“Don’t Write A Story.”

Recently, as I was dwelling on something in my personal life, my Mom told me “don’t write a story.” She’d heard the saying from someone else and shared it with me.

What does it mean exactly? 

It’s easy to read too much into what happens in life. It’s easy to read into what people say. It’s easy to assume. It’s easy to over-analyze.

By “not writing a story,” you’re living in a way where things simply are as they are. There are no hidden meanings and no underlying messages. Simply put: it is what it is.

This idea of “not writing a story” about every situation in my life like this was, well, earth shattering.

Especially as women, we tend to write stories all the time; whether it’s a situation in work, with friends and family, or with our significant others. We write stories about why something happened, why a situation went the way it went, why someone reacted the way they did or did what they did. We over analyze every situation to the fullest extent.

I have to hand it to men here: comparatively, men tend not to over-analyze a given situation. They take things as they come: simply.

The reality is: without all the information, do we know our story is true? Absolutely not. It’s almost as though we need to explain a situation to ourselves without actually knowing the reason why.

And guess what? More often than not, the story in our heads is so much more outlandish than the actual story that you wouldn’t even believe it.

What will happen when we stop writing stories? You’ll find that taking things as they come causes less stress and less anxiety. After all, living more simply means taking things as they come.