Write Your Own Fan Fiction

TL; DR: Think of yourself as a character in a book or a movie. Then write fan fiction about yourself. Fan fiction is the first step to transforming yourself and your life.

A very small number of people are born for greatness.

They are born with an obsession, and natural talent to match. They are born into the right circumstances to train their powers. Then hard work and luck do the rest.

Another rare breed is thrown into heroism by adversity. People like Helen Keller or Stephen Hawking come to mind.

And then there are the rest of us. Apparently meant to live quiet, comfortable, mediocre lives.

If that’s what you want, you won’t have to struggle too much to find happiness. But maybe you see that there’s more.

You know that deep inside you there is awesome potential. I’ll prove it to you.

The moment you were conceived, more than 200 million sperm cells were released. Each one would have created a different human being.

So right off the bat, biologically speaking, you only had a one in two hundred million chance of being alive. But it’s not that simple.

Each of your biological parents had to face the same odds. One in two hundred million odds for your mother to exist, one in two hundred million for your father, and then, once they joined together, the same odds for you.

That’s one in 200,000,000 x 200,000,000 x 200,000,000 or one in 6,000.000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The math is already extraordinary, and that’s assuming both your parents and all four of your grandparents were in the right place at the right time just to create you.

If anyone had lost a fight, eaten too much, caught a cold or jumped on the wrong bus, the odds of your existence would be much lower.

And we’re only going back two generations. Multiply these odds by adding at least eight zeros to each generation, all the way back to prehistoric times.

If one cell had been out of place through the course of all those tens of thousands of years, you wouldn’t exist.

You’re either the winner of a million million lottery tickets in a row, or you’re inevitable. Both are equally profound.

Know that you are a hero who is able to surmount extraordinary odds. That’s how you got here in the first place. You were already extraordinary as an infant, as an embryo, even as a single cell.

These astronomical odds prove there is awesome potential deep inside you. But you’ll have to dig deep and practice great courage to bring it out.

That’s the reason I write this newsletter, and it’s the reason for almost everything else I do.

Each week I try to provide a useful tool that may help you or someone like you to realize that awesome potential.

This week?

Write your own fan fiction and you immediately cast yourself as the hero you are, in a story you choose.

A quick definition: Fan fiction is the practice of borrowing a favorite character and writing a story about them.

Whether it’s Harry Potter, Violet Sorrengail, or Aragorn, you get to decide what happens to them. Or at least what they're going to do about it.

This time around, the hero of the fan fiction you’re going to write is you. Take a close look at the situation you're currently in. Then write the story.

What are you going to do next? How are you going to capture that treasure or get out of this predicament?

Now here’s the magical part: As you write your fan fiction, you find meaning. You uncover what your story is truly about.

Are you grinding away at a job until you’re old enough to retire, lost in quiet desperation? Or are you the musician who bravely endures the necessities of work so you can play in a band on Friday nights?

Are you the protector and provider for your family? An aspiring writer, entrepreneur, speaker, or coach who's going to change lives with your creativity and inner power?

Consciously writing your fan fiction will reveal the true meaning of your life and empower you to change it in extraordinary ways.

To have a story, you have to find the conflict. There’s either something the character deeply wants, or something they deeply want to avoid.

There are daunting obstacles that hinder their progress or escape.

If everything was hunky-dory, it would be a boring story. Instead, there's always a challenge. That's what makes the story interesting.

 What about your story?

I'm sure it's not too hard to think of what you want or need. And you probably don't have to look far to see the obstacles.

What is the obstacle or the challenge your fan fiction character is facing?  What is the conflict?

Writing your life as fan fiction will make you look forward to the challenge. You'll be eager to see how the story ends.

This could change the meaning of your life.

Tool of the Week: Writing Your Own Story

1. Name the #1 conflict in your life. What is your greatest wish? What is preventing you from fulfilling that wish? There’s the conflict.

2. Write about the current situation as if it were happening to someone else. You could start with a sentence such as, “Once there was very wise, brave, and capable person named (Your Name). The found themselves in a very interesting situation…”

3. Write about the obstacle or the transformation that the character will need to go through or overcome.

4. List your character’s superpowers. What can they (you) do to dramatically alter the situation in your favor?

5. Write about how they will do it (or how they already did it).

6. Now you know how the story goes. Take action and be that character.

Most people go through life rarely questioning the circumstances they're in.

Those who raise the question usually wake up to a sense of horror at how much they're missing and how much they’ve settled.

But you can do the opposite. You can see this as an amazing opportunity to rewrite the scripts and become a hero on an epic journey.

You can take your life to a new level because you've examined the story and empowered the hero.

Be your own fan. Write fan fiction.  

That wraps it up for this week.

If you’re enjoying these rants, lessons, and tools, I would love to hear from you.

If you’re not, I would like to hear from you even more.

Reply to this email and tell me what you think, what you’d like to see in the future, or just to drop me a line about your cat.

I don’t always have the time to reply to your message, but I read every one of them.

Jacob