I was really drawn in by the first dialogue bit with Carol. You can compress most of the stuff above it and get there faster.
- Be mindful of the images you conjure in your reader’s mind. What do you want them to see? What do they need to see to understand the story, or your point? For example, this sentence makes me think of Zoom’s branding and a computer screen. I can’t really picture the faces on the screen, which are way more important than the app facilitating the call:
- What I want to see in my mind is what Carol is wearing, what color her hair is and whether it's short or long. I want to know if you're exhausted and had to run home from your last meeting of the day. Help me see the people before the computer screen.
- I think there will be many opportunities throughout the manuscript for compression. And, in my opinion, this is how good writing becomes great. I’ll be looking for opportunities like these, and I’m flagging this one so that you can start to spot them too. Here’s an example of going from two down to one paragraph.
- For one, I don’t think there’s any meaning lost here, which means there’s more meaning here but in fewer words. That makes it more dense, compact — always good for your reader and for the flow of your writing.
- These two paragraphs are really one idea. By making them one paragraph, that becomes clearer.
- And with this paragraph, you’re emphasizing all the right things. The two most important ideas are at the beginning and end of the paragraph, which is what you want. In the first draft, these sentences were buried in the middle of paragraphs.
- “My well-being had always been a function of how I performed.”
- “I call this the outside-in paradigm. And when I met Carol, I was still stuck in it.”
- Aim for one idea per paragraph. Use paragraph-breaks not for emphasis but to separate ideas.
- This is a wonderful insight and really smooth writing:
- Give your reader credit. This is a mantra I remind myself of when I write. Trust your reader to connect the dots. In your case, this means:
- You don’t have to separate the “story” and “teaching” into distinct sections. Your reader will naturally learn from your story.
- You can still have a short “practices” or “takeaways” part of the chapter, but it’d serve more as a recap than it’s own section. Help them learn along the way. They want to always be learning, anyway.
Our first meeting was on a zoom call.
Your original paragraphs:
Up until now, I mostly considered feeling good as a function of what happened in the world around me. If whatever activity I was engaging in was going how I wanted it to, I felt good. When things weren’t going my way, I didn’t feel good. This positioned my well-being and fulfillment as a function of how I performed.This way of relating to the world pushed me to focus my energies on excelling from a young age. From childhood through college, I focused on being the best in sports, school, and socially. When I got into the working world, I pushed myself to have a successful career, exciting social life, and a big bank account. I thought performance would make me happy. And behind this was an assumption that something outside of myself was largely determinant for how I felt inside. I call this the outside-in paradigm. Carol was the first person who pressed me on this approach.
And here’s my edit:
My well-being had always been a function of how I performed. This way of relating to the world led me to focus my energies on excelling. If whatever I was doing was going well, I felt good. When things didn’t go my way, I didn’t feel good. And behind all this was the assumption that something outside myself would determine how I felt inside myself. Today, I call this the outside-in paradigm. And when I met Carol, I was still stuck in it.
A few important things are happening here:
The more I noted these experiences, the more I saw how my entire existence was like a big dance of mini-resistances. I was either compulsively reacting to life with unsupportive thoughts, feelings, and actions, or orchestrating life so I wouldn’t need to experience them.