It’s National Read Across America Day! My book is called: “The Wisdom of Getting Unstuck.” Check out my first chapter below:

Your Antagonist

You’re the author of your own story. You’re the main character, and as you know, a compelling story always has the major character come into conflict with an opposing force. 

This force is your Antagonist.

It wants to see you struggle. It snuggles up next to you, rubs its shoulders against you, and attempts to feed you its lines all day long. 

It wants you to follow its script, not yours.

The Antagonist tries to distort our vision. It blurs the lenses with which we view ourselves and the world around us. Our perception of reality becomes muddied by its foreign messages and external expectations. It’s easy to become misguided by its thick layers of deception.  

Would you describe yourself as a wise person? 

You’ve got your struggles just like everyone else. You’re most likely wiser in some aspects of your life than others, and whether you’re fully aware of it or not, you’re always making efforts to become the person who you truly want to be. 

Have you ever met anyone who isn’t grappling with something? We’re all struggling with one thing or another. Every one of us has an Antagonist.

The Antagonist leaves us good reason to be concerned. It’s doing everything in its power to distract and entice us into doing the wrong thing. When we start to identify ourselves with the negative messages that it delivers, we’re bound to start experiencing a heightened degree of discomfort, emptiness, pain and tension.

It’s a Bother

You’ve probably already given what’s bothering you a name. People often call it anxiety, depression, mania, fear or addiction. A good diagnostician is able to break down one’s negative behaviors and thought patterns into simple terms.

We can learn a lot from these labels. 

The problem is when we start defining ourselves by them. It’s not clear from where they originated. One thing’s for certain, once we start basing our most important life decisions on our Antagonist’s ill-driven directives, that’s when we know that we’ve stumbled right into the muddy middle. 

Imagine making life decisions based on your own values, making choices that look right and feel good, and whenever you decide to take your next step, you can count on it to be firmly planted and well secured. 

What if you could establish a mutual understanding with your Antagonist, and change the relationship for the better? Nothing could stop you from writing your own story in your own way. 

You’d have the freedom to develop a narrative that suits you best. 

In order to start relating to our Antagonist on our own terms, we have to become wiser to its daily shenanigans. As long as we’re convinced of its rhetoric, it’ll continue to rule over us. 

It’ll continue to dictate our life. 

It takes a wise person to be able to avoid one’s Antagonist’s whims, but when we time and time again find ourselves stuck in the muddy middle, it’s upon us to start developing new and clever ways to finagle ourselves out from the middle of its sticky mud.

Want to read more? Click below to order “The Wisdom of Getting Unstuck.”